MARTIN DAWES - Take a tip from me and leave the cash
THERE used to be a little cafe on Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, frequented by local businessmen who left generous tips. Not that the staff saw them.
The husband and wife who owned the place thought all tips should come to them and cut the pockets out of the waitresses' pinnies to avoid temptation.
How do I know? My daughter was one of the waitresses.
I thought about that the other day when the Department for Business Innovation and Skills released a detailed survey of tipping.
It revealed that men are slightly more prone to tip than women (except at the hairdressers) and the older and posher you are, the more frequently you tip.
It also showed that contrary to popular myth the Scots are the most likely of the four races in Britain to tip all the time and the English the least.
In Yorkshire we're most likely to ask who gets it, the boss or the staff.
The bumff which came with the survey - designed to encourage best practice in tipping and other charges - had some fascinating stuff.
I didn't, for instance, know that the word 'tip' was an abbreviation of the signs in 16th century English pubs which invited donations To Insure Promptitude.
This seems to be putting the cart before the horse, paying for something before you get it. But the idea spread.
If, say, you visited the local lord and lady in their country house, you were very wise to slip the servants a sum of money called a "vails."
Otherwise you might find your luggage accidentally damaged, your dinner sabotaged with obnoxious substances or "your horse could suffer a mysterious injury."
If you didn't want to pay up it was probably wiser to arrive on foot and skip dinner.
Now the BBC is very fond of costume dramas but I have never heard or seen a character slip the butler a wad. But it does show the Mafia came late in the day with the idea of protection money.
Now some restaurants impose a 15 per cent service charge but I have noticed that few places do in Sheffield. When one new chain arrived, together with the charge, it swiftly dropped it.
But if you pay by card you sometimes get those weaselly little words up on the screen "Gratuity?" If I'm paying I leave it on the table.
One thing the survey does not reveal is the correct amount to tip.
Few of us would want to follow the customer in an American Pizza Hut who gave a $10,000 tip - it must have been some meal - but, interestingly, the idea of tipping is something we gave to the Yanks.
They encountered it in Europe and took it back home. In fact, they take tipping, or its absence, so seriously there are websites fingering the poor showbusiness tippers.
And one New York waitress, Katherine Taylor, named and shamed personalities such as Madonna and Rupert Everett as poor celebrity tippers.
She was going to include Gwyneth Paltrow but said generously: "I thought she probably couldn't calculate 15 per cent."
You wonder what she would have made of the late, great Tommy Cooper who had a novel way with tipping.
He would take an envelope out of his pocket, hand it to a waiter or porter, and say "Have a drink on me."
When the recipient opened the envelope he, or she, found a tea bag.
Got a view? Add your comment below.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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