Opinion

THE CULTURAL TIGHTROPE

BARNEY GRIFFITHS

Tipping

My argument, as ever, is that whatever the local custom is, it should be followed, whereupon I am accused of being stingy myself.

This month's topic is one which could not be more cul­tur­ally dis­tinct: tip­ping. By which I mean leav­ing a gra­tu­ity for a ser­vice re­ceived, not dump­ing stuff il­le­gally some­where or pre­dict­ing which horse is going to win a race. The rea­son for this choice is that I have often found my­self in a Cata­lan restau­rant hav­ing an ar­gu­ment with Brits - but not Brita­lans, ei­ther vis­i­tors or ex-pats - who crit­i­cise the lo­cals for being stingy and not tip­ping enough. My ar­gu­ment, as ever, is that what­ever the local cus­tom is, it should be fol­lowed, where­upon I am ac­cused of being stingy my­self.

Reg­u­lar read­ers will be aware that way back when I spent a cou­ple of years in Japan. And that's a good place to start, as the act of tip­ping there has tra­di­tion­ally been con­sid­ered in­sult­ing, seen as it is as feed­back on how well some­one has per­formed their job, when it is in­her­ently as­sumed that every­one is doing their job as well as they can. There is no such thing as a slacker in that par­tic­u­lar cul­ture, as being one would bring shame on you and your fam­ily, and there­fore not an op­tion. Some may de­tect a con­trast with cer­tain wait­ers they may have come across in other cul­tures, where shame is the last thing to worry them in their wait­ing en­deav­ours.

In the States, where I've also lived, tip­ping is con­sid­ered oblig­a­tory, even though it ac­tu­ally isn't. The cor­rect amount is widely held to be 10%-15% of the bill in restau­rants, and, smit­ten as it is with North Amer­ica, the UK now copies this model.

If we look at other Eu­ro­pean cul­tures, we find that restau­rants in France in­clude a 15% ser­vice charge on the bill, as re­quired by law, mean­ing tips are rare. As for Italy, a travel guide states “Tips are not cus­tom­ary… Al­most all restau­rants (with the no­table ex­cep­tion of those in Rome) have a ser­vice charge”.

In other words, analysing just a hand­ful of coun­tries we find com­pletely dif­fer­ent cus­toms when it comes to tip­ping, so here's the ques­tion: should we use our own cri­te­ria or fol­low those of the local cul­ture, es­pe­cially if we have made it our adopted home? I would sug­gest the lat­ter, not purely out of re­spect for the coun­try where you have cho­sen to live, but also from an eco­nomic point of view, as break­ing eco­nomic norms in other coun­tries may have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for the peo­ple that live there.

In other words, would you like to be priced out of a restau­rant be­cause ta­bles are re­served for big­ger tip­pers? What hap­pens when wealthy tourists come along and price the lo­cals out of that lovely chirin­guito down on the beach on the Costa Brava? Sim­ply be­cause they can af­ford to? My ar­gu­ment then, is not based on an un­will­ing­ness to tip 15%, but on the im­por­tance of re­spect­ing local cus­toms rather than stomp­ing all over them with your big boots shout­ing “That's how we do it back home!”

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