I had arrived in Calcutta in the early hours of the morning and was
taken to a smart guest-house owned by a corporation I had come to write
about. The porter, who had to be woken up to show me to my room, insisted on
carrying my bags up several flights of stairs in suffocating humidity. He
showed me in and then started to hover. I had been in such a rush that I
hadn’t picked up any Indian currency and was now in the embarassing position
of trying to explain that I didn’t have a single rupee to offer as a tip.
“Nothing?” said the porter scornfully. “I’m sorry,” I said and then
compounded the offence by asking for a bottle of water.
I could understand why he might be put out, but I was taken aback by his
hostility as he stomped off and brought back the water without a word. My
previous experiences of Indian service had been wonderful. I would never
have expected such a breakdown over the small matter of being caught without
the cash for a tip.
But the world is changing. The culture of tipping is spreading fast and
gratuities are now expected in countries where they were previously unheard
of or, at least, not generally expected. In China, where traditionally
tipping was seen as a capitalist mechanism that promoted inequality, the
practice is taking off ahead of the Olympics next year.
The growth of tipping worldwide is driven by business and leisure travellers
from the West, particularly America, where tipping is a crucial component of
the economy worth an estimated $26 billion (£12.9 billion) a year.
Tipping is said to have originally stood for “To Insure Promptitude”, but
these days the tips we pay out are a reward for the competence and charm
with which a service is provided. Or so we think.
Michael Lynn, an associate professor of Consumer Behaviour at Cornell
University, has been studying tipping behaviour for 20 years. His research
into what motivates people to tip found that, although the majority of
people say that they tip to reward good service, the correlation between the
quality of the service and the size of tips is, in reality, minimal. Whether
or not the sun is shining on any day affects the size of tips as much as the
quality of the service. Tips are influenced to some extent by the rapport
between a waitress and her customers, but, in the vast majority of cases,
people simply give the standard percentage and do so to ensure that they win
the approval of the waitress and those in their party and to make them feel
better about themselves.
A few decades ago Americans paid tips similar to those in Britain now – about
10 per cent. Now the trend is upwards, says Lynn. “A tip of 15 to 20 per
cent is neutral. There is upward pressure. People are trying to buy social
approval.”
The etiquette of tipping in Britain is fraught with perils. Although modern
tipping is thought to have originated in Britain, as a nation we are not
generally very generous tippers. Lynn is more tactful. “You just don’t have
the same norm.” Americans are the biggest tippers, while in Japan, Iceland
and New Zealand there is very little tipping. Lynn puts Britain around
mid-table.
I’m a particularly anxious tipper, partly because I spent a few
years in America, where restaurants carry signs that read “Tipping is not a
city in China”, and the huge number of occasions where one is expected to
tip left me in a state of uncertainty when I came back to Britain. The
result is that I tend to overtip.
In the US, come the holiday season (Christmas to us), I was rebuked by friends
when they discovered that I hadn’t given a handsome bonus to each of the
guys who delivered three different newspapers to my door each morning. Every
year a hairy fellow emerged from the woods of Virginia in a pickup truck and
delivered a stack of firewood to my porch. I paid him. But apparently I was
also supposed to tip him. That may have explained his sullenness.
Websites such as Bitterwaitress.com
and gossip columns in the US take great delight in naming and shaming mean,
and praising generous, tippers. No doubt they pay decent tips for the
tip-offs. The custom has spread to Britain. Earlier this year Prince William
and friends on holiday in Switzerland were exposed for leaving a tip of just
1 per cent: Fr10 on a Fr1,000 bill. Perhaps they got confused with their
arithmetic.
In restaurants in Britain it is now fairly standard practice for an optional
service charge, usually between 10 and 12.5 per cent, to be added to the
bill. This has become the norm because, according to The Times’s
restaurant critic Giles Coren, “British people are stingy and don’t tip. In
America, unless the waiter spits in the soup, they tip.
“You could say reasonably ‘I don’t approve of this service charge. I will just
tip on the basis of the service you give me.’ ” He hasn’t quite had the
courage to do that yet.
The problem, he says, is that most of the time the service charge is used to
make up the staff’s wages and is not shared among them as an extra bonus on
top of the wage. “I think that is dishonest.”
He will sometimes ask waiting staff if the service charge is paid directly to
them by management and, if it isn’t, he will ask for it to be taken off the
bill and he will then pay the waiting staff the tip in cash.
