Last week at a cigar bar in Old Town, Alexandria, I overheard some jolly bartenders discuss the tips they’d gotten that weekend: “Five hundred last night. Five hundred the night before. Seven hundred the night before that,” one of them said. Unable not to pry, especially when it comes to money, I asked them if that was a standard take for a weekend. “Oh, sure. It’s tough work, but you can make a lot of cash here,” one replied. Satisfied, I paid for my drink and left a 20% tip. "I'm not going to look like the tightfisted Brit, ignorant of American norms," I thought. "Not again."
Perhaps two middle-aged men working in a fusty cigar bar are deserving candidates for such a king’s ransom. They were kind and indulged my nosiness. It turns out that the poor buggers don't even smoke. One of them said that the tips help to cover his multiple trips per month to the dry cleaner, a prerequisite ordered by his wife of him taking the job. Twenty percent here and there for good service and good food has become so normal that you’d be rude to complain about it. Trust me, since I arrived in America six months ago, I’ve tried. Some of my American friends are judgmental about the fact that I’ve decided to draw a line. Anybody who isn’t making me a cocktail, delivering still-hot pizza, or styling my hair isn’t getting 20% of anything. It would be 100% too much to give 20% to anybody merely bending their knees to pass you a cold bottle of water from the fridge beneath them. In some cases, there isn’t even a human involved. Today, online, I saw a guy who was prompted to tip a machine at a self-serve airport convenience store. “Who does it even go to?” he rightly asked.
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Somewhere along the way, and only as recently as COVID-19, tipping culture has become so out of control that Americans are sick and tired of it. It may be the one issue that you all can agree on.
Tipflation is defined as “recent widespread expansion of gratuity to more industries, as opposed to being traditionally only prevalent in full-service restaurants.” You know something is awry when it gets its own portmanteau. But no American needs an explanation of this. They see it every single day in every single transaction they make. Just today, I was prompted to tip after buying a pint of milk at my local store. Technology has seen to it that it’s no longer a pleasurable experience to make a server's day unprompted, or, more recently, when servers were made to ask grovellingly, “Would you like to leave a tip?” Now, most of the time, all we see is a grunting employee tilting some kind of hinged, smeared screen that prompts a default 20% gratuity toward you on the counter.
What was once an accepted norm of 15 standard percent, 20 for great service, and 0 to 10 for crap treatment has turned into 20 to 30, expanded into all kinds of other transactions, and the actual mechanics involve a strange impolite pressure culture that’s uncomfortable from both sides. This existed for the same reason as the curtains on voting booths: True honesty is not possible in public view. Now, you don’t leave cash or a penned-in line noting the extra amount in a slip to be discovered later, out of sight, but rather choose it as the recipient of the tip stares on. It’s a sort of push poll.
If it isn’t an electronic tipping prompt that’s bankrupting you, it’s something else. Over my short stay so far in my beloved new home country, I’ve seen all manner of extra charges added on my receipt: credit card processing fees, service charges, convenience charges, cleaning surcharge. One friend told me, with incandescent rage, that he’d had a 5% "health and happiness" surcharge added to his receipt, separate from the gratuity.
As a waitress of six years, I know that the job can be hard and hostile, and I’ve done my fair share of giving smaller servings to rude customers and crying in the walk-in freezer. One place I worked had a head chef who would spit on the steak of anybody who had dared to ask for it well done. (It caused the kitchen to back up, and as Roberto, the chef, said, “The thing is absolutely ruined anyway.”) People are difficult, and you’re paid a pittance — in my case, I think it was $7 an hour. But it’s the choice you make when you take the job, and tips should be seen as nothing but an added extra. In a healthy tipping culture, you should even crack a smile when you get one.
Most places in the world have found a happy medium with tipping. In Japan, even offering one is grossly offensive. It may be difficult in the beginning, when the pushy twenty-something is gawping at you when they pull up the gratuity screen and say something like, “Oooh, it’s asking you a question!” But I promise, it gets easier to say no. Even enjoyable. And as for laborers’ compensation, without screens and norms pressing customers and servers to make sure workers get their due pay every time you buy something, making tips a mere bonus again creates a world where, much more sanely and correctly, pay is between the employer and the employee.
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Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.