Who are the best tippers? Yanks for asking …

http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2015/jul/25/who-are-best-tippers-americans

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It’s fashionable to decry tipping. Who isn’t repelled by the creeping shift in the standard restaurant service charge from 10% to 12.5%? Who thinks American tipping of 15% to 20% is anything other than absurd? I once witnessed a British couple being seriously harangued by a waiter in a New York tourist trap restaurant after they said the food was lousy (it was) and refused to pay the service charge. The waiter insisted it had nothing to do with the food, that it was his basic pay and they had no choice. It almost ended in a fight.

Then I pinch myself and remember that for a year after college I was a waiter at a pizza joint (“restaurant” was stretching it) in London. If a table of French tourists were presented with a bill for £24.50 (this was the late 1980s) they would round it up to £25, oh-so-kindly telling me to keep the change. A table of Americans with the same bill would automatically hand over £30.

I soon learned to do exactly what the tipping system encourages: be super-nice to Americans, and simply ignore the French. I even developed an internal tipping system; I’d slip £1 to whoever was doing the door if they seated Americans in my section. The French (or similarly parsimonious Spanish) could sit wherever they like, so long as it wasn’t on my tables.

The bingo moment would come if I spied an American visitor opening a map. I’d zip over to the table, engage them in conversation and help out with directions. The tip would safely jump from £5 to £10. A French customer a few tables along could be examining their London A-Z for hours without attracting the merest flicker of interest. In my personal global rankings, Americans came top, Brits second (10% wasn’t bad), Germans next (you were lucky to get 5%) and the French and Spanish last.

Now I don’t especially hate the French or love the Americans. But my rent was high (although a fraction of today’s crazy levels) and tips made the difference between living a subsistence life or being able to enjoy things a little more. For years afterwards I was always a generous tipper, irrespective of the quality of the food.

Was my behaviour as a waiter ethical? Not especially. Every customer coming into a restaurant and paying what it says on the menu deserves the same level of service. But the tipping system discouraged that, certainly in London where the international nature of customers encouraged my sort of behaviour. Does it still?

Our survey this week of tipping practices around the world reveals how persistent global differences are. We didn’t bother to include Japan – they just don’t tip. The French are still keen on the rounding-up approach. The Swedish system perhaps appeals most: properly negotiated industry standards for pay for workers in the hospitality industry, a structured career path, and general bewilderment that you should pay extra for service levels that should be standard. Waiters, I was assured by our correspondent in Sweden, will treat you equally no matter if you’re from Paris, Texas, or Paris, France.

Except that I was in Stockholm a few weeks ago. At the very first bar I went into, in Gamla Stan, I ordered two beers. The barman said it was, as I recall, 185 kroner (about £13.80). I handed over a 200 kroner note. The barman shiftily handed back a note and some coins in a tray, not really pushing it all the way across to me. I could sense what he was trying to do. So I asked: was it normal in Stockholm to tip the barman, like they do in New York? Oh yes, he said, it’s what everyone does.

I did of course wonder if he was trying it on (it actually prompted me to commission the feature in Money today) and I have now learnt from my colleague in Sweden that I had been taken for a ride.

Maybe the barman thought, as I entered the bar, that I looked American and decided, “I can take this guy for a few quid.”

What goes around, I suppose, comes around.