“I don’t tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I’ll give them something, a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it’s for the birds. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just doing their job,” says Mr Pink in a memorable opening monologue of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
When the film was first screened in Ireland more than 30 years ago, most Irish watchers probably found themselves nodding in agreement with Mr Pink, played by Steve Buscemi, because the notion of tipping had yet to become a significant feature of our world.
People tipped for sure, but the practice wasn’t widespread, and certainly not expected in the handful of coffee shops that were dotted around our towns and cities.
The idea that before paying for a cup of coffee in Bewleys you’d be offered the chance to tip the server 10, 15 or 20 per cent would have been ridiculous.
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It’s not ridiculous now though, is it?
[ Make tipping policies clear to protect consumers, watchdog urgesOpens in new window ]
And tipping is not the marginal thing it once was. The vast, vast majority of Irish people now tip as a matter of routine, according to a recent piece of research published by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC).
But not everyone is happy about it.
The consumer watchdog did a deep dive into tipping culture in Ireland and reported that 90 per cent of consumers tip at least some of the time – with women and the over-35s most likely to leave money behind as a reward for decent service.
But while we are clearly better tippers than we used to be, the research also found that two-thirds of Irish consumers believe tipping has become less voluntary, while one in five said they had recently paid a bill that included an unexpected extra charge, usually in the form of a service charge automatically added to the final cost.
According to the CCPC, as many as one in four Irish consumers have tipped in error, which means that potentially millions of euro is unintentionally left behind in restaurants and coffee shops each year.
But how is it possible to tip in error, you might well ask?
Well, as with so many things, the march of progress and technology is to blame. When publishing its findings, the CCPC noted that technology has changed the tipping landscape, and with fewer people carrying cash, businesses have taken to relying on virtual tipping through payment terminals.
“Newer technologies like payment screens and tipping terminals are changing the way we tip for services,” the CCPC’s Simon Barry said. “It’s important that businesses using these technologies do so in a way that protects the consumer’s right to decide whether and how much to tip.
He said transparency was “vital”, and added that “any mandatory service charges must be flagged well in advance, optional charges must never be automatically added to bills, and tipping terminals should be placed away from payment terminals to avoid any confusion”.
[ How much should you tip in restaurants? Ireland’s tipping culture decodedOpens in new window ]
Sometimes consumer confusion happens when it really shouldn’t.
The large sign on the tipping machine beside the cash register at the Bodega coffee outlet in Dublin’s George’s Street Arcade could scarcely be clearer, but while the black-and-white notice sellotaped to the terminal screams TIPS in capital letters, staff have lost count of the number of coffee drinkers who think it’s a payment terminal.
Barista Anna Cavana and her hard-working colleagues do sometimes benefit from the mistakes that possibly caffeine-depleted and tired customers make, but she is still wearied by the whole palaver.
The tipping machine at the Bodega – a relatively new piece of tech found across the Irish hospitality sector and deployed in response to a decline in the numbers carrying cold hard cash – is set to accept a flat €1 fee.
Cavana says most of those who tip in error do not accept the refund she says is automatically offered to them, but it creates a headache on both sides of the counter.
“Usually people see the sign, but sometimes they tap by mistake,” she says. “We always offer to give it back in coins, but they usually say ‘No’. We try not to hide the signs so people can see that it’s the tip machine.”
The experience reader Aoife Doyle had at an entirely different cafe was less clear-cut, and she believes that while she made a mistake, it was hard to avoid. She is a good tipper, although says she doesn’t tend to leave gratuities in coffee shops, saving her largesse for sit-down meals in restaurants.
In a south Dublin suburb she recently was caught out by one of the tipping terminals the CCPC refers to, and while she acknowledges the mistake was hers and inconsequential, it still rankles that it was so easy for her to make.
“I was in a small little cafe that was operating a one-way system where you queue and order and pay, and then move along the line to pick up your coffee,” she says, “It was quite crowded, and when I ordered and went to pay, there was a white machine which I hovered my phone over.”
‘Some people complain and say they feel like we are throwing “asking for a tip” right in their faces, but we will always be like, ‘You can skip, there’s no issue’
— Delila Davis, Two Pups cafe
As she made her way to the pick-up point, a staff member called her back to say she still needed to pay.
‘She immediately offered to refund me my euro tip, but there were so many people around that I just said it was fine. It would have been too awkward – I didn’t want to seem scabby,” Doyle says. “I won’t say it was sneaky, but it wasn’t obvious, and there was no sign saying it was the tip machine.”
Delila Davis is more often than not found on the other side of the counter. Currently working in the Two Pups cafe on Fairview Strand, she comes from Boise, Idaho – the US being a world in which tipping has reached insane levels where, if someone so much looks at your suitcase in a hotel lobby, they expect a fiver for their troubles.
She is well aware that our tipping culture is not quite as, um, advanced.
Two Pups doesn’t have a dedicated tipping terminal, but people get an option of tipping between 10 and 20 per cent or nothing before the payment terminal looks for money.
[ Customers are ‘generally predisposed’ to tipping, study suggestsOpens in new window ]
“Some people complain and say they feel like we are throwing ‘asking for a tip’ right in their faces, but we will always be like ‘You can skip, there’s no issue’.”
She stresses that even though the tip option is presented first, “it’s not like we’re really looking. It is nice to get a tip and we do table service too, but I can understand a reluctance to tip on a takeaway coffee, especially in this economy.”
While she is convincing when she says she and her colleagues at Two Pups are not actively looking for extra cash for making takeaway coffees – and Pricewatch has no reason to doubt her bona fides – we have been in many cafes where the chance to tip is put front and centre on the terminals, and know first hand how we can feel a bit mean by hitting the “no tip” option.
Another reader, Lorraine Hayes, contacted us recently to highlight her concerns about the pressure she feels to tip.
She says “so-called discretionary tipping is a bugbear of mine. Discretionary is defined as ‘the right to decide something based on one’s own decision’. A 12.5 per cent discretionary service charge added on to a bill does not imply discretion on the consumer’s behalf, and is creeping into common usage. I think 12.5 per cent is over the odds given that there is a minimum wage and we are not in the US.”
The debate on whether and when we should tip and how much is, of course, not new, and even in the home of tipping in the US, it has raged for more than 100 years.
Going all the way back to 1897, the New York Times carried a report about an anti-tipping movement that described the giving of gratuities as the “vilest of imported vices”. And in 1916, author William Scott wrote The Itching Palm, in which he claimed tips were “democracy’s mortal foe” and created “a servile attitude for a fee”.
He suggested that “every tip given in the United States is a blow at our experiment in democracy. The custom announces to the world... that we do not believe practically that ‘all men are created equal’.”
While such language is overblown, there is certainly an argument to be made that tips would not be needed if those in the service industry were paid a decent wage.
That seems to be the way of things in Spain, France or Italy, where people frequently make life-long careers in the service sector, and tipping is not the norm.
There is another issue, of course – service charges. These can be low-hanging fruit for some unscrupulous restaurants, and can sneak their way onto bills – leaving consumers no choice but to pay.
If this is a concern, what’s an ordinary diner – out for a special meal or a quick bite – to do?
The best advice is: just ask. Serving staff will appreciate that you care enough about them to make sure that any money you leave is going directly to them and is not just an additional charge on top of displayed menu prices which goes to the restaurant – in effect subsidising an employer’s wage costs and increasing a restaurant’s profit margins.
