I'm not sure I understand the objection to the tip line on credit card slips, though. Surely it's commonplace to just cross it out and hand the slip back? If I tip, it's always in cash anyway. Just because it's there doesn't mean there's an expectation to use it.

No personal objection to the tip line, I was just responding to Mr H's statement that in London you wouldn't be signing a credit slip but would instead do it all electronically.

You are taking my comment out of context. There was a dialogue between myself and hfly where he was talking about common practices in "fashionable" London restaurants which mean your bill ends up being double what the menu says. These practices bear no relation to reality - e.g. couvert charges, taxes added on top of menu prices and couvert charges, and the blank line on credit card slips. My response was that blank lines on credit card slips were not the norm, since most customers will be presented with a chip and pin machine. The slips can still be offered for foreign visitors who don't have chip and pin, but they are not the common practice.

I suspected from hfly's post that he was being argumentative and hadn't actually been to London. If he had, then I apologise but it makes his posts look all the more bizarre because, as I say, they have no grounding in reality.

Yeah, STAY HOME!!

Service workers in this country depend on tips as a major part of their income. Their base salary is often quite low. If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out, stay in hotels, etc. Your country is different. Bully for you. When I go to Europe, they set the rules and I either play by them or have a less happy experience.

You are entitled to nothing.

The OP isn't suggesting withholding tips, merely avoiding services where tipping is required.

Exactly. The problem with such a long thread is that everything has already been said a long time ago and newcomers to the thread do not seem to bother to read it through.

I would like to point out that service workers do not get paid less than minimum wage, they are paid an hourly wage below the minimum because they make enough in tips to be above the hourly minimum. If a service worker does not make enough in tips, the employer is legally obligated to make up the difference. Think about it, if a waiter has one table an hour that tips them $5, they have made over $7 per hour. I am guessing if a server only makes $5 per hour in tips, they will not be at that establishment very long.

Really charming of the OP. He can afford to travel abroad, and yet he wants to nickel-and-dime some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S.

The last time I was in Continental Europe (admittedly a long time ago), there was no need to tip because the restaurants automatically added a service charge.

Why are we supposed to pay them? I thought that was the responsibility of their employer?

I dont know why this topic always brings out so many emotions.

Personally I find it unreasonable "having" to tip. That is a very personal and individual decision. Regarding paying extra or not, I consider eating out in the US already as expensive, compared to germany for example. For excellent and personal service a tip of 10-12% may be justified, however to expect or even add automatically more is simply insane. After all I spend usually around 100$ on a dinner for 2. The amount of time dedicated to me is no more than 20 minutes total and even that is put very generous. For what would I pay 20$ tip ?

Many who comment on great tipping dont do it because they feel others deserve it but they merely like to think of themselves as Mr Bigshot who can afford to give other people 20 bucks, be it justified or not. This IMHO of course and as always YMMV.

Not to take care of your employee and leave him to the goodwill of the customer is more a problem of the american society. After all they dont really care about the low income folks anyway - sad but true. I lived in LA and wouldnt be surprised if many here who parade about good tipping have a housemaid, nanny or gardener who just gets the minimum wage or even less, not taxed of course and the immigration status is often questionable as well, of course nobody cares about that as long as they are cheap ! :td:

A short history of tipping, from the NYT.
 

I just love these "dirty American custom" threads.

Long snip from NYT article on tipping, 2008:

Tipping was imported from Europe, and when it arrived in America, it met with impassioned and organized opposition. While the precise origin of tipping is uncertain, it is commonly traced to Tudor England, according to “Tipping,” Kerry Segrave’s history of the custom. By the 17th century, it was expected that overnight guests to private homes would provide sums of money, known as vails, to the host’s servants. Soon after, customers began tipping in London coffeehouses and other commercial establishments. One frequented by Samuel Johnson had a bowl printed with the words “To Insure Promptitude,” and some speculate that “tip” is an acronym for this phrase.

