Tip of the iceberg: Frank McNally on generous taxi-drivers and guilt-trip gratuities

On the way to Dublin Airport recently for a flight to the US, I encountered that rarest of things: a happy taxi driver.

He seemed to have life worked out. His mortgage was paid off, his lifestyle modest. He worked mornings only, until noon. Then he had the rest of the day to enjoy simple pleasures – a swim, walking the dog, the occasional pint or two but never more than three – which he took pleasure in detailing.

But the most memorable detail about him was what he charged. The fare was €25 plus whatever I might add as a tip. Remembering that many Dublin taxi drivers are allergic to credit cards, I had stopped at an ATM beforehand, for €40 cash, in two twenties.

Unfortunately, the driver had no change. After waving away my offer of a card instead, he handed me back one of the notes. “We’ll leave it at €20 – you can get me again some time,” he said.

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Mildly astonished, I pocketed the reverse 25 per cent tip with gratitude. “I will,” I said, and meant it, even though I knew the chances of my running into him again anytime soon were minimal. Still, he mentioned he drinks in the Gravediggers, occasionally. And if we do somehow renew acquaintance, I plan to return the surprise and fiver, plus tip.

***

The memory of the flaithiúlach taxi driver was still warm when I landed in America, a land where such a thing would never happen. You’d be paying for your cab there by card anyway. But even if it was cash, the driver would be sure to have enough change for you, at least after you added the recommended gratuity.

Tipping is ubiquitous in the US and, under a thin pretence of being discretionary, rigorously policed. Yes, I suppose you can refuse to pay. But then you’re the one who feels like a heartless exploiter of the working classes: not their bosses, who refuse them a living wage safe in the knowledge that saps like you will take up the slack.

Restaurants are the worst. Even if you ignore the vague threat of consequences from the kitchen should you fail to pay the protection money, the guilt of knowing that most workers there don’t get minimum wage and depend on your largesse is crippling.

And yet I still bridle. Especially in the many places that now take the trouble of calculating the range of gratuities you may be considering and helpfully show the guideline amounts on your bill.

When Mark Twain wrote of refusing to tip a taxi driver, the Chicago Times-Herald congratulated him in an editorial

Lest you’re the sort of stingy bastard who thinks 15 per cent is generous, these typically start at 20 per cent, rising to 22, 25, and “other”. When this happens, I have taken to performing a small act of rebellion in which I make my own calculation – of precisely 18 per cent – and add that. It’s a feeble protest but my own.

Ralph Waldo Emerson knew the feeling. Opposed on principle to tipping, he still found it hard to say no. “With shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar,” he wrote, “yet it is a wicked dollar, which, by and by, I shall have the manhood to withhold.”

***

Emerson wasn’t unusual then in his resentment to the tipping system. It was widely hated in 19th and early 20th century America as a feudal leftover imported from corrupt, aristocratic Europe.

There was no tipping in the Land of the Free until the Civil War. Then a new wave of immigration from poor countries, the rise of US tourists going to Europe and coming back with notions, and the new freedom of black southerners to be underpaid in service jobs all combined to make the habit widespread.

By the 20th century anti-tipping movements were springing up to stop it. When Mark Twain wrote of refusing to tip a taxi driver, the Chicago Times-Herald congratulated him in an editorial. Some states even banned the practice for a while. But when Leon Trotsky visited New York in 1917 and refused on communist principle to tip in restaurants, he had soup spilt on him in revenge.

Back in Russia, meanwhile, revolutionary waiters had taken to displaying signs saying tips were no longer welcome. In republican France, waiters were properly paid from the 15 per cent “service compris” built into the menu prices. Even aristocratic England had largely abandoned the practice of the upper orders randomly rewarding the lower for being flunkies.

In the US, by contrast, tipping had become the general rule. Worse, in a terrible reversal of history, large numbers of wealthy Americans were now crossing the Atlantic on an unwitting revenge mission, dispensing gratuities everywhere and reinfecting Europe with the virus it had previously exported.