The Star Tribune has a barrage of letters with advice and strong feelings about appropriate amounts to tip.
The difference between 15% and 20% is hardly something I'd have thought justified language like "those food servers should be sent to jail" and "That woman ... is an idiot."
Me? I'm just glad to know that lots of people are all at sea with the appropriate percentages. It isn't just faulty information being given to foreigners.
I'm also glad to see that Miss Manners also thinks that folding service charges into the bill would be better:
You see why Miss Manners has been railing against the institution of tipping, with its silly pretense of being voluntary that brings out the worst in both giver and receiver? Putting the service charge on the bill is a big improvement, but building it into the cost of the food, as service is figured into the cost of buying other items, would be better. The very term “gratuity” inspires the nastiness you encountered, and a parallel unpleasantness on the part of some recipients who try to shame tippers into giving more.
One of the strange things about being an historian is that you can write a sentence like "tipping is actually quite new in the United States," and then realize that the early twentieth century is not "quite new" to most people.
In any case, no matter your perspective, tipping has only been around a hundred years or so in the United States. Economist Ofer Azar provides a good summary of the literature in a working paper "The History of Tipping - From Sixteenth-Century England to United States in the 1910s" and writes:
Tipping did not exist in the United States before the Civil War, but by the end of the nineteenth century it was prevalent throughout the nation and in many occupations. Yet, despite its prevalence, many regarded tipping as an evil and an un-American and undemocratic custom that should be eliminated. Those who disliked the tipping custom claimed that it is degrading to the tip-takers who have to “ask for favors” instead of earning a fair wage, and that tipping makes the tip-takers servile and creates different classes – the tip givers being superior to tip takers. Several customer and worker groups tried to abolish the practice, and in several states anti-tipping laws were passed around the 1910s.
And so to the present confusion ...
Posted by robe0419 at May 23, 2005 10:24 AM | TrackBackInteresting... I had no idea tipping was not in favor here before the Civil War. I'm curious, did it start in the North or the South? It was the comment about it making the tip-taker servile that prompts that question, the tip as a behavior-controlling mechanism?
Posted by: Donna B. at June 1, 2005 08:53 AM