Tipping began as an aristocratic practice, a sprinkle of change for social inferiors, and it quickly spread among the upper classes of Europe. Yet even at its outset, tipping engendered feelings of anxiety and resentment. In the mid-1800s, after leaving the Bell Inn of Gloucester, the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle complained: “The dirty scrub of a waiter grumbled about his allowance, which I reckoned liberal. I added sixpence to it, and [he] produced a bow which I was near rewarding with a kick.”

After the Civil War, wealthy Americans began traveling to Europe in significant numbers, and they brought the tip home with them to demonstrate their worldliness. But the United States, unlike Europe, had no aristocratic tradition, and as tipping spread — like “evil insects and weeds,” The New York Times claimed in 1897 — many thought it was antithetical to American democratic ideals. “Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape,” William Scott wrote in his 1916 anti-tipping screed, “The Itching Palm.” One periodical of the same era deplored tipping for creating a class of workers who relied on “fawning for favors.”

Opposition to tipping was not limited to the media. In 1904, the Anti-Tipping Society of America sprang up in Georgia, and its 100,000 members signed pledges not to tip anyone for a year. Leagues of traveling salesmen opposed the tip, as did most labor unions. In 1909, Washington became the first of six states to pass an anti-tipping law. But tipping persisted. The new laws rarely were enforced, and when they were, they did not hold up in court. By 1926, every anti-tipping law had been repealed.

Ultimately, even those who in principle opposed the practice found themselves unable to stiff their servers. Samuel Gompers, who was president of the American Federation of Labor and a leading figure of the anti-tipping movement, admitted that he “followed the usual custom of giving tips.”

Meanwhile, Europe was rethinking its devotion to the custom. The 1943 Catering Wages Act in Britain established a minimum wage for service employees that helped decrease their reliance on tips. And in 1955, France passed a law requiring its restaurants to add a service charge (“service compris”) to each bill, a practice that has become the norm for most of the continent. By then, the anti-tipping movement had all but vanished in the United States. Its last great champion, the social scientist Leo Crespi, died in July of this year. Sixty years earlier, Crespi published a scholarly study of tipping and called for the formation of a National Anti-Tipping League of diners. But the call went unanswered — even by Crespi, who never dined out.

Honestly, for all the flak Americans get for being boorish when travelling abroad, nothing makes me happier to be an American than watching a bunch of Euros spend hundreds of words trying to come up with (and justify!) schemes to stiff poor people out a few measly bucks. We may be a lot of things, but at least we're not *that*.

Some people deserve what they get in life. Have fun paying higher prices from the mini bar than you do at the bar. Of course, nobody at the lounge where you take the drink is going to want to talk to a .......... Also, have fun with McDonald's on your vacation.

In my experience, it was largely people from the UK who were that tight. I'd always pass them off on lesser servers and they'd get an experience that they'd deserve. Germans seemed to be quite good.

Well, you're in Canada are you not champ? Thus, what's your point about the 20% tip. In Canada people don't tip as much. Tipping is bigger here because the government automatically takes a chunk of the server's tips. It isn't so in Canada. Head to some countries where tipping isn't big and see the service you get. You can of course complain about it, but you don't get out of paying for it and have no real recourse to hold anyone accountable.

Yes and many people think that comets are space ships flying to earth to pick up their soul and thus they off themselves. That has about as much relevance as your statement above.

No, it happens in Canada as well. People tip more 15% there for great service as opposed to 20% here. Again with the many? How many? Who? Do you just make this stuff up to justify being cheap? How many people here do you estimate have a staff at home? Please enlighten us. Also, what does having someone mow your lawn have to do with tipping exactly?

I know it is roughly the same in Canada. Since it is the same Continent called (N.)America. Enough people on FT I know have staff at home but it's not about FTers but the society in general.

And it related to tipping in that way, that the folks here justify it with "they dont make enough money/just the minimum wage" though their own (illegal) "employees" get even less.

Some call it "cheap" - some call it "reasonable". As I said above: YMMV ! :)

Alot of us europeans also call it cheap, not to say disgusting being unable to give your own citizens healthcare but to fight a ridiculous war ! Not that I give a damn... just stating the facts !

Yep, putting it on a credit card ending up in debt and bankrupcy. :D