Tipping in America
To tip or not to tip…
OMG, this is the biggest stress whenever I visit America. I try my hardest never to eat without a local, so they can just tell me how much to pay on top of the bill. It’s complicated.
In the UK, if the service was good, you normally add around 10% if it’s not already included in the bill (I love it when it is – no thinking, just paying!). If you try to tip in Japan, the staff would probably chase you down the road to give it back to you – they hardly ever accept a tip. In Germany, each server has a little bum-bag and you just round up your bill a few euros and they stash it away. But in America, it’s a whole new kettle of fish (or burgers). To make things easier for us tourists, you will often find a handy little cheat added at the bottom of the bill now. It breaks down what 15%, 18% and 20% of the total to pay would come to, so you can decide how much tip to give.
In America, the waiting staff can be paid as little as $2 per hour. They make their actual money from tips, so this usually means the service is pretty good. You can add bits and take things off your food, go from meat-option to veggie-option and even full-fat to low-fat-soya-milk without the staff blinking an eye. They know they need to be nice, or they don’t get a tip.
Saying that though, my friends all agreed that even when the service was terrible, they would still average a 20% tip. This makes no sense to me at all. I don’t tip when the service is bad – in Berlin the service is literally horrendous and I don’t tip when people are rude to me, ignore me or refuse to be helpful. In America, it seems you still tip even if there has been very little ‘service’. What was interesting on this trip, is that all my friends now have jobs (we all used to be super poor and at university) and so they were actually tipping around 25%, to help the waiters and waitresses out and because they could easily afford it.
We tipped 20% plus rounded it up to the next dollar. It seemed crazy sometimes to be giving over $10 as a tip, but it’s the American way…