I'm visiting the US next week for my Honeymoon. (Maui and San Francisco) I've never been to the US and just realised I have no idea about tipping and tipping etiquette. I'm ok with restaurants and diners etc but am I expected to tip everyone who does a job for me each and every time they do it? If so, how much? For example if someone takes my bags to my hotel room what should I hand them?

Most Americans (myself included) also have no idea about this sort of stuff, and there's often debate about it. Outside of restaurant waitstaff, the only times you tip are for what I think of as "personal services", like barbers/hairdressers, masseuses, etc., and hotel staff, from the bellhop (porters) to the housekeeping service. Also if someone carries your bags at the airport (or train station).

First, the generally recognized standard for waitstaff is 15% and generally you round it off to the closest $0.25. (Whether it's 15% before or after tax is also a debate, but there's really not going to be a lot of difference there.) Tip more (up to 25% without being a showboat) if the service was exceptional, less (possibly down to 0%) if it was notably bad. These tips are generally only given to full-service waitstaff, where they take your order, bring your food, and refill your drinks. (Bartenders tend to fall in this rule as well, but you'll often see them tipped a good bit more. That may be because their patrons are drunk.) If the only service a waiter provides is to bring your food, as when you order at a register but your food is brought to the table, there's no need to tip. Sometimes buffet-style restaurants will have waiters that deal solely with drinks. I tend to tip $1 (per diner) there, regardless of the bill, but that's hardly a rule. As you can see, there are a lot of ill-defined points here, and this is, by far, the most concrete tipping standard in the US.

As for other services, even an American wouldn't get much of a second glance for failing to tip anywhere else. A foreign tourist would get even less notice. So if you want to be safe and cheap, you could easily get by without tipping anyone else.

Keep in mind that waiters rely on tips. Their salary is generally below the legal minimum wage with the expectation that it will be made up for with tips. This is sometimes the case with bartenders as well. Tipping in any other situation really is a gratuity. Some might reasonably consider it a bribe for exceptional service. As such, you might want to consider tipping people other than waitstaff in advance, but that might also be considered a little gauche.

That said, there are a number of tipping guides on the internet:

http://www.itipping.com/tip-guide-travel.htm
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/10/12/basic-tips-on-tipping-how-much-and-to-whom/
http://www.tipping.org/tips/us.html
http://www.tip20.com/tipping-standards

Also, congratulations.

Tipping is something that gets me really angry. I hate it.

I don't see why people who pickup a plate of food and walk 20m to my table with it are doing anything special at all. In fact I would prefer just to go get it from the kitchen myself. Here in the UK, if a tip is automatically added to my bill I will strike it off out of principle. If I do tip it's always to the nearest £1 under 10%. Which I think is just stupid and often do it only out of social pressure.

After 12 years as a telephone engineer working in peoples homes, and now 3 as a wedding photographer I have not once been tipped. Even though I offer a very personal service. I think it's a silly culture, and I wish people would just get paid properly in the first place, and I would say national minimum wage applies to people who just deliver plates and drinks to tables. I just don't get it.

Rant over

Cheers

Cris

Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more, Cris.

First of all, a waiter/waitress is doing a hell of a lot more than "pick up a plate of food and walk 20m." Have you ever waited tables or known someone who does? Do you know how much they get paid?

I have two more things to say about your reply:

"telephone engineer" - does not get tipped (sorry!)
"wedding photographer" - pretty sure should be tipped

So is this a grudge you're holding that makes you not tip? I go into people's homes and fix their computers. That's pretty damn personal too, but I don't expect to get tipped for it. I'm also making far more than an minimum hourly wage for that service.

I think you're making the opposite point than you intend. Tip culture causes underpaid waitstaff, not the other way round.

The minimum-wage law in the UK, BTW, has no exception for tip-heavy roles. (Nor, according to Wikipedia, does Oregon's.) On the other hand, it is legal in the UK for establishments to operate a tip pool or suchlike, so your money doesn't necessarily all go to the one individual you expect. This is at least as bonkers IMO.

Peter

Proprietors of businesses should not be tipped, and wedding photographers tend to be in that category.

Congrats on getting married and Bitt gave the real answer.

