I’ve been feeling lately that maybe I took the wrong career path.
Investment law is interesting and satisfying, but I can’t escape the gnawing feeling that there could have been other, even more titillating fields in which to concentrate.
Cornell Prof. Michael Lynn obviously is having no such career doubts:
Prof. Michael Lynn, marketing and tourism, surveyed 374 waitresses about their perceived “sexiness,” breast size and other physical characteristics and correlated these results with the amount of tips the waitresses received.
His results indicate that evolutionary instinct trumps the ideals many patrons profess. Though most customers say they reward service, Lynn reports that quality of service has less than a 2-percent effect on the actual tip.
Instead, he found that waitresses with larger bra sizes received higher tips — as did women with blonde hair and slender bodies.
While this may seem self-evident to some, Lynn said that “it’s always important to test what seems like obvious cultural wisdom.”
Uh huh. He’s just trying to provide career services to people in need:
Lynn explained that his study could be useful to a potential waitress as it can help gauge her “prospects in the industry.”
Uh huh. Not going to make many friends in academia with this advice:
“[Restaurants] might very well want to hire waitresses who will earn larger tips,” Lynn said. “[These employees] can largely be identified through their physical characteristics.”
For those of you who want to read the full study, the research paper is titled Determinants and Consequences of Female Attractiveness and Sexiness: Realistic Tests with Restaurant Waitresses. There are no pictures, so don’t bother clicking, gentlemen.
It seems that I’ve heard this story before. Video link, please.
Update: Jules Crittenden explains it all.
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Comments
"Tit-ian. I kid you not. T-I-T-I-A-N"
Don't tell me – a government funded research project, right? Another example of wasted tax payer money. Any fool (or pretty young waitress) could have told you that – no charge!
BTW – this study encourages sexual bias against males and discrimination against brunettes (based on "perceived looks") – alert the PC Police immediately!! 😉
How is it socially just that big boobed beautiful blondes can earn more than anyoe else? As a soceity, shouldn't we demand Obama get involved and level the playing field? Should't society be offering boob jobs and bottles of bleach to right this horrible injustice?
Did his sample include topless waitresses of strip clubs in his study? I suspect they make even more than clothed waitresses, but we need a study to confirm this. But if my suspicion is correct, then why not just hire topless waitresses with big tits to improve business? The waitress will earn more and the business will earn more. Win/win. Everybody earns more and pays more in taxes, so it could be a solution to the federal government deficit.
So basically science has verified the business model for Hooters. Well, thank you for that.
Seriously, haven't they been fending off federal EEOC lawsuits for years?
On tha topic this is the way I see it. You can't force a strip club to be gender neutral. A club is allowed to cator to a specific clientelle. And bluntly, i think of hooters as just a low-grade version of the same thing. i really think hooters is one end of the spectrum, and strip clubs are toward the other end, but its a difference of degree and not kind.
My modest musical response, entitled "Nice Big Jugs," G-rated, sad to say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saeur9He75Q
I'm rather disappointed that this posting wasn't illustrated with examples of some of the more successful tip gatherers. For scientific purposes only, of course.
As a soceity, shouldn't we demand Obama get involved and level the playing field? Should't society be offering boob jobs and bottles of bleach to right this horrible injustice?
Yes, but not in the way you're proposing. I suspect the current administration would be much more amenable to the idea of mandatory breast reduction surgeries and dye jobs so that no one has an advantage.
One really would require further research into the curve of the hip before taking this too seriously.
And what of the daintiness of the ankle?
I wonder if they controlled for personality.
M