The Tipping Point
July 22nd, 2008 by Tim Uden
For travellers not used to the custom, tipping is one of those strange American customs that can make you feel totally uncomfortable.
For starters you are bribing someone for simply doing their job and the question of how to tip is just as difficult as how much. Many people find the concept of paying a bribe somewhat sleazy and the action of leaving extra money feels a bit dishonest.
In most parts of the world you won’t cause too much offence if you simply pay the amount advertised on the menu, but if you’re travelling in the United States or Canada then tipping is almost unavoidable especially if you plan on eating out.
For years the standard tip has been an additional 15% in restaurants and $1 per drink in bars – that’s right, in North America you are expected to tip in bars as well – however North American attitudes to tipping are based largely on guilt and most people now regard 15% as the bare minimum with 20% becoming the new standard.
In bars in the United States it is common to tip an extra dollar per drink. An extra dollar is excessive, but when everyone else does it you have to do it too, unless not tipping is an advertised policy.
During happy hour, an extra dollar can be 50%. Even 15% is often way more than the profit margin of the guy who owns the bar, yet the bar staff have invested nothing in the business other than their own time.
Some – mostly American – travel guides have huge sections devoted to tipping. Apparently if you stay in fancy hotels you are expected to tip virtually everyone from the guy who opens the door for you to the person who cleans your room. Based on this, I certainly wouldn’t want to stay in a nice hotel in the States.
Fortunately hostels are tip-free zones. The average backpacker comes from a country where tipping isn’t an entrenched custom and the low budget emphasis means that it would certainly be unusual if a guest started throwing their money away. This means that a bar in a hostel should also be tip-free. If it isn’t, then the hostel deserves every bad review they get.
A standard argument is that tipping is necessary because the staff get paid so poorly. I have been told that some get paid as little as $2.15 hour.
$2.15 is not much, but you can afford to pay a little more if you charge more for the drinks. The customer pays the same but they don’t feel like they need to bribe the staff just so they do their job. The whole process of tipping is really intimidating for many travellers and for this reason a hostel bar is often popular with travellers as a hostel is one place where travellers feel they don’t need to tip. Many travellers would prefer to drink in a hostel bar over a regular bar for this reason alone.
Wages are just another cost of doing business and paying staff is the business owner’s responsibility, not the customers’.
I have had low paying jobs like stacking shelves in supermarkets, packing CDs in a warehouse near Heathrow, clearing tables in a bar in Auckland and carrying customers’ groceries to their cars in Melbourne and I have never been tipped nor expected a tip. In fact I probably would have felt uncomfortable if someone tried to tip me.
The American attitude toward tipping seems to be motivated by guilt and the desire to appear generous in front of your friends. In America it is considered bad form to give a bad tip even though the service may be appalling.
It is one thing to tip in Canada and the US, where it is an accepted custom; however it is quite another thing when North Americans insist on tipping when they travel abroad. I, and I am sure that I am not alone here, do not appreciate it when this custom is introduced to other countries.
Most people I know don’t regularly tip, but in Australia it is starting to catch on especially in trendy inner-city neighbourhoods. My local fish and chip shop in San Remo (1½ hours south-east of Melbourne) lost my business the moment they put a tip jar on the counter. Now I drive an extra few minutes to White Salt in Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island, where I have discovered the fish is so much better. My local fish and chip shop lost a regular customer through the selfish act of soliciting a bribe and I’ll never return now that I have found somewhere better.
I don’t know about you, but I think that a fish and chip shop is not the sort of place where you should tip anyway. Even in America I doubt most people would tip in a greasy take-away with no table service.
When I travel in the US I find I can avoid tipping by staying in hostels, frequenting fast food places or food courts in shopping centres and buying most other food and drinks from supermarkets. However sometimes it is nice to go to a bar or linger in a cafe, especially if there is a free Wi-Fi connection and in these cases you are entering tipping territory. It puts the customer in an uneasy situation and making the customer feel uncomfortable is certainly not good customer service.
Fortunately a handful of restaurants in the US are bucking the trend. The Linkery in San Diego is one that I will make the effort of visiting next time I’m in California.
I sometimes like to eat out and I like to be in a comfortable environment where I feel welcome and relaxed and am treated well regardless of how much money I have. If I am paying full price for my meal – and eating out is an occasional treat – then why should I feel that I need to pay a bribe just so the restaurant staff do their job. Really is my meal worth more simply because a waitress draws a smiley face on the bill?
Tipping doesn’t play a big part in increasing customer service particularly when tips are given regardless of service (see “Tip Levels and Service: An Update, Extension and Reconciliation” by Michael Lynn of Cornell University, 2003, and “Incentives and Service Quality in the Restaurant Industry: The Tipping – Service Puzzle”, by Ofer H. Azar of Ben-Gurion University, 2007). If anything tipping only decreases the customer’s guilt.
I wouldn’t pay an extra 15-20% to a used car dealer so why do the same in a restaurant or bar? Restaurants should just raise the prices by 20% (so they can pay higher wages) and then add the tax to the price (advertising prices exclusive of tax is another annoying thing about America that would be outlawed by deceptive advertising laws elsewhere in the world) and then let customers pay the advertised price.
