Long ago there used to be a time when I would voice my opinion via the comment section on websites, when I read something of interest. If I liked what's written, I would say so and if I
did not agree with their view, I would post a comment in that vein.
But over the years, I stopped the practice of commenting due to a mixture of laziness, lack
of interest and a feeling of "why bother?". However, I could not resist commenting on this
"Open letter to the Prime Minister of UK" from an American waiter, which was published
on one of my favourite blogs - waiterrant.
Check out this letter, which rants about how the British (& the Canadians & the Australians
& the New Zealanders & those from EU & the rest of the world) are bad tippers and how we
all need to be educated on tipping by the all-knowing American wait-staff. Some snippets
from the letter for those who are lazy to click on the linky :
"...one behaviour of your citizenry here in America of which I find the most annoying,
disturbing, and ultimately maddening is the ignorance of a peculiar American cultural
artefact, which manifests itself most obviously in the act of the tip."
"Mr. Brown, I urge you, if only for decency’s sake, to inform your citizens, before travelling abroad to the United States, that while dining out in a restaurant where waiters take orders
and serve food, that the tip is not compulsory, but mandatory, ..."
"I can only surmise the problem stems from a lack of education of the British People, "
And this interesting (but one that apparently stems from ignorance) one is for my Canadian friend Will of "Wandering Will" blog fame :
" Please forward this letter your your pals, the Prime Ministers of Australia, New Zealand,
and Canada, as we have similar problems with them, Actually, we’ll deal with the Canadians as we see fit."
To which, the author of waiterrant commented thus : "Actually Martin, the last time the U.S. invaded Canada, it didn’t work out so well for us." He he...
The author of waiterrant himself has posted many-a-time about stuff like bad tipping, linking bad karma with bad tipping, soliciting tips via PayPal etc. But since I like his writing, I chose
to ignore that minor abberation in his attitude. But this 'open letter' was a little too hard to
resist and I posted the following on the site's comment section.
"While this blog has been my favourite for years (Congrats! waiter, on the book), I could
never digest the attitude towards tipping that it tries to enforce on the readers & the world.
If the U.S. laws do not even guarantee minimum wages for wait-staff, I think you should
start working on that first, instead of trying to 'educate' the rest of the world about how
to tip. We know how to tip, thank you.
And BTW, the US is not the world. Just because a few million of you follow something, does
not automatically make it the world standard for the billions elsewhere. For us, a tip reflects
the "Quality of Service" and that is how it should be. You serve well, the tip will reflect that.
Your service is lousy, there ain't gonna be a tip at all.
It would be the height of self-centredness to think that you could get away with poor and abysmal service on your job and still expect the patron to tip you. And that too 10% min.
Why don't you guys then get this enshrined in the US constitution, under a tipping section ? Something on the lines of, "Any visitor to the US is required to tip a minimum of 10%".
Truly hilarious. "
Feel so relieved now. Really. :-)
P.S. : Just tried out some text colouring in this post, to distinguish between quotes from
different people. Hope it is not too harsh on the eyes.
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