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The question of how much to pay for service varies hugely between the old and newer world. Americans typically are generous, offering large gestures of appreciation regardless, often, of whether or not the service is actually any good. But big tips are not customary in France or Italy, where patrons only leave small change alongside the bill.
In the UK, as in so many things, we prevaricate when considering the service charge. Over the decades, there seems to have been a cultural understanding that if not included already in the tally we should contribute around 17-ish per cent as service (a smidge higher than the standard 12.5 per cent). Yet we show little or no consistency in whom we give these rewards to. Do you tip your hairdresser, for example, at the salon? Or what about the junior who has to offer you an awkward head massage while conditioning your hair?
Post-pandemic, the cashless economy has exposed further the incongruities of the service charge. We now routinely pay for items via terminals and tablets that ask us if we would like to add a tip. While tipping was once discretionary, furtive and private, the new systems make very public exactly what we’re prepared to pay. We seem to be falling for it. As noted in a recent New Yorker article, the new system has led to a spike in earnings across a whole range of industries: tips in bakeries and cafés have risen 41 per cent, according to the article, while theatre box office staff have seen an increase of 160 per cent.
Moreover, the new iPad-style pay system sets out new expectations as to what the client should pay. Are you the cheapskate who only pays an extra dollar for their latte — which, in the cheapskate’s defence, might have been served from a counter in a takeaway container? Or are you Daddy Warbucks, opting to whack down the full suggested 30 per cent?
Then there’s the question of to whom the tips are going. Is there a general pot? Evening Standard editor Dylan Jones recently bemoaned the phenomenon of being asked to pay a supplementary tip for “just” the waitress, in addition to the considerable service charge he had already paid.
In my experience, the world of tipping is wildly inconsistent, and the widely held notion that it supplements the lowest wage-earners is often a fallacy. Mostly, tips are about tits and timing: the tips I brought home as a waitress in the 2000s rarely correlated to the actual effort I had made on behalf of the client. For example, the breakfast slot — a three-hour schlep of 10,000 different coffee preferences, gluten intolerances and requests for toasted teacakes, hateful, raisin bun-muffins that would incinerate unless watched with the vigilance of an MI6 operative — would yield meagre rewards. The tips were pathetic, even when I’d sometimes had to thrice toast those fecking teacakes, and the crumby tables were a disgusting mess to clear away.
During the evening service, the tips were generous and routine — though shout out to the gentleman who once brought his family of 12 to celebrate an anniversary, at the culmination of which he presented me with one shiny 50p. Incidentally, the best money I ever made was on cloakroom duty over a New Year weekend. I went home with £600 spilling from my pockets, just for standing next to a pile of ugly coats.
My favourite thoughts on tipping invariably involve Jerry Seinfeld, the self-appointed etiquette guru and comedian. On his series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he takes Sarah Jessica Parker to task for her habit of tipping only 20 per cent. By contrast, she considers Seinfeld’s sheaves of dollars “disgusting”, and there follows a squabble during which she declares that it’s a good job she’s not married to the vulgarian.
The contactless tipping system has made Seinfelds of everyone. We are now publicly shamed into paying ever larger gratuities, and for services that are dubious at best. At fast food outlets, for example, one is encouraged on the self-serve checkouts to round up one’s bill as an optional service charge. I’m a big fan of rounding up for charitable causes, but surely McDonald’s could just adjust its menu so that the staff wages could incorporate that extra 13p.
And what of the other services that are harder to remunerate with a machine? Should hotel door staff now carry payment devices so that we can blip them a few quid when they flag down a cab on our behalf? And what of the restroom attendant? Since we went cashless, the little dish that sits near the sink in posh hotels (I’m thinking specifically about Claridge’s) has dwindled to nil. And yet I still make good use of their face cloths and spritz myself with their perfume. Is this fair?
Maybe we should all carry devices that allow us to be rewarded, or reward whomever we please. I could blip the nice lady in Waitrose for helping me find something on the spice shelf. Or having tried to board the wrong aeroplane this morning, I could blip the chap who checked his app to tell me the correct gate to find my flight. I could blip this column’s editor for making wise additions to my copy, she says hopefully. And then, having read, and I hope enjoyed it, you can all blip me a small token of your gratitude.
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