TIPPING
Daily Telegraph - August 2006

I am a notoriously bad tipper, which is to say I don’t. This is not because I’m cheap – my cheapness is merely incidental to my position on tipping – but rather a moral stance. I don’t want to live in a country where we outsource pay cheques but, more importantly, I don’t like being made to feel guilty for not donating money to people who are being paid an acceptable wage.

This is a restaurant, not a child sponsorship commercial.

The latest innovation in tipping is “the tray”. Found in any bar with an aquarium, and expanding its influence with every passing year, the tray is an insidious and evil invention. In essence a shaming tactic, the tray is predicated on the notion that picking up your change in front of strangers will make you feel self-conscious and petty.

The inventors of the tray clearly didn’t see me coming: I have had many occasions to feel shame in my life but retrieving my own money has never been one of them. Rest assured, from me you’ll be getting nothing but an empty silver disc. Maybe you could polish it up and use it as a mirror?

I can remember a time in Australia when nobody tipped. Tipping has become, I suspect, a rather self-conscious gesture of your big-city credentials, something someone saw on Friends and thought might be fun, like living in a loft or drinking from a big mug. A suspicion supported by the fact that I always see tip jars with smiley faces in expensive city cafes but have yet to see one in any establishment where they serve a carpet bag steak.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, I have never been a waiter or poured a beer, but for some years I was a kitchen hand in a nursing home and the closest I ever saw to a tip there was a pair of false teeth left in a plate of curried egg. Maybe I’m still resentful, but I don’t understand why the guy washing dishes out the back gets nothing extra while the guy who brings them to him is treated like a kid at Christmas.

The hunger for tips encourages service staff to be obsequious, and if there’s one thing I want to discourage it is intimacy with strangers. You do your job, I appreciate that; but there’s a reason you’re serving at my birthday party and not sitting at the table.

In America, attempts by service staff to insinuate their way into your affections often assume grotesque proportions. From zany badges to stand-up routines to sitting down at the table and having a chinwag about the specials’ board: there are no limits to the horrors.

Let’s end tipping now before we wind up with barmen who do magic tricks and waitresses who moonwalk your fries to your table. Be warned: the little tray is the tip of the iceberg.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008