My experience working in restaurants has been the people in the kitchen get paid the same per hour as the waitresses but they do not get tips and they do have to do just as much or more work than the waitresses. The difference being they don't have to directly deal with the customers. I never worked in anything other than family type places but the waiters/waitresses still got tips. Yeah I know how much they get paid 7.25 an hour plus tips and they never report the tips as income so they pretty much pay no income taxes.

I do tip but really all this tipping stuff is based on some kind of tradition or fear of bad service not any logic. What is the logic behind tipping a photographer and not a repairman? The photographer is probably getting paid more than the repairman and is probably setting their own price anyway.

Idle curiosity here...

In restaurants, I prefer to tip always, and tip well (usually 20 percent or more) because I think that that waiters and waitresses have a difficult but low-paying job which is frequently full of rude, surly, condescending customers. I want to be the bright spot in their day, so I treat them nicely even (and perhaps especially) when they make a mistake, and always tip well.

But I know some people who use tipping as a merit system, like the guy in the video clip. There's logic to using tipping as a service-quality indicator, but I happen to disagree with it.

So what I'm wondering is... For those of you who have worked in a "tipping" job (waitstaff, hotel bellboy, valet, etc.), how do *you* tip? Do you follow the "tipping as a merit system" logic, where you only tip (or only tip well) if you feel they did a good job? Or do you, knowing how sucky the job is, always just tip well because you know what they're going through?

I ask because I've never had to work for tips before, and I don't have the point-of-view experience.

I know plenty of people who have done waiting jobs, me personally I've always had more sense and got myself jobs that pay well in the first place. It's no harder job than any other job in any other service industry. In fact I would go as far to say it's much much easier than working the kitchen or cleaning the dishes.



This makes no sense at all, and totally proves my point. Both are personal service industries but one gets a tip and the other doesn't. Who says! I think Mr Pink has a point!



No grudge. I just don't bow to social pressure and give my hard earned cash to people who avoid tax and don't go get themselves a better paid job. I don't expect a tip and nor should I. The whole idea is stupid and frankly in quite poor taste, I have no idea where this culture came from but I sure wish it would go away.

Cheers

Cris

I mostly follow your method unless the person is a total ass or something then I give them less.

Until you realize that they have to deal with people like you.

I guess you should just avoid full-service restaurants. I don't think anyone there would miss you.

Oh, also: how is "telephone engineer" a personal service? Merely because they come to your house?

I'm with Cris on this one. Why on earth shouldn't people who serve food simply be paid a decent wage in the first place.

Why should it be any different from say being served by someone in a shop or at Starbucks ? You'd presumably not expect to have to tip someone who served you in a shop just for doing their job ?

For reference, I do tip, but like pretty much everyone I know in the UK I almost always tip by the same 10%. If service it really awful then I won't tip at all. In practice service is rarely that bad, so 99% of the time I end up tipping the same 10%.

So I go along with it, because it is the done thing, but I think the whole setup stinks. I'd love to know how/why we ended up with this special case for restaurant waiters ?

The irony is, the person serving me in the shop is likely to be on the same level of pay as the waiter.

I do wish we had the level of service in the UK that I've experienced in the US. In general the service I received in US shops/restaurants was much better than the UK. It was particularly noticeable that even in large stores you'd get replies like "I'll see if I have that", it would be very rare in a UK shop to hear the assistant taking ownership of a request like that, "I don't know if we have it" is the more likely reply in the UK.

Why is being served food in a restaurant a "personal service". In fact, what is a "personal service" ?

Lets not get personal now!

I've had to deal with difficult people for my who career, in every job I've ever done I've been public facing. I am actually easy going as I know how difficult a job can be, but I can't quite see why someone who takes an order then delivers it is in any way special to the point where you'd hand them that little bit extra after spending £20 on a steak and £5 on a glass of wine.

In fact a made a career from customer service, my last job in BT was the manager of the team that deals with complaints right from the the top of the organisation, so I know just a little bit about keeping customers happy, and basically doing my job very well. I didn't get tipped once I might add.



I suppose in your book "the cable guy" is just a tradesman who should use the back door and wipe his feet before coming in. In every single way a telephone engineer in this country is offering a much more personal service than a waiter.