Some restaurants include a service charge and then, when the credit card bill
comes, leave a space for an additional tip. Coren regards this as very
cheeky. If the service is good he will add a little tip on top of the
service charge. But then he worries that the waiter will think that he
hasn’t noticed that service is included and that “I tip really stingily. So
then you have to ask ‘is service included?’ and flash the fiver.”
Coren says that the whole percentages system is also wrong. “Why should the
girl who is working really hard in Pizza Express get a fiver on a £40 bill
when the waitress at Le Gavroche could get a ten per cent tip of £60?” He
suggests it might just be better to tip a tenner regardless of the total
bill.
One of the most awkward tipping scenarios can be in the hairdressing salon. If
you’re a bloke paying £16 to the barber and you’re feeling generous you
might hand over a £20 note and walk out of the door feeling like a
particularly munificent monarch. It seems that it is trickier for women: do
you tip the stylist and the colourist and the girl who washes your hair? And
how much?
Hari Salem, The Times’s hair expert, has simple advice: “Tip well or don’t tip
at all. The worst thing is to tip badly. It doesn’t go down too well.”
Failure to leave a tip at all is “no problem. The only time you are
disappointed is if you get a bad tip. That’s a bit of an insult.”
In general, clients at his south Kensington salon tip 10 to 15 per cent to the
stylist and a similar amount to a colourist, with £2 to £5 to the girl who
washes their hair. It would be regarded as a faux pas to tip the owner if he
cuts your hair.
More tricky tipping dilemmas: do you tip the pizza delivery-boy when the pizza
is late? It is probably the fault of the kitchen so it seems harsh to punish
him, but then I lean towards the view that it seems ludicrous to pay
anything extra for poor service. Lynn says he would pay a tip but possibly
smaller than normal. What about the guy who lurks around in the lavatory in
certain flash restaurants, waiting to spray soap on your hands and to make
sure there is no funny business going on in the cubicles? It’s hard to
imagine a more miserable job, but my harsh view is that I cannot possibly
fork out a quid to a bloke who is standing behind me making me feel nervous
while I’m peeing.
It can be risky to refuse to tip a taxi driver. I once told a cabbie
that I couldn’t give him a tip because he had taken a completely
bizarre and circuitous route to my destination “We’re not f****** geniuses,”
he said and then wrote on the receipt: “No tip w****r.”
I hate those moments when you can see the meter ticking round and as you get
close to your destination it has reached £9. If you carry on it is going to
be very close to £10 meaning you will either have to give no tip or break
into another £10 note just for the gratuity. So you tell the driver:
“Actually, it’s fine if you just drop me here.” A short walk and an 80p tip
is certainly preferable to completing the journey and having an awkward tip
situation.
“It’s a funny old business, tipping,” says Bob Oddy of the Licensed Taxi
Drivers Association. “I think it’s fair to say you are disappointed if you
don’t get a tip but these days not surprised. When I started 40 years ago
everybody tipped. You could go a whole week, even more, without someone not
tipping. And the proportion of the tip was higher than it is now. The
average fare was four shillings (20p) and nine out of ten people would tip
one shilling. Nowadays, although the majority tip, a significant minority
don’t tip.”
He estimates this to be as much as 40 per cent. The average fare during the
day is £7 or £8 and people tend to round up rather than tip a percentage.
“If that’s £7.20 up to £8 that’s quite nice. If it’s £7.80 and they round
up, not so nice. I think a possible reason is that a different type of
person takes a cab these days. A more mixed clientèle perhaps. When I
started people would say ‘Take a bob for yourself, cabbie.’ Maybe it was
patronising, but, patronising or not, you usually got a tip.”
That goes to the heart of the matter. In the US there are no hang-ups about
tipping. In Britain we get in a terrible tangle over what is appropriate. I
once spent a wonderful couple of days on Kangaroo Island in Australia. But I
now cannot think of the trip without groaning inwardly at my failure to give
my terrific guide the cash for a few beers. You see, I was worried that he
might be insulted. I should just have offered. If in doubt, tip.
A mistake not to tip
One of the mistakes that foreigners make is to tip sparingly or not at all
because service is generally included – 15 per cent in the case of all
restaurants and cafés. The French do not tip generously by American or
British standards, but even when the service is included, they leave some
extra cash to show their appreciation.
In cafés and restaurants where service is adequate or good, it is normal to
leave up to about 10 per cent on top of the bill (which already includes the
15 per cent for service). Taxi drivers do not expect big tips. Rounding up
the fare is usually fine. Hairdressers and their assistants do expect solid
tips. The assistants often don’t have much other income.
