Tipping is the practice of customers voluntarily leaving additional payment
at a restaurant or for a service
as a way of appreciating someone doing a great job.
The waiter or waitress is particularly attentive, thoughtful,
and has genuinely made your experience more memorable.
It can be nice to give them a few extra bucks for their effort.
And for solid, but not outstanding, service,
it's both nice and convenient to at least round up the bill.
At least that's how it works in Australia, New Zealand, the UK,
France, the rest of Europe, Japan, India, Asia in general,
Latin America, Africa (if they had extra money),
and pretty much every country in the world.
There's one notable exception,
the United States of America.
And one less notable exception, Canada.
Because here in North America,
not only do we tip on just about everything,
in a restaurant, it's standard to tip 15 to 20 percent--
unless the food literally kills you,
in which case, you would put 14% in your will to make a statement.
And a big reason for our tipping culture is
because of how much wait staff are paid,
which is often below minimum wage.
The idea being that when you combine tips with their pay,
it will be above minimum wage.
And if it's not by the end of the month,
then the restaurant will make up the difference.
So ultimately you end up with a game of chicken
whereby a restaurant says,
"We're gonna underpay our staff because the customer will make up for it."
And the customer says,
"if we don't make up for it, the restaurant will have to stop underpaying their staff."
This is of course the reason why I always tip zero percent,
because I'm not a coward.
But it doesn't stop there,
because, well, pretty much everyone knows that you should tip 15 to 20%
at restaurants, bars, taxis, and at the hairdresser.
There are situations that get niche enough
that none of us even know what you're expected to tip.
Movers, I don't know. Cleaning lady, I don't know.
Grocery delivery, I don't know. Massage therapists, I don't know...
depends what ending you want :~)
Even the other day I was getting some furniture delivered
and so I googled if you're supposed to tip the delivery guys
and one person said, "they assemble it, I'll tip them
"But if they just drop it all off at my place,
"then I'll just give them a six-pack of beer or something."
So now, not only do we have to worry about how much to tip people,
we've actually completely regressed to the barter system.
One of the strange things I find about tipping
is that it's almost always done as a percentage.
Meaning that, oftentimes, you're not even paying for better service,
you're paying more as a function of how expensive your food is.
If you come in and buy $100 bottle of wine and leave a $5 tip
that would be considered being a bit cheap.
But, if me and my friends go into the same restaurant,
order two happy hour house wines, minutes before happy hour's over,
and sip on them until late night happy hour starts again,
when we tip five dollars, that's like twice as much as our entire bill.
So to the untrained eye we seem generous,
even though we're actually bankrupting Cactus Club from the inside out.
Now, given the fact that tipping is so prevalent in North America,
there must be some logic behind it.
And while one reason in restaurants is that it leads to lower menu prices,
giving the illusion of a better deal,
the argument for tips being a big part of servers income
is that, by having a large percentage of their wage coming from tips,
it incentivizes them to do a better job.
This is of course why it was such a shocker
when George Washington went with the constitution
and not the iron backbone of the restaurant model.
What frustrates me even more is that in Canada
if we pay by card we're immediately prompted
to tip either 15, 20, or 25 percent by the machine--
and that tip is on top of tax.
So not only do you panic trying to figure out
if you're supposed to tip when you're just getting takeout coffee,
if you don't have the balls to press other tip and manually enter zero percent,
the government then charges you interest
for being polite and conflict avoidant,
the very base values on which all of Canada was founded.
Using this tipping logic as part of my own personal protest,
when I do my taxes each year, I like to overestimate by 15%
and then say keep the change.
Just kidding, obviously;
I don't declare my income tax.
And while we have to deal with confrontations,
something us Canadians are not good at,
the worst part of non electronic tipping in America
is that it requires you to do basic mental arithmetic,
something I thought had been abolished years ago.
And while you might think that you're good
at simple multiplication and division,
the moment you have the spotlight on you
you'll realize that you might as well be doing matrix algebra,
because not only do you have NA education,
it's also been three months since your last Amazon delivery
and you've forgotten how to hold a pen.
Now the ultimate question is
what do we do about the whole tipping situation in North America?
Do we discourage tipping
and pay employees a reasonable living wage
and then let the small business landscape
settle at a new equilibrium like every other country?
Most certainly yes,
But that would be quite difficult.
And in the grand scheme of things
we have much more serious issues to worry about
than tipping in restaurants.
For example, take a look at student loans.
Here, that's at least $10,000 a year for school
and another $1,500 for textbooks.
That means you're literally tipping 15% to your professors
so they can find a new stock photo for last year's material
Or did you know that in almost all first world countries
you have serious medical expenses paid for by the government,
but in America, not only do you have to pay
for potentially life-saving surgery,
the surgeon is legally allowed to keep 15% of your appendix
for his collection.
Ultimately though, while North America might be a little behind
when it comes to tipping practices,
we can be grateful it's not the worst.
Take China for example:
where as a newly married couple
you're given a punch card after your ceremony,
and then for every three kids you have,
the government gets to take one.