By Catriona McGrath
I just never know what to do. How much do you tip a waiter? Should you tip the poor man who has driven in the pouring rain to deliver your dinner? Do you tip if you’re just getting a tea or coffee in the coffee shop? I mean, they have those tip jars on the counter, they must be there for a reason? And don’t even get me started on non-food related tipping… taxi drivers, hair dressers… where does it end?
But seriously though, I would really love to get people’s views on this. Maybe we can reach a consensus and print a ‘Guide to tipping etiquette’ information leaflet. Something which helpfully goes through all possible scenarios and tells you whether you should tip, when you should tip and how much you should tip.
So, say for example you go to lunch – it’s a buffet and you serve yourself, or else you are served by someone behind the counter but still have to do all the running around yourself to get things. You come to the end of the counter where the till is, tray in hand, clearly about to bring the food to the table yourself, and there is a tip jar, or plate, or bowl. Do you tip? Yes, the staff have prepared the food, but then they are paid to prepare the food. I’m carrying it around myself, I got my own cutlery and napkins and glass of water – do I tip? I’m inclined to say ‘no’, but clearly people do and I’m curious as to why. Am I being completely rude by not dropping in a few coins?
Or, lunch again, only this time a sit down lunch. I know a lot of people who don’t tip at lunch times. I tend to, though I wouldn’t leave as much as I might if it was a dinner, but I’m slowly being brought round to the other way of thinking. One of the arguments put forward have been that there is a minimum wage here. It’s not like in the US where waiting staff might get a pittance and rely on their tips to survive. Here, there’s a minimum wage, and that wage pays the waiting staff to do their job, and it’s not necessary for us to supplement it. Unless, I suppose, you consider that you’ve had amazing, out-of-the-ordinary service, and you want to reward it.
As for dinner, I definitely tip. But the more I think about it the more I wonder why. Why would I tip at dinner and not at lunch? What’s the difference – if somebody is serving me food what does it matter what time of day it is? And even if I resolve that question I have the problem of how much to tip. My working holiday year in Canada has trained me to tip 15% but is that a good guide? I remember in Canada being told that you tip no matter what the service has been like, but here I would not tip bad service, and I really hope we never develop that habit of automatically tipping no matter how appalling the service.
And the delivery man… oh that awkward dance of handing over a €20 note for something that comes to maybe €18. Do you wait for your change? Will the delivery man assume it’s for him? Is €2 a lot for a delivery person, or is it a little? Do delivery people expect to be tipped??
All answers on a postcard to me please!