Recently, I was ordering a bottle of beer in a bar and got my change on a little silver dish. This isn’t the first time it’s happened – wine bars and cocktail bars seem to do this rather a lot. But there’s a part of my that begrudges tipping for a bottle of beer being opened.
The fact is, I just don’t know when I should tip.
Tipping for good service
Tipping for good service is obvious, but it can be a little bit of a minefield. If I tipped for every bit of good service, I wouldn’t have any money left at the end of the week. Do I tip every time I buy a drink? Leave a tip on the bar when I go? Do I part with my pennies when I’ve had adequate service? There’s nothing wrong with adequate service, a lot of the time I don’t want to be bothered or have a chat with someone about my day. Sometimes I just want to be served quickly and quietly, but I don’t think you can tip for that.
Tipping because you feel like you have to
Those little trays are like a passive aggressive guilt trip. I don’t want to be forced into tipping someone. Actually, I hate it. It’s not the actual tipping that I have a problem with, but I’d like to make my own mind up about when I do. Those little trays make me feel bad and I find myself rebelling against them. They also imply that I should leave my change and that’s a strange way of tipping someone – if I’ve given you £10 and I get a fiver and some ten pence pieces in change, I’ll feel even cheaper just leaving the spare change.
I’ve only twice asked for a service charge to be removed from a bill (eye-rolling doesn’t exactly make your case if I’ve had an issue with bad service). There are times when I feel like I probably wouldn’t have tipped, but it’s not such bad service that I want to argue the case over paying it. It’s easier to pay, tip and vow to not return again.
Tipping when the opportunity doesn’t arise
Tipping for services feels awkward sometimes. Do I tip the guy who washed my hair at the hairdressers? What if they got me a drink and gave me the best chocolate biscuits because I remembered I liked them? If I do, how do I tip them? Often we don’t get a say over where our tips go – especially not if we’re paying by card. Some restaurants split tips between everyone (or keep them to up minimum wages, which is very uncool).
There’s nothing more awkward than tipping, or waiting for change to tip. So sometimes it’s easier to overtip or not tip at all.
Tipping in the strangest of places
Despite all of my tipping woes, I sometimes over tip in the strangest of places. A taxi driver can woo me out of a couple of quid if I’m running late and I don’t want to wait for change. A takeaway delivery man will get a tip no matter how surly he is, just because I can’t be bothered to wait for him to find change. I don’t feel that I tip enough sometimes, but then others I’m all over the gratuity.
Tipping when I can’t afford it
Sorry, lovely cute waiter, sometimes that change you’ve given me is actually paying my bus fare home. I even feel guilty about going out for a slice of cake.
Anyone else have trouble tipping?
{Image: Brad Greenlee}
Tips can be an issue. The only regular recipient of tips is my hairdresser.
In pre-Euro days St Tropez we had such appallingly bad service in a restaurant – probably because we clearly hadn’t walked off the nearest yacht – that I left a 5 centimes tip, only to discover the terrible French practice of automatically adding 10% to the bill for ‘service’. We went outside fuming only to be guided out of the car park by a charming young French man who quite made up for his compatriots. But since then I never tip in France. But in the US, many people depend on tips just to make a living so you have to be sensitive to local customs.
The practice in the UK of using tips to make up the minimum wage is actually illegal now and the best restaurants will share tips with everyone on the staff. I prefer to tip in cash, even if paying on a card, just to avoid the taxman! But I do agree that the passive-aggressive silver dish is a underhand. Just try and see if the waiter is polite to you when you walk out without leaving the change.
I hate tipping but it’s a common social convention nonetheless.