So apart from the fact that the Hotel/Restaurant under pays their staff and over charges for their food/rooms, why would you tip a waiter or bell boy but not someone who comes to install your internet connection ??? I just don't get it.

Do you tip the check out girl at the super market ??? I mean she must be on pretty crap wages and fall into a very similar demographic as a waiter. Do you tip the homeless guy for doing a really good sign and keeping his dog really well, you may want to knock a bit off if he swears at you!

Can you give me a break down of what exactly a waiter does to deserve your tip ??? I don't seem to be getting it do I ???

Cheers

Cris

Good point. To me anyone dealing with a member of the public one to one is offering personal service.

Thinking back, I did get lots of tips as a telephone engineer. Customers used to write in to BT HQ and it used to filter down to my manager. The company then rewarded me. That seems like a much better system of recognition to me!

Cheers

Cris

Here in Mexico it a bit different. It is customary to tip the person who bags your groceries. This is not the cashier, but a separate individual, usually a young person (10-13 yrs) or an old person (60+ yrs). The usual amount of the tip is 1-2% of the total purchase, and this tip is most likely the sole source of income for that person; he is NOT employed by the store, but has permission to work there for tips.

The same holds true in the parking lot. You will be besieged by persons, frequently older men past the viable age of employment, who will carry your groceries to your car and quite competently pack them away and be very pleased to receive a five peso tip (about 40 cents USD). Again, this may well be their sole source of income.

At the gas station, the "rule" seems to be if the attendant hustled and cleaned all your windows, kicked the tires to see if one of them might be low, and told you his cousin Carlos could fix that scrape on the bumper for maybe 150 pesos... you tip him 10 pesos. If he just stood there and put gas in the tank, you tell him muchas gracias, and go on your way. A fill-up from near-empty costs 300 pesos, about $25 USD.

By contrast, I was told NOT to tip at the corner mini-mart, run by an old lady and her daughter. In this case, a "tip" would be buying a loaf of bread and two liters of milk for 38 pesos, giving her 40 and saying "No cambio, por favor." This would be construed as being condescending, with me, the rich Gringo from up the hill, acting as though she needed the extra two pesos and I being so wealthy that mere pesos don't matter to me. It's a different culture here that I am slowly coming to grips with.

In the best restaurant in town (not just my opinion; it is an understood "fact" beyond dispute) normal USA-style tipping practices are observed, except that the locals usually tip at 10% and we rich Gringos usually tip at 15%. The reason I bring this up is that all tips go into a pool and are distributed equally among the wait staff and kitchen staff at the end of the week. While this might appear to be a disincentive (why bust your butt if you're gonna get paid the same regardless?) that doesn't appear to be the case. I have never seen one of the wait staff standing around wondering what to do next. Every waiter services every table, the number of waiters per table is at least double any other restaurant in town, the owner of the restaurant is out there every night busing tables, keeping an eagle eye out for anything amiss, all the staff move at a near trot and it all works like a well-oiled machine. Oh, the service isn't perfect, mind you. One time it took 38 whole seconds for my empty Sprite bottle to be cleared from the table, but that's about as bad as things ever get there. The capper is this: There are at lot of pretty good restaurants within a two block radius of Tango's (the restaurant I am talking about here.) On a typical evening, you can go to any of those restaurants and there is a fair chance you will be the only client, or perhaps you'll share the place with one or two other occupied tables. At Tango's, where they have about 35 tables, you will wait 20 to 40 minutes to be seated. Applicants wait months for a chance to work there, and people appreciate the level of service and are willing to tip accordingly.

BTW, a Filet Mignon dinner for two (Argentinian beef, cut it with a fork), with side dishes, drinks, dessert, and propina (tip), will run under $30 (~$350 pesos), and the servings are so generous that the take-home box will be enough for a complete second meal.

So, if you think your tipping situation is complex, try living here.

tanstaafl.

Jumping in late and attempting to answer the original question without debating whether any of this is "appropriate" or not:

The standard tip in any restaurant with waiters is 15%, perhaps then rounded up to the next whole dollar if you're happy. (Note: if you're computing your tip after the tax, you're already giving them a bonus.) Some restaurants add an "automatic" gratuity to your bill, particularly for larger parties, so do pay attention to the bill. If you deliberately tip less, that's a signal that you were unhappy with the service.

