Tipping

Just to make my position clear, I hate tipping. The whole idea of it is a little vulgar to me. When someone is nice to me, I like to think it is because they either enjoy their job or they think that I'm a lovely fellow. It is horrible then to realise that after you meal, the person serving you has only been nice in an attempt to make you tip more. That is, if they are nice at all. If you think about it, tipping is quite patronising. It is much the same as tapping the person on the top of their head or pinching their cheeks saying, "You've done very well, you lifted those plates and delivered them all the way over to my table without dropping them or anything!" That is their job. It is what they are paid to do.

The argument that they aren't paid a lot and so the tips are to make their wages up doesn't wash with me either. The restaurant should just pay them more. If needs be, increase the prices on the menu. People shouldn't need to be bribed to be good at serving people, if they are poor at the job, they should be fired. This might leave a lot of grumpy and sullen people unemployed, but I am OK with that. Maybe they could get a job as a bus driver, my understanding is that those qualities are a prerequisite for the job. (Don't get me wrong, a few nice people slip through the net).

One thing a lot of people say when I chat to them about this sort of thing is that they don't like as they don't get tipped for their work. I'm not a massive fan of this as an argument. There a lot of perks that people get in their work that others don't. This might sound like I am contradicting myself, but I'm not. I might not like the perks other people get, but that is just jealousy, but tipping directly affects me as the onus is very much on me to give people money that I don't feel they don't necessarily deserve.

What I hate most about tipping though is the judgemental side of things. When I ever go for a meal with people and we are sorting out the bill, people always say about adding extra money for the tip. The problem with this is that if I question it, I appear as the tight bastard, where in fact I am just questioning if the service was so exceptional as to deserve any kind of monetary bonus. Surely, if we have to tip, it should only be when service has been exceptional, above the norm, not, as it is now, done no matter what. In America, servers have apparently been known to chase customers down the road demanding a tip.

I'm not sure I have any great point to make here so I shall summarise it like this: I hate tipping. Almost as much as I hate begging.