No matter how much you squint your eyes snd wish, tipping a service worker is not corrupt. It is gratuity. I guess it’s culturally better than our history of slave wages.
Moderating:
This thread started as a request for advice on how to tip in America. If you want to discuss whether tipping is corrupt, benevolent, etc., please start a new thread. You can link to this one if that’s helpful.
But let’s keep this one to just “who do you tip, where, how much, how” and similar.
I haven’t been in a bar in probably 30 years. But my father was a bartender, and tips were an important part of his income.
You DO understand that I’m not suggesting that someone do these things, right? All I’m saying is that there aren’t any tangible repercussions for doing them, as asked by the OP.
The question was:
He wasn’t asking for advice on how to avoid tipping, he was asking the repercussions if he messes up. And @Chefguy is right, the repercussions for a tourist who will never return to that establishment are that he might feel regret later, and will have a little more money left. And the server or whoever that he undertipped might be a little unhappy. But even the server isn’t going to lose any sleep over a clueless tourist undertipping, it’s just not that big a deal.
However, at one bar I know of, Aussie tourists do not get the best service, as they are well known bad tippers. So you stiffing some server may have some repercussions against your fellow country people down the line.
Do you want Australians (for example) to be thought of as cheap bastards?
Eh, he should try to tip appropriately (as he is, witness this thread) because under our current system, that’s fair to the servers. But if he makes a mistake and doesn’t, he shouldn’t stress over it.
When we have European employees coming over for work assignments (three months to three years) part of the orientation is a lesson on the tipping culture in the US and why it exists.
Then those servers are entirely deserving of minimal or zero tips from those particular customers.
Well, I think it would be worthwhile as a setup for the Julia Roberts “big mistake” scene, except it’s a 250lb Australian prop forward.
I didnt say BAD service. Just not the best.
Probably not a great personal policy to adjust your level of service based on how you think someone might tip just from their accent.
Can I piggy back a related question to the OP. We are doing a Hawaii trip next year, is Hawaii tipping culture functionally identical to the mainland USA or are there differences?
I haven’t been to Hawaii in a while, but I’ve been three times, and I noticed no tipping difference between the islands and the mainland. I paid a lot of tips with cash, though, because I ate at a lot hole-in-the-wall places where I thought it’d be appreciated.