Tipping taxi drivers is a bit more complicated. I've heard 10% as a metric or "round up to the next dollar or two." The specific taxi tipping custom also seems to vary from city to city. Similarly, for getting a haircut, there's an expectation of a tip for fancy (women's) beauty salons, but not for basic (men's) barber shops. Since I frequent the latter, I can't say much about the former.

If you use a valet to park your car, even for "complementary" valet services, you typically tip the valet a dollar. If it's a swank restaurant, maybe $2 or $3. Bellhops (the guys who helpfully offer to carry your bags into the hotel) typically also expect a tip. I believe the answer is $1/bag.

If you're at some kind of uber-trendy restaurant or nightclub, of the sort I don't really frequent, tipping customs get quite particular. It's not unheard of to push a $20 or more to the maitre d' to get you in sooer, but some places will see it as an insult. Tread carefully. Similarly, it's not unheard of to tip a valet extra bucks in advance to have your car parked right up front. Needless to say, these sorts of customs are restaurant-specific.

If you go to an espresso bar (Starbucks, etc.) or many other restaurants where you order at a counter, there will typically be a "tip jar" on the counter. I typically dump in whatever change they hand to me after buying my coffee. This is entirely optional.

I've even heard of leaving money on your hotel bed to tip the ladies who clean up your room. I don't typically do this, but a friend of mine who does leaves $1 for each day.

I agree with those who have said that the problem is that the waitstaff are underpaid to begin with. Stiffing them on tips could lead to them taking home less than minimum wage. Keep in mind that in many restaurants, tips are split between the server, busboy(s), and runner(s) who bring the food out but don't do the actual ordering/service, yet people are generally only tipping based on how friendly/attentive the actual server was. What if the kitchen was slow or sent out bad food? That probably manifests itself in the form of a lower tip, even though the server had nothing to do with it.

The server already has an incentive to be nice and provide quick service -- their desire to stay gainfully employed. Pay them a decent wage and we don't have to do this Rube Goldberg gratuity dance any longer.

I like having a little control over the reward a server receives. At the DMV I have no control and get treated like dirt. While tipping for all services might be impossible and way to complicated it seems like I get better service when a TIP is possibly in the mix.

Depending on the establishment and the server’s performance a server can make GOOD money. My wife was a server when we first got married and made decent money.

Some servers do not report all the income to the government so much of the TIP is tax free.

I have the impression that a restaurant server's 'taxable tips' are estimated by the government. Not sure why I think this.

I tipped my bulldozer guy on a multi-thousand dollar job at my ranch. Last year he arrived with a dozer, backhoe, grader(!), water trailer, and several skilled helpers. All this was far above his usual annual visit with a D-9. The results were fantastic and I appreciated the efforts.

Meanwhile, the topic at hand can be augmented with info from wikipedia, which I love dearly. So, here's a link...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_%28gratuity%29

Annual visit???

If it takes a D-9 to dig you out I'm guessing that's why no one lives there all year round.

When my wife waitressed I think the government had the restaurant claim 7% of her sales on her W-2. Of course you could always claim more on your tax return. I would imagine an instant audit would result if you claimed less. Also if you could prove you did not make minimum wage the company would have to make up the difference. I have a feeling that would be hard to accomplish as well.

I'm in the camp that views mandatory tipping as utter nonsense, yet I also comply with it (15% of pretax amount at sit-down restaurants).

I did once tip a "telephone enginneer" -- DSL troubleshooter -- for taking 45 minutes beyond what the phone company permits him to try and optimize our DSL performance. Made it clear up front, and slipped him the $20 on completion.

Cheers

He typically skins the road of shrubs and weeds. Occasionally there's some road modifications required- new spurs or whatnot.
The reason *I* don't live up there year 'round is because it's an hour's drive to the nearest grocery, let alone anything else. Lots of folks up there, though.

