I am just back from New York and I’ve brought home a new anxiety dream as a souvenir. I’m paying in a cafe and a giant touchscreen asks me to choose a gratuity. The options whirl, impossibly fast: 50%, 100%, nothing, $100,000, as I try to hit the right one with sausage fingers. I fail, and face financial ruin, or have my meanness broadcast over a PA, while everyone stands around, judging: “Cheapskate on table four!” Brrrr.
Is there a cringier social dance than tipping? It’s got everything: money, guilt, notions of generosity, discomfort around service, a tussle between our idealised and authentic (broke) selves. I need therapy after a week of agonising over it daily in the US, fumbling with screens and prompts. Should I tip for coffee, a bagel, a $2 sachet of washing powder, rung up agonisingly slowly by an extremely stoned-looking bodega employee?
