51. That won't do nicely!

I was in a black cab going down Regent Street in central London.  We reached Mappin and Webb.  I got out and handed the driver £15 to pay the £14.40 fare.  As I turned away from the taxi I felt a smattering of objects on my arm.  The cab driver had thrown coins at me.

“Keep ‘em mate.  You need it more than me.”

GRATUITY: Something given voluntarily or beyond obligation, usually for some service.

That dictionary definition of a gratuity or tip seems pretty clear to me what it means. For years in the UK, they were a part of my life that I gave little attention to but in the five years that I lived on Cayman gratuities became a big part of my daily activity.  Not only were tips expected at the usual places but the bar staff expected to keep the 50 cents change from a $3.50 bottle of beer.  They expected a tip for doing what exactly?  Their job!  That’s all.

Percentages are not subject to inflation.  Things may have changed a little but in London in 2005, 10% was the standard addition to a restaurant bill and the usual tip for a taxi ride too.  Occasionally 12% was added to a restaurant bill but it was the exception.  It was not always printed on the menu as an expectation of payment either.  When I left a tip, I didn’t work out a percentage.  I gave the amount that I thought was appropriate.  Anyway, why should a waiter be tipped more for bringing a plate of lobster to my table than for bringing a beefburger of equal weight?  It doesn’t make sense.

Why tip anyway?  Gratuities in restaurants in France and Italy are not overtly expected nor requested.  In France, by law a 15% service charge always included in the price wherever you eat or drink.

Tipping in Italy is by and large an exception, not a rule.  It’s something you give to reward exceptionally good service. If the service is normal, then tipping is neither necessary nor expected.  The ‘coperta’ or cover charge and the ‘servizio’ or service charge is included in every restaurant bill.

Gratuities here in the UK have been described as, “arbitrary, antiquated and discreditable,” but in the States they are part of the fabric of society because waiting and bar staff are paid so appallingly.

It has been argued that countries with more “extroverted” and “neurotic” people give tips to the greatest number of services and also tipped the largest amounts and that America’s brash, extrovert culture encourages tipping.  But how then do you explain the lack of tipping in Australia and New Zealand, where the big-mouthed, extroverted, drinking culture (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) rivals America’s?   The answer is, I think, that Aussies, in the service industry, don’t depend so much on tips for their income.

In Japan, where the culture is in many ways the antithesis of America’s, tipping is not required and in fact may cause embarrassment or offence to those tipped.  If you tip, it could be seen as a mistake on your part.  A friend, recently returned from Tokyo, has told me of a waiter who chased him down the street to tell him that he had left money on the table.  When the porter stood an extra moment or two in his hotel room, he was not waiting for a tip.  He was waiting to make sure everything was satisfactory.  This is just good customer service.

I had lunch in a restaurant on Ocean Drive, South Beach, Miami in December 2009.  When the check came the gratuity had been added at 22%.  Before I paid I checked the menu and could find no mention of the gratuity rate on it. I asked the waiter where the 22% figure had come from and he told me that it was the standard rate along the strip. “If 50% were standard,” I asked, “would I be expected to pay that?”  He became angry and flounced off saying, “OK don’t pay it.  I’ll work for nothing.”

Later I asked him what he meant by, ‘working for nothing’.  He told me that his pay was $1.00 (63p) an hour and he depended on the tips to survive.  Of course, I relented immediately and then probably I overtipped him.

This situation is outrageous.  I would much rather have paid $25 for my crab salad and not have had that experience, than pay $20, feel cheated and then partly humiliate the poor guy who was just doing his job.  Restaurant and bar owners in the US and the UK should pay a living wage to staff and put it on to the prices of their products.  In the US the restaurant owners can get away with this because the only people in the States who can legally make less than the minimum wage are people who receive gratuities.

I have never checked but I am pretty sure that I always leave more when a bill has, “Gratuity not included” printed on it. There is a restaurant in Cayman that has no fixed charges.  Patrons pay what they feel is the right amount for the food, the drinks and the service that they have received.  There is a similar place in London and it is always full.

In Cayman, there is the phenomenon of “Mandatory Gratuity” printed on the menu.  WHAT?  If ever there were an oxymoron, this must be it.  Those words are printed on the menus of several very expensive restaurants in or near George Town.

A couple of years ago Caroline and I were in one of these expensive restaurants.  We ordered our main courses and waited for about twenty minutes.  Eventually the food arrived.  That would have been fine – we could cope with a wait that long – if Caroline’s order had not been totally wrong.  She had ordered shrimp but was presented with lamb.  My plate had been left in front of me and as it was getting cold, I started to eat.  I had finished by the time her food arrived.

I took 15% off the grand total and paid the exact amount in cash.  As we were getting up to leave the waiter returned and demanded the missing $20.  I explained that I was not paying it and why.  Then the manager came over and the two of them harangued me while the other diners stared open mouthed.  We tried to go but they blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let us leave.  This stalemate lasted for 5 or 6 minutes while I tried to explain the nature of a gratuity to them and only ended when Caroline made a big show of phoning the police.

In the States, calling the police might not have worked.  In November 2009 a restaurant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, actually had two people arrested for refusing to pay a mandatory 18% gratuity.  The couple had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress went outside for a smoke; they had to go to the bar themselves to ask for refills and then had to wait over an hour for salad and wings.  That sounds like terrible service and if I were put in that position I would have simply walked out 30 minutes after ordering.  I’ve done that twice in the UK. 

It’s hard to believe that the police took them away and they had criminal theft charges filed against them for failing to pay a mandatory $16.35 gratuity but that’s what happened.  It doesn’t mean they didn’t have options available to them.  They just chose the wrong one.  The case was eventually dropped and didn’t come to court.

Sometimes I am keen to give a gratuity.  When two deliverymen struggled in oppressive heat to carry heavy kitchen goods into my house in Cayman, I had a real problem getting them to accept the $20 I thrust upon them when they had finished.  Certainly they were being paid by the company to do it but their enthusiasm, good nature and general niceness had brightened my day.

Where is the line drawn with tipping? Why do we tip hairdressers and not dentists?  They both spend about the same length of time using their skill to work on a part of your head.

Why don’t we tip the cashier at the supermarket; the post office worker who hands you a parcel; the assistant at Wendy’s who serves you a coffee or the policeman who takes your statement after a traffic accident?  Why do we give the dustmen a Christmas bonus but not the postman or the street cleaner?

It’s an embarrassing, anachronistic nightmare and I hate it.