The Tip Extortion

To give the wait staff a little change is accepted in Germany as a gesture of politeness. Until now. In this country, the attitude that tips are an entitlement is gaining more and more acceptance. Observations from the U.S., where customers suffer under the excesses of tipping.

The future rests on top of the counter at a New York coffee shop, for example. You briefly slide a credit card in and a dollar is deducted. After you have already paid $3 for coffee, it is understood the extra dollar is only for the kindness in having the coffee handed over in prepared form and not as raw beans. The future is a small marmalade jar-sized thing and it’s called DipJar. This electronic device is imitating something called the tip jar, and usually takes the form of an old marmalade jar containing real dollar bills. In the past, an encouraging sign often stood next to it: “Tipping is not a city in China.”

When these money collecting jars, along with their witty exhortations, found their way into the Bundesrepublik a few years ago, many Germans reacted somewhat stubbornly: The Chinese are building so many cities, there must already be one with the name “Tip” among them; besides, the same thing, which was demanded here with unusual braggadocio, was actually once called “Trinkgeld.” [Ed: tip on drinks]

But as a nice traditional term, Trinkgeld appears to have gone a little out of fashion, particularly to those who receive it. Trinkgeld always just sounds a little bit like “one more beer for the man at the piano.” Therefore, the term “tip” has gradually become more popular in the German restaurant business. Tip describes something more like an entitlement than a gift. The word may be English, but the act itself, tipping, is more American than anything else.

Now the Attempt is to Increase Tip Totals

In the U.S., educating the customer base, even persistently laying something down in self-service locations, is essentially more sophisticated. Now those self-service locations are attempting to drive up tip totals. Many coffee shops simply set up two money jars, one by the cash register and then another where the coffee is picked up. Others use a device for payment by credit card on an iPad, where you can select whether to give one, two or three dollars extra.

The gastronomy world learned this trick as a natural response to new technology. Earlier payments with cash included a 10 percent tip on average. Once credit card readers offered pre-selected options for tips, such as 20, 25, and 30 percent, most customers tend to choose the middle. You could also manually punch in a smaller amount, but it’s clumsy, and under the judgmental looks from those standing behind, customers end up choosing that option the least.

The servers actually shoot for 30 percent; when it is less than 15, then they come up to the customer afterwards and demand an answer. Demanding sounds like this in America: “Excuse me, was something about my service not to your fullest satisfaction? Was there something that I could have done better?”

Often enough you can see tourists from Europe confusedly looking for nice words instead of looking for their wallet, which is the actual intention. Translated into German it sounds like: “I want 20 percent minimum, you miserable wretches, and if that’s too much, then please stay on your frail continent over there.” Correctly put: The prospects of the euro don’t look good, the dollar is becoming more and more expensive; in other words, it’s becoming more and more difficult for a European in the U.S. not to behave like a miserable wretch.

The Matter is Becoming Too Much Even for Americans

Is it any solace that the Americans themselves are groaning about the excesses of tipping? The promise — a.k.a. the threat — of inventions such as DipJar depends on the fact that in the future, tips could be demanded where no one has yet thought of.

The matter is becoming altogether too much for Americans. Originally it was accepted as downright un-American, undemocratic, and worthless, according to historian Kerry Segrave at any rate; only slaves expected to get a little something thrown at them. Segrave’s study “Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities,” now considered a classic, is fundamentally about how this proud, free land was able to completely and utterly fall prey to servitude by tipping.

The stirringly patriotic Segrave claims that the English word “tip” — like the French “pourboire” or the German “Trinkgeld” — meant money with which one virtually buys a drink for the waiter. It comes from “to tipple,” to drink. In no way, according to Segrave, is “tip” to be taken as an abbreviation for “to insure promptness.” And almost certainly false is the popular legend that the writers Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson concocted it in their club in London. The word was indeed in use before them. But according to Goldsmith and Johnson’s accounts, they had to stop visiting their friends at the time. The compulsion as a guest in a lordly house to consistently pony up tips to the entire wait staff had become practically ruinous for both of the scholars.

This custom had become ingrained during the century before and could no longer be eliminated. Whoever refused to tip could expect his horse to have a mishap in the stable after a visit, or get a little sauce poured on his pants by mistake during the next visit.

All of this Segrave explains with relish in his book, and principally clarifies the question of guilt in the European-American tip conflict. American tourists preferably give too much rather than too little out of uncertainty, and therefore drive up prices in Europe in order to spread “tipping” into innocent America like a … yeah. The word plague is not used. But it’s clearly meant.

Ruthless Restaurateurs Who Don’t Pay Their Employees

Many sources indicate that the matter has promoted a less than kind human trait — the necessity to feel like a higher class citizen by letting a few pennies fall into the hands of another. When such patronizing gestures from the feudal Middle Ages met the morally reckless capitalism of the Wild West, it was, of course, only a matter of time before ruthless restaurateurs happily used the custom to pass the compensation of their wait staff entirely to their customers. And so has it essentially remained to this today. It has been greatly complained about, but little has ever changed. It has only become more and more expensive.

Older New Yorkers whisper of times when one reckoned with 10 percent, the somewhat younger ones can remember 15 percent. Today, as mentioned before, 20 is accepted as the boundary of politeness. For groups of six people or more, 20 percent or more is automatically tacked on as a fixed flat rate. (“Party of Six” would be a good name for a New York band, “Gratuity Will be Added” would be the title of their first single.)

Of course, European tourists often come in groups that are smaller. A particularly scary waitress named Donna Lillis recently put it on the record for New York Magazine, claiming that in these cases, they always ask directly where the people are from and stare threateningly into the eyes of everyone as a precaution. The French are always the worst customers for her, but Germans are often known to be astoundingly cheap as well.

Hotel Personnel Have Opportunities for Revenge

There is, no joke, a German travel magazine, whose reporters are not allowed place a tip on top of the bill after a business lunch in North America. It is no wonder, if people are not taught to generally leave one dollar per beer on the counter, and that the $4, $5 per night for a made bed in a hotel is not a nice gesture, but a requirement of manners. This is especially so since hotel personnel have the ability to take revenge. The story of urine in the aftershave is told here so often that it almost doesn’t matter if it has ever actually happened. And if the welfare of your car is so important, as the horse was to the visitors of English manors in the past, then you should correspondingly thank the man who drives it into the garage.

Extortion? Well …

As stated before, Americans themselves moan about the issue. But it is up to them to change it. That has also been attempted. Again and again restaurant owners explain that friendliness which lets itself be paid for is in poor taste — and they instead pay adequate hourly wages. But typically, whoever holds out their hand for tip in America is extremely underpaid, servers sometimes not at all. Visitors from Europe often aren’t aware of this fact. Or they think they could change these conditions if they refuse to support them. But whoever withholds the tip for an American server is only making it more difficult for them to pay rent.

As a European, you can get worked up about these rules, but you ought to refrain from it. In the end, you are merely a guest. Foreign countries, foreign customs. In Japan tipping is a faux pas, in the U.S., the opposite. As a visitor you can do little about it, and whoever attempts to do so regardless is behaving like a sore idiot.

The only thing you can do is this: Make sure at home that Europe doesn’t catch the tipping “plague” from America in turn. That includes whether the barista is in Berlin, dawdling over a cappuccino for five minutes for exactly as many euros and sports an original full-beard from Brooklyn, or even if the waitress is in Munich, babbling on as if she’s actually working in Los Angeles. They both receive hourly wages. If they want to now be tipped for service in turn, you should say to them: “You don’t really want that.” And for those who have done their job well, then leave a decent tip.