. In fact, it was worse than that: I had forgotten to tip. She wasn't even angry, just anxious to know what she'd done to offend, keen to work out what shocking felony she'd committed that would lead me to withhold what was hers by right. And there's the issue: tipping is so woven into the fabric of life in the US – as American as McDonald's Apple Pie – that it almost feels like it's been written into the Fifth Amendment or something, as if Abraham Lincoln and his Rushmore buddies fought the British for the twin principles of freedom and that extra 20 per cent on top of your bill. In fact tipping culture is now so deep-seated, Stateside, that you regularly find resorts adding 'resort fees' to their list of compulsory charges (but you are a resort! That's why we're already paying a nightly rate!). And somewhere in America right now, there is presumably a shop adding a 15 per cent 'shop fee' to the receipt, and a nurse piling 'nurse fees' on top of her salary. It's not the cost we object to, of course. We're British, dammit, so it's chiefly just the unspeakable social awkwardness of the situation, that painful tango of trying discreetly to peel off bank notes – that all look unhelpfully the same, whatever the denomination – and insert the correct, unknowable amount, neither insultingly small nor showily big, into a stranger's palm. Morally, then, you have every right to not pony up – and, arguably, a duty not to. Think of it as your stand against: a) the millennial generation's sense of automatic entitlement; b) the corporate equivalent of creeping stealth taxes; and c) smiley faces penned inanely onto the bill beside the words 'thank you!!!'. Trouble is, giving a tip is such a given in the Land of the (not) Free, that wages in the serv){kind=link}
The British hate the unspeakable social awkwardness of the situation, but the impact of withholding those few extra dollars can cut deep
I was once chased out of a restaurant and some distance down the street by a waitress in Connecticut.
It wasn’t the irresistible scent of my cologne, sadly, and it wasn’t because I’d hurled a displeasing dish across the room (this time).
In fact, it was worse than that: I had forgotten to tip.
She wasn’t even angry, just anxious to know what she’d done to offend, keen to work out what shocking felony she’d committed that would lead me to withhold what was hers by right. And there’s the issue: tipping is so woven into the fabric of life in the US – as American as McDonald’s Apple Pie – that it almost feels like it’s been written into the Fifth Amendment or something, as if Abraham Lincoln and his Rushmore buddies fought the British for the twin principles of freedom and that extra 20 per cent on top of your bill.