Tipping

Hi all. For one of our class assignments we were asked to reflect on a cultural practice from a Christian perspective. I find it difficult to nail down exactly what a Christian perspective is supposed to be, so I just reflected on the cultural practice of tipping (which largely involved recounting ananecdote) from my perspective (as a Christian). Enjoy:

I’ll be honest. We’d been putting it off ever since we had arrived in the US, but there was an inviting looking pizza restaurant right in front of us, and well, we were hungry, we’d promised the kids dinner, we felt like pizza, and frankly, we were sick of fast food. ‘Looks good’ ventured Angela (my wife), ‘…I’ll go and check out the prices…?’ ‘Sure, whatever’, I said characteristically. ‘Looks like it might be a tipping joint though’. It was too late. Our 3 y.o. Judah piped up, ‘Oh yeah, pizza Dad! I want [to] eat pizza! I wike pizza. I’m hungwy Dad!’ We sat down awkwardly, but our discomfort soon dissipated. We were waited on zealously and persistently by an attractive young girl who loved our accents, asked us about Australia, brought crayons and coloring books for the kids (?!?), served the most magnificent complimentary bread unexpectedly ‘just so the kids would have something to start on’ and warmly welcomed us to California. Happy lass. Must have really enjoyed her job. ‘This is definitely a tipping joint’ I remarked wryly to Ange in one of the very few spare moments we got. The short story: we had an exceptional experience once we lightened up, it was a tipping joint, I tipped, it didn’t hurt, and we’ll do it again. Now some explanation.
Tipping is not a common practice in Australia, and it may sound silly but both my wife and I were particularly nervous of it when we first arrived. We just couldn’t work it out and we didn’t want to offend anybody. Fifteen percent of the total was easy enough to work out, but then we got confused. Tipping was obligatory for many services – not just in restaurants - we were told. Other services had different rules of thumb ranging between 10% and 20%. So far so good. But then you have to tip more if the service is ‘really good’. Well then, what is really good service and how is it measured? How much more for really good service? Wouldn’t it be better then to get served poorly so you didn’t have to tip much? What if the food is bad but the service is good – or the other way round? Are there circumstances under which a tip should be withheld? Is the size of the tip a reflection of the quality of the service only, or the generosity of the tipper also? Do kind people always tip more? Should rich people tip more? Do Christians tip more? Do we demonstrate ‘unmerited favor’ in how much we tip, or should we encourage young people to work harder and show respect by being stingy? And what about bill splitting? (Do people even do that here?) How do you even work out 15% without a calculator anyway?
As you can see, this relatively simply practice can be highly confusing and even intimidating for the outsider.
Now some brief critique. Actually I learned something from a practice which I previously despised (because I didn’t understand it). It doesn’t hurt to be generous. And if I have to get deep, well God is generous, and we should be generous. The ‘requirement’ to ‘be generous’ caused me to evaluate just how stingy I can be. What’s a few more bucks anyway when you swipe four and a half grand on your card four times a year at Fuller? So thumbs up for tipping…but I still don’t ‘get’ the rules of this strange new game.