To tip or not to tip…
When you travel to any country it is always good practice to familiarize yourself with the local customs before your arrival. If nothing else this prevents you from unknowingly insulting the culture and at the same time can protect you from being taken advantage of. The noble gesture of ‘tipping’ is one such custom which is very popular in the United States.
The idea behind tipping is to show ones appreciation for the service received. Since this is usually a voluntary gesture there is no defined value, a patron can tip as much or as little as they want. In fact in 2007 a NBC tabloid did an article on a Pizza Hut waitress who was tipped $10,000 from a family of regulars who heard she couldn’t afford college.
In Las Vegas we put tipping to good use by tipping the waitresses at the casinos one dollar every time they came around the casino floor with a alcoholic beverage for you. In the gift shops on the strip, again due to the tipping custom we were more inclined to say keep the change or round things up to the nearest multiple of 5. Even in Phoenix, after a great number of round of drinks had at Applebees we again tipped the waitress a couple of bucks to show our appreciation. Let it be known, I am under no illusion that my one or two dollar tip here and there on its own doesn’t mean much, but by the end of the night when these waitresses count up their tips it could add up to an amount. It was a part of American culture I began to like, it just went that little further than a polite ‘thank you’, if you really did enjoy the service then this was a great way to express it. Then we arrived at New York.
New York extended this courtesy by instead swapping the good service that we were accustomed to tipping in Las Vegas and Phoenix for the convenience of telling us how much we should tip them by usually adding a 15 to 18% ‘appreciation tax’ to the bill. Yes, so if things were not already confusing enough here is how it worked: you go to a restaurant in NYC, order the Lobster, the menu says it will cost $35 dollars. Come time to pay the bill, you have your lobster charge of $35, then the gst of $3.50, then a gratitude tax of $6.30!
A notion of gratitude is one thing, but when you decide only to tip the staff a few dollars because the meal was mediocre and the service was nothing flash only to have the waitress return to your table after paying the bill and saying, “oh, here in NYC we tip 18%” is just plain rude, and defiantly doesn’t deserve said tip after such a imposition.
It should be pointed out though for those that don’t realize, these are the views of an Australian of which tipping is not a local custom. An interesting alternative view point of ‘tipping a waitress’ can be found <a href=”http://www.savingforserenity.com/blog/how-much-should-you-tip-your-waitress.html”>here </a>. They do have a point, but I still believe that tipping should not be a mandatory thing and should be at the discretion of the patron.