As a European, I can safely say that tipping in American restaurants is one of the most unusual things I remember about America. The amount of tips is huge and they are demanded of you everywhere
While we used to have "rounding up" tipping here as well (closest 5 or 10, depending on where you lived), it's sadly becoming norm to ask for percentage based tipping in europe as well, especially in the more touristy places.
This is what I don't get about tipping percentage based. It makes no sense to me. The serving effort is exactly the same between a 10$ salad and a 100$ steak. Take plate, bring plate, place plate on table, smile and check back. That's it.
It gets even more obnoxious when dealing with drinks. A 20$ bottle of wine requires the same effort as a 200$ bottle of wine. (well, except that pretentious bs about breaking the glass, but that's ridiculous anyway)
Same goes for drinks at bars. 5$ shot of your cheapest whiskey takes the same effort as a 50-500$ of a top shelf / ridiculously rare whiskey. Tipping a percentage of that makes absolutely no sense at all, and people defending it with "you get better service" really should visit high end restaurants in London / Paris etc. and see what "great service" really means.
>This is what I don't get about tipping percentage based. It makes no sense to me.
Of course it makes sense and I think you understand it even if (very reasonably!) you don't like it: it's a rough but effective effort at a progressive taxation/extractive pricing scheme. They're trying to extract the maximum amount of money from each customer for each individual transaction [0], orthogonal to effort or value. They aren't a government of course though and don't have full visibility of anyone's exact income or personal psychology. But as a simple proxy somebody buying a $200 bottle of wine is more likely to either have a lot more money or (just as good here) simply be in a mood/occasion to splash out and due to how humans tend to judge relative expenditures they're a lot easier to convince a $30 tip is acceptable if it's 15% of the price instead of 150% the price. Even if they aren't rich and/or are typically value-oriented, on a "special occasion" it's probably going to be easier to squeeze them harder while not framing it as getting squeezed. Once people commit to paying higher numbers that frames the rest of their economic decision making for the transaction.
And clearly it does work for a lot of places, at least in the short term, same as other exploitive human economic hacks (like the predatory rise of microtransactions in video games). It lets the businesses (including not just owners/managers in this case but many employees as well) make a lot more money.
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0: Ie, treating it as a non-iterated game theory situation, which probably is rational for a lot of restaurants and particularly tourist ones where odds may be that they will only ever see any given customer once (or perhaps single digits, close enough) in a lifetime. In an iterated game, where a large/critical percentage of business depends on local repeat customers, it can make more sense long term to build loyalty by not feeling exploitive and have lower-per-transaction profits that are steady over years/decades. And I have seen that play out to some extent. Some places may also split the difference, such as by offering special local discount scheme sort of things, or having very different pricing/offerings certain days of the week when statistically very few tourists are there vs locals.
As a European have you noticed a recent increase in tipping in Europe as well?
In Switzerland a lot of the restaurants that have moved to tablets for payment, and the payment screen pops up a "suggested tip" window with a few options. They might be a bit lower than the standard American tips but it's still there and it never was before.
As an American, may I suggest you Europeans start a social media movement to boycott all businesses in Europe which have that tip screen on their card terminals, before the cancer solidifies its foothold in your home? We won't get rid of tipping here until we get a superdepression for a number of years and no restaraunt operates anymore because literally nobody can afford it.
Sometimes it's ridiculous enough that the waiter is the one pressing "0%" to switch directly to payment, e.g. when you get your order at the bar yourself and the amount of service is minimal.
There's no custom of tipping that much at any of these places, but I feel cheap just clicking the lowest (no tip) of 4 options. Maybe all the time I've lived in the US plays a role here but it seems like it might just be the decoy effect [1] applied to tipping. It will be interesting to see if consumers see this as a dark pattern and push back.
I haven’t noticed such thing, but maybe you are right. I think that Switzerland is completely different than other parts of Europe and it is hard to compare with.
For me ridiculous is the fact you are tipping only person who brings the plate.
You dining experience is affected more by other people: person who actually prepared the dish and person who cleans the toilet. Their poor work can easily ruin your dinner experience, but tips are expected to the person walking with plates.
>you are tipping only person who brings the plate. You dining experience is affected more by other people
A lot of restaurants have "tip sharing", "tip out", "tip pool" where the waitstaff share some portion of their tips with the hostess, foodrunners, cooks, etc. So the customer is really tipping all the workers except the managers.
You will no doubt have noticed that with the proliferation of mobile Epos, tipping is increasingly being crowbarred into daily life over here too. For godssakes Just Say No
It's weirdly named. But it's all because the person servicing you is pretty much not paid by their employer. Instead they are "hired" and paid by you directly to service you. You don't have much control in this business relationship between you and your server, however you are expected to pay for it. Look at servers not as employers but as freelancers and it'll be easier.
It is such a relief to go out to eat in Europe versus the USA where you have to negotiate a fair wage for the service employees at what seems like every food service business at the register. I prefer the solution other countries have where the price already includes a fair wage, I don't want to have to think about it with every meal or snack.
That and disappearing with your card, swiping it with only some kind of implicit authorisation, doing some kind of pre-auth (?), which is then released/finalised once you add the tip and sign the receipt ? (If I understood it correctly)
And European tourists are notorious for not tipping, because they have not taken the time to understand our bizarre customs which we don’t even like.
Combine that with the fact that tourists everywhere are more difficult and time-consuming to deal with and it’s a recipe for resentment.
Just last week I saw a group of Spanish visitors to NYC create a confusing maelstrom of orders at a coffee shop and then override the tip to zero, all while shouting across the room to each other.
I frequent a bar in a tourist area with many international tourists. They finally just by default added an 18% service charge and a line for an additional tip.
The servers and bartenders are always very explicit about the tip being included.
Here in the UK, it's common for a "service charge" to be added to bills which is the equivalent of a tip, but considered mandatory for large groups. I think the next step is to just roll the tips/service charge into the food prices and thus not be pushing employee wage issues onto customers.
That is simply a markup and should be reflected in the price. Euro style tipping is annoying enough but percentages in the US are huge. It is really not an afterthought to the whole transaction. Imagine you bought a car and the dealers profit would be totally optional for you to decide. The situation is frankly ludicrous
If they say up front on every menu that the tip is included and the servers/bartenders are up front and you can actually remove it (I guess you can put less on the bottom line), what’s the issue?
Taxes also aren’t included in the menu price.
I can’t imagine any of the servers who don’t like the status quo or that would come out better even if they made $20 an hour.
>>If they say up front on every menu that the tip is included and the servers/bartenders are up front and you can actually remove it (I guess you can put less on the bottom line), what’s the issue?
Nothing. Some restaurants in London started doing this now, the menu says a service charge of 10% will apply unless you ask to remove it and very few people have any issue with it.
Because if one restaurant or retailer in general added taxes and no one else does, it makes their prices seem higher. Everyone in the US knows that taxes aren’t included.
