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?
The only safe answer felt like yes after a first disastrous outing buying a takeaway coffee, when I forgot to tip in an intimidating Brooklyn cafe and was forced to wait for my drink as the touchscreen showed the other challengingly stylish customers I was cheap and ignorant. As I waited, I remembered a New York waiter complaining last year on social media about stingy Europeans tipping her 10%, saying we should be banned from travelling until we learn how to behave. Not knowing how to tip isn’t charmingly, British-ly hapless like Hugh Grant; it’s shameful. Mortified and contrite, I played it safe: 20% for everything (including a packet of tissues) and 25% in restaurants.
But perhaps that’s wrong too? There’s a growing backlash against tipping culture, decrying touchscreen tip requests everywhere from drive-throughs to self-checkouts (I think “appease the robots” is a sensible policy these days, but each to their own) and the upwards creep of suggested percentages. Comic skits suggest tipping to pet a dog, or for a baby to breastfeed. There’s also well-founded unease around the lack of transparency about where digital tips go and how they’re distributed and a more fundamental objection that tipping enables and excuses inadequate wages (it feels genuinely shocking that US employers can pay tipped employees a pathetic $2.13 (£1.68) an hour, if tips make up the minimum wage difference).
It might prove a hard habit to shake. US research shows customers resent suggested tips less than an imposed service charge; I’ve heard Americans argue that tipping is exercising personal freedom. But how can that be a substitute for paying people properly?
I’m not opining from any sense of superiority: relying on individuals to prop up structural failings is very Britain 2024, after all. There’s no hint of a consensus about what’s appropriate over here in the UK, service charges are inconsistently applied and poorly understood and embarrassment is a national pastime. The notion of “rewarding” good service feels presumptuous and patronising – who do we think we are? Then British companies sometimes take the, er, pizza on tips: Pizza Express notoriously tried to claw back a hefty chunk of digital tips from staff until shamed into backing down. Cash tipping gets to the intended recipients, but it’s so awkward: tucking a tip under your plate is OK, but handing over notes provokes a full-body cringe.
Mean Europeans probably have the right idea, actually. A 2023 YouGov survey highlighted the vast cultural difference in what’s considered appropriate. Sweden came bottom (or top depending on your perspective) in terms of how much and whether they tip: 37.8% didn’t, and the average restaurant tip was 4.5%, surely reflecting comparatively high wages. France scored low, too – 34% didn’t tip in restaurants, but service jobs are careers there and accorded real respect, and there’s a decent minimum wage.
One thing is certain: there’s no way me deciding what’s appropriate for people to be paid is a fair or right way to do things. I struggled with GCSE maths percentages and my finances are as dubious as a Canal Street knock-off handbag. Indeed, all those craven attempts not to be the stingy Brit on holiday mean that 2024 is kicking off with a month of gruel. They have left me contemplating installing a tip screen near the dirty washing pile (darks 15%, delicates 20%?). Maybe not – if my husband retaliates with one on the coffee machine, I will be ruined.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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