单选题 {{B}}Text 3{{/B}}
When Thomas Keller, one of America's foremost chefs, announced that on Sept. 1 he would abolish the practice of tipping at Per Se, his luxury restaurant in New York City, and replace it with a European-style service charge, I knew three groups would be opposed: customers, servers and restaurant owners. These three groups are all committed to tipping—as they quickly made clear on Web sites. To oppose tipping, it seems, is to be anticapitalist, and maybe even a little French.
But Mr. Keller is right to move away from tipping—and it's worth exploring why just about everyone else in the restaurant world is wrong to stick with the practice.
Customers believe in tipping because they think it makes economic sense. "Waiters know that they won't get paid if they don't do a good job" is how most advocates of the system would put it. To be sure, this is a tempting, apparently rational statement about economic theory, but it appears to have little applicability to the real world of restaurants.
Michael Lynn, an associate professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, has conducted dozens of studies of tipping and has concluded that consumers' assessments of the quality of service correlate weakly to the amount they tip.
Rather, customers are likely to tip more in response to servers touching them lightly and leaning forward next to the table to make conversation than to how often their water glass is refilled—in other words, customers tip more when they like the server, not when the service is good. Mr. Lynn's studies also indicate that male customers increase their tips for female servers while female customers increase their tips for male servers.
What's more, consumers seem to forget that the tip increases as the bill increases. Thus, the tipping system is an open invitation to what restaurant professionals call "upselling": every bottle of imported water, every espresso and every cocktail is extra money in the server's pocket. Aggressive upselling for tips is often rewarded while low-key, quality service often goes unrecognized.
In addition, the practice of tip pooling, which is the norm in fine-dining restaurants and is becoming more common in every kind of restaurant above the level of a greasy spoon, has ruined whatever effect voting with your tip might have had on an individual waiter. In an unreasonable outcome, you are punishing the good waiters in the restaurant by not tipping the bad one. Indeed, there appears to be little connection between tipping and good service.
单选题 It may be inferred that a European-style service ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[考点解析] 本题为推论题,文章第1段谈到:当美国的著名厨师汤姆斯·克勒宣布9月1日他会在纽约的豪华餐馆Per Se废除付小费的做法,用欧洲的付费方式取而代之时,我知道有3个团体会反对:消费者、服务员和餐馆店主。由此可推断欧洲的付费是免付小费的,故正确答案为A。
单选题 Which of the following is NOT true according to the author?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[考点解析] 本题为是非判断题,参见文章第2、3段,其大意是:但是克勒先生取消小费是正确——为什么餐饮业几乎所有人都坚持这种错误做法,这一现象值得探究。消费者很相信付小费,因为他们认为它有经济意义。大多数提倡者认为,服务员知道,如果他们不做好工作,他们将得不到小费。的确,这是关于经济理论一种既诱人又显然合理的说法,但它在真正的餐饮业似乎却很少适用。选项A、C、D都提到了,没有提及B,所以B为正确答案。
单选题 According to Michael Lynn's studies, waiters will likely get more tips if they ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[考点解析] 本题为细节题,参见文章第5段第1句末:in other worlds, customers tip more when they like the server, not when the service is good. 其大意是:换句话说,消费者要是喜欢服务员,便会付更多的小费,而不是服务很好的时候。由此可知,要是服务员赢得消费者的好感,将会得到更多的小费,故正确答案为C。
单选题 We may infer from the context that "upselling" (Line 2, Para. 6) probably means ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题为上下文语义题,参见下文every bottle of imported water, every espresso and every cocktail is extra money in the server's pocket. 其大意是:每一瓶矿泉水,每一杯浓缩咖啡和鸡尾酒都是服务员口袋中的外快。由此可推测upselling的意思也就是向消费者销售更昂贵的东西,故正确答案为D。
单选题 This passage is mainly about ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[考点解析] 本题为主旨题,文章第1段提到美国著名厨师汤姆斯·克勒宣布废除付小费的做法,以后各段作者谈到付小费的利弊,分析了废除付小费的原因,所以正确答案为A。