In some states (AZ I know specifically), wait staff make BELOW minimum wage on the expectation that the majority of their pay comes from tips. Last time I checked, wait staff makes a kickass $4.35/hr (which is barely more than I made 20+ years ago as a student working at a register in a shop, student wage back then was $3.80/hr) while the state minimum is $7.35/hr. So no, it isn't quite the same as the grocery store checkout clerk.

Same here. Even worse are the "18% gratuity is included for parties of 6 or more." If you're so hard up that you can't pay your wait staff properly, just raise the prices, already. Meh. I've only ever once not left a tip in a restaurant, and the servers were so rude that I wouldn't let anyone else (in a party of nearly two dozen) leave a tip, either. We'd been prepared to tip generously, too -- the place was slammed, and were short-staffed.


I've never tipped one, but when we had our FiOS installed, it was a bitterly cold and rainy winter day, so I did give our installer some mulled apple cider.

This all sounds very strange to me. Here in Belgium, tipping is very much the exception. No-one ever does it, except maybe the occasional tourist who doesn't know better. Up to a few years ago, all receipts also mentioned 'service and tax included', so maybe that's where this came from. I don't know if the whole tipping thing is actually against the law here or something, but I do know it's just not done.

I understand the point others have tried to make that they want to have a hand in how well their service is going to be. Tipping is not the only way to make sure of that. Firstly, bad restaurants with lousy service don't last very long. Secondly, it *is* custom here that if the food is unsatisfactory to just say this, and they will usually come up with something else. If the food was just downright terrible and you don't want to give the kitchen a second chance at poisoning you, you just leave and don't pay. Of course, you can't do that after you've had the entire meal, obviously. Usually a bite or two are enough to convince yourself if the dish is edible or not.

The other thing I find very strange in this discussion is, as in the part I've quoted, how people in wait staff jobs can be employed below minimum wage. I mean, isn't minimum wage not like the eh... absolute minimum an employer is allowed to pay his or her staff? Isn't it against the law to employ somebody below minimum wage? (it should be!). Having the staff living of tips is like having them live of money that's off the books. Which is illegal here also. (or course, the catering business is probably THE business where most money of the books is made of any job... well, that and the construction business anyway).

So as a rule, I don't tip. Ever. I'm totally with Cris on this. But I was a tourist in a country where it's customary to tip, I guess I would comply. But I know this would feel very unnatural to me. Same as haggling at a local market. I'm used to just pay the price that's asked. Even if this means I'm being ripped off.

There are different minimum wages. There is the federal minimum wage, then state minimum wage (can be more or even less than the federal), some states have a 'tipped employee' minimum wage (which wait staff fall under), and there is a student wage (high school students - can't find any reference to see if it is still around) which is below the federal limit.

What point is there to having a general federal minimum wage then, if any state can simply overrule it? I'm not mocking here, this is a serious question.

In the USA we love to make things complicated, tiping, taxes, wages, laws, healthcare ..etc.

To add to the confusion we now have this….

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-05-16-panera-pay-what-you-can_n.htm

I believe federal employees will not see lower than that limit.

The Federal minimum wage has priority. State minimum may be above, but not below, the Federal minimum. Likewise with local area minimum wages.
For example, the minimum wage in San Francisco ($9.92) is higher than the minimum wage of California ($8), which is higher than the minimum wage of the USA ($7.25).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._minimum_wages

edit:

Oh my!
Seems I have a false impression of how this stuff works!
http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm
Some states do indeed have minimum wages that are lower than the Federal minimum.
edit again:
...and yet: "Note: Where Federal and state law have different minimum wage rates, the higher standard applies."
So, the states with lower than Federal minimum wages are probably just behind in their bookkeeping.

They can't, the employee always gets the higher of state vs federal.. But Federal minimum wage is different for wait staff. Read here.

Ah, ok, so we're back at the beginning of this discussion where someone said they should get rid of this system and also pay wait staff a decent wage to begin with. After all, why should an exception be made for them. To me, it seems they get the short end of the stick anyway that way.

I will agree that the situation is a little ridiculous. However, at least in the US, the general expectation is that this is how it works, and failing to account for and including that additional 15% is cheating the waitstaff. Would it be easier if the food were just 15% more expensive? Sure, but it's not.

