Half my family lives in England, where tipping a waiter or bartender is rare, so when they come over to the US for holiday or business it can make for an awkward scene at a restaurant.
Recently my cousin Andrew was in NYC where a bartender gave him less then stellar service. Now Andrew is a big time finance guy whose traveled to the US many times, so he’s familiar with the custom of tipping. Naturally he concluded that if good service equals a 15% tip then terrible service doesn’t get squat. Now, in the logical land of the UK that would be exactly right but he was in the US where the public is guilted to compensate for the below-minimum-wage pay of our waiter/waitresses/bartenders by slapping a self imposed ‘gratuity’ tax on top of our final meal price.
Andrew almost got lynched by the bar keep that night and the next time we saw each other he had a question that he couldn’t seem to figure out.
“How the bloody hell do you know when to tip, and how much? There doesn’t seem to be any consistent rule to this thing.”
So I gave Andrew my quick and dirty rules for tipping in America, “15% for anything that’s not abysmal at a sit down restaurant, 20% if they were really attentive, informed, and courteous. Bars are generally a buck a drink. Never fall into the trap of trying to impress a waitress or bartender with your tip. In her eyes your just one of the thirsty lemmings, besides your competing with a contingency of unhappily married men who use their fat wallets to buy some attention.”
Andrew appreciated the advice but still doesn’t quite follow the ‘logic’. Next time I have to explain how tipping works I’ll just save myself the trouble and send a link to Jim Giuliano’s Daily Local article on Tipping.
Link: http://tinyurl.com/28evyu
