The Sleeper Effect: A Reason for Lost Tips

My co-workers and I recently experienced the sleeper effect in how we are conducting tip distribution in a new restaurant that just opened. The sleeper effect was shown by Hovland and Weiss (1951) when they found that attitudes that come from a non-credible source increase over time. It is the tendency to remember the content of the message but forget that the source was non-credible (Pratkanis et al., 1988). Anyways, there is a cook who works in the kitchen (I will call him George) and is one of the owner's best friends. He is the guy who jokes about anything and everything and makes everyone laugh. The first day of training the manager told us never to take anything George says seriously. However, one of his early jokes caused the employees much confusion once the store opened. As a restaurant all the waiters pull tips so everyone who is at the same level (server 1, 2, or 3) should get the same amount of money on a given night, and all the tips are put on the paycheck at the end of the week. This makes sure everything is claimed and nobody gets in trouble with the IRS, and also it helps the whole restaurant work together as a team. So server 1 makes the most percentage and gets the highest hourly and server 2 gets the second highest and so on and so on. George started a rumor early on in training that all server 1's get 100% of cash tips and we should just pocket it and take it home. At first, we all knew that it was George and we should run it by the manager before actually taking him seriously. However, it slipped our minds and come opening night there were three server 1's on the floor, myself included. At the end of the night each of us had one table pay with cash each and we had the idea in our heads that the cash tips were ours because we had apparently forgotten who had told us this. So we pocketed the cash tips and left for the night we some money in our pockets. The next day at work all three of us were brought into the manager's office and on the desk was the server's manual that had in big bold letters "POCKETING CASH TIPS RESULTS IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION!" We were all shocked and couldn't think to believe why we thought it was alright to take the cash home, until finally, my co-worker said that George had told us that. Then, it all clicked, we all immediately remembered George telling us and realised it was just a joke gone wrong. So we ended up paying back the cash and we were not penalized for the misunderstanding. However, this is one example that shows that the sleeper effect can cause problems in society, and everyone should always check their sources.

Hovland, C. I., & Weiss, W. (1951). The influence on source credibility on communication
effectiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15, 635-650.

Pratkanis, A. R., Greenwald, A. G., Leippe, M. R., & Baumgardner, M. H. (1988). In search of
reliable persuasion effects: III. The sleeper effect is dead. Long live the sleeper effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 203-218.