That said, most of the waitstaff I've known would rather get tips than work for a base salary. Customers are, generally speaking, going to be more generous than employers.

Traditionally, in Italy Tip is just meant to be a sign of appreciation, and most times just symbolic. Waitstaff are supposed to have their own salary just like any other restaurant employee. Even so, however, it gets a bit confusing here as well. While in a basic restaurant you may just not leave any tip, or tip with a couple of Euros just to say "thanks, you were nice", if you are in a more expensive restaurant, tradition is to tip more, and, in some occasions, up to 10%. Some would say that % also depends on the number of people in the party (the more, the higher the tip).
Which is why waitstuff here tends to love US tourists who don't know or happen to fail in adapting to local customs.

But, I have to say that quality of service in Italy is, on average, not nearly comparable to that in the US. So far, US waiters are in my personal experience the best trained, nicer, and most careful I've met. Not that here servie is particularly bad (and I find it improving, fortunately). Just, not as good, at all. Most times waiters's kindness or care is part of their own personal people skills. They don't get trained, they don't get told what customers like and dislike, and there's just a less developed culture of customer care.

And your average waiter is going to be less than honest with the tax man ??? Getting paid cash in small coin sounds pretty good to me!

Is the food in a US restaurant 15% cheaper than in Belgium then ??? It should be !!!

Cheers

Cris

That's a good question. Based on a little research, I'm going to say yes; it looks like restaurants in Belgium do charge a little more than similar ones in the US, but it's very hard to compare.

Of course it is. The USA has very little in the way of food safeguards compared with the EU, and the EU lacks "illegal immigrants" (mexicans) to pick crops for next to nothing in wages.

Cheers

15% minimum tip on the before-tax amount. 20% quite often. For restaurants. at a bar where I walk up and order a drink it's always without calculation for me. It often just depends on what kind of money I have on me if I'm paying cash. It's a good idea to separate kitchen performance from wait staff performance. There have been situations where the waiting experience was totally and completely to blame for a terrible experience and I've left 0. It's only ever happened once or twice in my life.

I don't believe that cash tips should be included in reported income and don't expect that any server should declare such earnings. It *is* supposed to be included. But then you're also supposed to declare all purchases, even of used items, at the end of the year to pay sales tax on them.

Store clerks get paid more than waiters pretty much... Everywhere. Some also make commission, as do many other sales jobs. That's their incentive.

When I worked at a restaurant, the kitchen staff all made a higher base wage than the wait staff.

People do also tip self-proprietors like photographers. That's not something I really do though unless they've brought along some underlings, in which case I may tip those employees.

There's a big difference between a tip and a bribe, but I don't like situations where the lines start to blur, which is the case in many places like Cuba. Nor do I like situations where someone throws themselves into the mix in order to squeeze a "tip" from you when in fact it's thinly disguised extortion. Example: parking your car downtown Lisbon and some guy will jump out as you're approaching a spot and point at it as if helping you park, afterwards expecting, and sometimes demanding some kind of compensation.

But as Doug mentioned I try to be respectful of local customs so as not to insult anyone, even if that means tipping lower than I normally would otherwise or perhaps not tipping at all if that's going to make them happier. Though I haven't yet met anyone that wasn't made happier with just a tiny bit of extra compensation.

My current favorite "jumping out to get a tip" sort of thing that really bugs me is a practice of Washington D.C. cabbies. They're allowed to charge you extra for helping you to load your bags into the trunk. Okay, you're arriving at the airport, carrying your bags yourself, and the cabbie offers to grab your bag and move it the last meter into the trunk, which you could well have done yourself. Extra charge on the meter.

Now I feel like I should brush off their offer to be helpful, and that's seemingly not right.

It's possible, but who says so? It is indeed not at all easy to determine. Sources?

No, actually. Though the specifics do depend upon the province/state in which one does business.

Here in Ontario, sales tax registration/collection/etc is not required on the first (from poor memory here..) $30K of personal sales. Businesses have no such exemption, except for Sole Proprietorships.

EDIT: Oh, that was pre-HST. Things may have changed as of last year.. dunno.

Cheers

Mark, I was talking about individuals paying former PST, not a seller collecting. I don't know what's up with the HST in this regard now.

