Ok, so you’re eating at a restaurant and it turns out that the waiter is a friend of yours. Do you tip him because your friend expects you to pay him for his work or do you stiff him because you wouldn’t want to demean your friend by implying that he’s inferior or in need of charity.

In the US, you had better tip your friend.

Well, clearly, yes, clearly – and you’ll see it if you think about it for a second – it has little or nothing to do with any implied contract (if it did, I could’ve sued half of the customers) or quality of service (the quality of work done by the actual tippee, that is). To me it felt more like receiving charitable donations.

Um, that makes all the difference, and it’s the status that precedes the contractual relationship. Do you receive tips? Regularly? Is it expected of your work?

Look at the basic social dynamics of the relationship: the person who serves you food; the person who cuts your hair; the person who carries your bags; the person who drives you somewhere. As opposed to the person who prepares your taxes, or the person who takes your blood pressure.

Who would have done such things 150 years ago?

Tipping is only done in cases of excellent service etc. When I pay with a note for table service i do not take the change, as it is generally considered to be not very classy to scoop up the sharpnel and pocket it!

As for the tax evasion angle, I think that restaurants are expected to withhold a set amount from the paycheck based on an assumed level of tipping. They don’t necessarily rely upon reporting of actual tips.

Tipping perpetuates master-servant relationships.

I would think this would be a highly individual thing. I’ve never participated in a master-servant relationship in either role and the attitudes and protocols involved are completely foreign to me.

I look on a tip as a simple transaction between a service provider and customer. I work as an independent consultant and am paid directly by my customers. I see little difference between my situation and that of a waiter working for tips except that I generally have a specific contract regarding the conditions of the transaction rather than an implied contract.

That’s a matter of opinion, particularly with the late expansion of situations where the need to tip is strongly implied.

I do wonder whether travellers to the US are placed in a double-bind: those forewarned that it’s a ‘tip everyone, just to be safe’ culture contribute to the tip culture, ensuring that those who are not quickly face the scorn reserved to the shoddy tipper.

instead they’re obviously rehearsed, and required by employers as surrogates (in the sense of ritual stand-in objects) for actual service.

I’ll note the scary innovation of bill questionnaires that ask customers if their waitron has fulfilled the requirements of the corporate greeting script.

I will say, though, that the skycap is often a tip-worthy resource: the guy who had a quiet word with the United check-in manager at La Guardia and ensured we made our flights more than deserved his $20.

[I habitually tip car mechanics, though for a different reason: my father usually had friends in the trade look at the car and charge a ‘tradesman’s price’, and he’d stick a tenner on top. In my part of the world, that was a mutual assumption: you discount for your mates. That stuck with me, but it’s more superstition these days, to ward off the evil spirits of bad repair jobs.]

“West Europeans find Russian service poor”

Rest assured, Russians also find Russian service to be poor! (It is better now in a lot of place, though.)

constant, scripted insincere attention from waiters

…Their job requires them to be nice to you, and be attentive to your needs… Sincerity, however, is the one thing you cannot hire people to give you.

If you pay enough they’ll fake it convincingly, but this completely misses the point of comment 38, which is to do with the theatrical or ritual scripting of the whole thing: in the US it’s common to have ‘greeters’ in shops; every foreigner who’s been to the US or its overseas chains (like TGI Fridays) knows the whole “Hi, I’m Mandy and I’ll be your server” patter. These things grate on foreigners because they’re false-flag communications:* they look like conversations but they aren’t** – instead they’re obviously rehearsed, and required by employers as surrogates (in the sense of ritual stand-in objects) for actual service. It’s what Stephen Fry calls a “discrete horror of detailing” (although he was talking about hotel rooms, where toilet paper folded into triangles, or chocolate mints left on the pillow, are sold to the customer in lieu of attention).

• the redcap/skycap example is particularly cruel to foreigners traveling in the US: they look so much like they’re laid on by the airport to help people – they even have official uniforms – but they’re actually exactly like the short-order porters on the streets of Cairo.

** Visiting foreigners should resist the temptation to ask “are you a bot?” It just never works.

I really don’t think so—tipping in the U.S. is a historical accident limited to waiters, mostly, and hairdressers/barbers. Cabbies, too, but only a small fraction of Americans use cabs on a regular basis. If it ever carried master/servant connotations, those have nearly all disappeared over the decades.

Waiters don’t feel subservient (nor customers superior) because of the tip. In fact, the status of ‘food workers’ who receive tips is higher than those who perform similar functions but who don’t receive tips. That is, it is higher status to wait tables at a ‘nice restaurant’ than work in fast food or any restaurant where you order and pick up your food at the counter. Then, too, waiting tables is quite often a student occupation, and these students may well have a similar family background to their customers (and, in a few years time, will be out of school and earning what their customers are).