Tipping for service?

Tipping

A couple of days ago I went to Pizza Express for lunch, it’s my favourite place for pizza, but sadly not for service.  Trying to gain someone’s attention to come and take our order after we had been waiting for 10 minutes, I saw 5 staff and not one of them was looking towards the diners, so trying to gain eye contact was something of a challenge.

When it came to paying the bill we automatically added 15% on as a tip for service, but it made me think about the tipping culture in the UK.  Why do we tip?  What is the tip for? So I conducted a little research amongst my friends and the results were quite surprising.

Why do we do it?

It seems that when it comes to taxis, very often they tell them to keep the change because they feel that it’s expected and there is an element of inferred intimidation.  The driver may be slow to hand the change back and they feel embarrassed standing there with their hand out.  One friend said that it in those instances it was just easier to let them keep the change.  However, when drivers are pleasant and friendly, open the door and help with bags etc. they willingly add on a tip as they feel that the driver has earned something extra.

Hairdressers – again it seems to be that they think it is expected that they leave a tip, and if they don’t the staff will think they are mean and may not give them a good cut next time.

In restaurants, again it is an automatic response, but the amount varies considerably froma standard £1.50 to 15%, but I didn’t speak to anyone who would consider leaving more than 15%.

The one consistent factor in all of my conversations was that there didn’t seem to be any common understanding of why we tip and what we expect in return for the tip.

In the USA the tipping culture is different, certainly when it comes to restaurants.  From my time there I realised that they have a clear understanding that the staff are on minimum wage and without tips they would receive a zero rated payslip at the end of the month after all the deductions.  So they work for their tips – to us it may seem that the level of service is a little ‘in your face’ at times, but when eating out there I never had to leave my table to find a member of staff to ask for some water, or utensils – sadly I’ve had to do that for both reasons more than once here.

I’m really curious to understand more about tipping.  Why do we do it? Who do we tip? How much is appropriate? What do we expect for our tip?