One unfortunate part of the HST however is that other provinces are now responsible for collecting it from Ontario buyers. So there's no more escaping the 8% PST portion when buying retail from out of province. Previously it was up to the individual to remit payment directly to the Ontario government.

As far as I'm concerned a tip is a gift.

.. and gifts are considered taxable income in this country.

I just made a quick perusal of some online menus for Belgian restaurants.

Using currency exchange rate is not a good way to determine where food is cheaper. You should be looking at purchasing power within countries. Exchnage rate is determined by money market, and may mislead you. If I make 2K Euros a month in Italy, and a friend of mine makes 2k $ in the US, given current exchange rate you may assume that I make more, which may not at all be true if goods costing 1 $ in the US cost 2 Euro here - as it often happnes, being esxchange rate unrelated to that to a large extent.

To go back to tipping, I am really not usre that tip culture has an impact on cost of food. On the other end, personally I think it is indee possible that it does cause low wages for waitstaff. Clearly, as a waiter you'll be willing to accept a lower wage if you know customers will tip a lot. BAsically, tipping alters the labor market. I don't say it is necessarily bad, but travelling would be easier if tip culture did not vary so much from country to country.

Yes, but experiencing different culture (including tipping) is half the reason to travel. If homogeneity is what you're looking for, staying home is good. Or come to the suburban USofA, land of the strip-mall and franchises run amok.

I agree on the value of learnign about different cultures. But I don't think knowing tipping culture differences is culturally or humanly particularly enriching, though. But maybe I fail in seeing the implications of that.

Not so much in knowing what the tipping culture is, but why. And, just as interesting, when different cultures intersect, how they approach things. In one, a "normal" American tip is considered extravagantly patronizing, while in others, it's more "let's get all the money we can from this idiot."

Indeed, "why" in some culture tipping is more important while in others it is not could lead to very interesting historical/cultural considerations.

So, what are the reasons why tipping in the US is considered important and why the amount is such? I just assumed it is a tradition which simply resisted to time changes, since when waitstaff were in fact living only/mostly on tips from customers, and were not regulated by a more formalized and structured labor law and "real" salary. And, my assumption was such because that's what happened here as well. For some reason, the idea that waitstaff was in fact regularly employed by restaurant owners (with salary and benefits) made its way into people perceptions here and tipping slowly decreased in importance and amount. Today, all it really means is: leave anything as a sign you're happy, but if you don't it is still perfectly ok". That's it.

On the other hand, many people, including me actually, tend to tip, or tip more, if they are particularly happy. I am personally all in favor of positive reinforcements, and if I think a waiter was particularly good and careful, I tend to tip significantly more.

I am also thinking that tipping here is considered appropriate in more formal situations. For example, if I eat in a restaurant for my usual 1-hr lunch break fromt he office, tipping is really not expected (but always welcome, of course), because it is not considered a "formal" lunch. On the contrary, usually it is a restaurant here that may give you a little discount (!!). Probably this is a consequence of the competition standard restaurants had to face against fast-food ones, or bars or standing pizza-places, or other types of places where you don't actually sit to a table to eat - which tend to be significantly cheaper.

I haven't read every post in this thread, but one thing that actually bugs me today has to do with dipping for carry out at the grocery store. That is, when I was in high school and worked as a grocery bagger, I got tips. I was paid minimum wage, but earned tips on top of what they paid me, which would often end up at $10-$20 for a 5 hour shift. I think minimum wage at that time was $4.50, so that was a pretty nice boost (by comparison, the checkers got about .50 more than we did).

At some point after I left that job and went on to bigger and better things, grocery stores started mandating that customers should not tip for carrying out groceries. I remember feeling pretty embarrassed when I tried to tip one and he said he couldn't accept it. The result is that I NEVER allow them to take out my groceries because I feel bad not tipping them after how much I earned in tips doing the same service when I was younger.

So this is probably an example of an industry correcting itself (or I *think* it's industry wide- I haven't bothered even checking with our local grocery stores to see what their accepted practice is), and it probably just annoys be because of my past experience. I have to admit, being able to go after work to best buy and pick up a new CD after every shift just on my tips was probably a little bit much for the work I was actually doing.