Way to go Dallas. You've been officially proclaimed the worst tipping city in all of Texas by our sister publication the Houston Press. Food critic Katherine Shilcutt analyzed data she pulled from Lousy Tippers, a website geared for the service industry that posts tipping statistics to publicly shame cheapskate diners. Her article lists Dallas and surrounding suburbs as king of the misers. She even called us a wretched hive of of non-tipping scum and villainy.
Lousy Tippers started recording user generated data in 2007, but has remained relatively quiet until gaining recent attention in articles on Eater, Creative Loafing in Atlanta, and most recently Eating Our Words. Lousy Tippers allows users to submit first and last names, address of the business where the tip stiffing occurred, total bill and amount of tip, and then after a basic (are you a human) math test, their submission to the database is logged.
While the DFW area has the most entries, suggesting that the city has the worst tipping population is a stretch considering the shaky design of the database and the ease at which users can enter random and incorrect data. It's just as plausible to offer that Dallas has the largest population of angry waiters who have been introduced to the website, which would account for higher entries, or that Dallas has one very bored and disgruntled 14-year-old busboy. I added a fictitious entry for a terrible customer named Timothy Toodles in less than a minute. (Sorry Dallas, I made us look worse.)
To be fair, Shilcutt admits the database is as shady as a man selling watches from the inside of a trench coat but either way diners might want to be mindful. The next time you fill out your credit card receipt and leave a crappy tip you could end up with your full name exposed in a public shaming on the website.