Delivery boys (for pizza and other services) normally receive a couple of
euros. Hotel doormen need a euro or two for hailing a cab, and the same for
bellboys delivering baggage. Theatre ushers still expect to be tipped. Give
them one or two euros.
Meaner than the English
The ground rule is to tip for all personal services, apart from those
performed by bosses. The question is how much, and the Germans seem to be
pretty mean compared with the British.
Restaurants do not usually levy a separate service charge and waiters are
badly paid – €1,000 a month take-home is usual. You should tip 5 to 10 per
cent.
If you are a regular customer you should tip at the upper end of the range as
this will guarantee you a good table the next time. If you are a tourist on
a quick trip, and you are not overwhelmed by the charm of your waiter, then
5 per cent is appropriate.
For drinks, round up. Germans are always meaner than tourists on this. They
often consider it excessive to round up on a €2.40 coffee and give €2.70
rather than €3. Serving staff do not take this amiss.
If you travel first class on rail, the ticket inspector will offer to bring
you food from the restaurant car. Since he is functioning as a waiter, you
can tip him.
ROGER BOYES
Tipping through the ages
For feudal landlords the toss of a coin to a scrofulous peasant was a way of
ensuring a safe passage, but tipping in its present form began in English
coffee houses in the 16th century. There, if you wanted speedy service, you
tossed a coin into a brass urn unsubtly marked “To insure promptitude” –
notice the first letters of each word.
The practice of tipping ahead of service spread to pubs and became a way of
demonstrating affluence, Sharon L. Fullen explains in The Complete Guide
to Tips & Gratuities: a Guide for Employees Who Earn Tips. At the
same time, household guests began to tip lowly paid servants, footmen and
valets, though once servants began to expect the reward, the incentive to
provide good service evaporated.
In America tipping emerged after the Civil War but encountered opposition from
those who disliked patronage. As William R. Scott put it in a polemic in
1916, the tip is the price that “one American is willing to pay to induce
another to acknowledge inferiority”. Anti-tipping campaigns led to six
states banning it but today the tip is non-negotiable throughout the
country.
Unncessary guilt trip
It used to be generous to slip a 10 rupee note to a hotel porter or a taxi
driver but as India’s economy has grown, so has the tendency for the footmen
of the service sector to turn up their noses at the face of Mahatma Gandhi
on the second-smallest denomination note. In a five-star environment,
tourists often feel embarrassed into giving 100 rupees, which is a little
more than a quid. But it is an unnecessary guilt trip. Tipping is not
expected. Handing out a sum that 800 million of the population would
struggle to earn in a day is furthermore culturally insensitive. In most
situations, 10 rupees hits the right note.
ASHLING O’CONNOR
Service is a new thing
Russia is relatively new to tipping, service being one of the many decadent
Western activities frowned upon in the Soviet Union. Soviet-era habits and a
Russian penchant for suffering mean that many staff still regard service
with a smile as demeaning to their soul.
A typical restaurant tip is 10 to 15 per cent, though customers in cheaper
places round up the bill to the nearest 100 rubles (£2). Rich Russians
routinely splash money around at elitny bars and clubs, but tough feis
control door policies ensure that bouncers never let in the sort of people
who might blab about it to the papers.
One café on Moscow's touristy Arbat recently included a 15 per cent service
charge on its English-language menu, but left it off the Russian version.
Staff explained that it was because “foreigners don’t tip”.
TONY HALPIN
Less is more
Japan is, pretty strictly, a no-tipping culture — at least in the mainstream
retail and services industry. Providing good service is simply regarded as a
matter of pride by the Japanese, and they believe that there is a sort of
social awkwardness inherent in then letting the customer calculate the value
of good service. Bear in mind also, of course, that things remain very
expensive in Japan, so most people feel that they have paid a full price for
whatever it is that they have received.
The word chippu is sex-industry code for the money required to upgrade a
“regular service” (eg, a massage) into an all-out sexual service.
You don’t tip in restaurants, bars, hairdressers, taxis. A sushi delivery man
came to the house a couple of days ago. I told him to keep the change, but
he flatly refused and handed over whatever it was (about £2, I guess). Golf
caddies tend to be tipped, but in the form of presents which they can later
redeem for cash at a set exchange rate at the golf-club shop. It is regarded
as a bit low to simply hand them cash.
LEO LEWIS
