Leaving Fifteen

When Americans travel abroad, indispensable items include passports, luggage, and loud and abrasive manners. “Ugly Americans” also take with them a custom foreign to many parts of the world: tipping.

The act of tipping, common in restaurants, hotels, and strip clubs (among other places), is pervasive in America. But elsewhere it is often unheard-of. In some countries, tacking on 15 percent to a bill is considered an oddly Yankee convention, done only by tourists.

Tipping practices vary widely from place to place but no country spends so much on tips as the United States, nor does any country tip for so many different services. This is not an accident. Our mania for tipping tells us a lot about how peculiar the U.S. is.

Throughout America’s early history, according to Northwestern University professor of economics Ofer H. Azar, tipping was almost unknown. Our founding tradition of equality and democracy did not mesh with the aristocratic character of tipping.

During the Gilded Age this began to change. Americans increasingly traveled to Europe, where they quickly noticed the longstanding practice of tipping. Hoping to appear cosmopolitan, wealthy travelers brought back the custom. The fad quickly took hold. In the 1910s, more than 10 percent of the labor force accepted tips for their services.

Although new to the country, Americans quickly outpaced Europeans in tips. While at the turn of the century, European tips were typically five percent of the bill, in America tips had already crept up to 10 percent. We became a nation of tippers and have not stopped greasing the hands that feed us.

Since then, American tips have grown even bigger, while Europeans have forgotten their munificence. Today in Western Europe, moderate service charges are often tacked onto bills. Even in the U.K. a paltry 10 percent tip is the norm in restaurants. In Eastern Europe and in much of Scandinavia, tipping is not expected, but occasionally done, and in countries like Japan, New Zealand, and Vietnam, tipping is simply not practiced at all.

According to Cornell professor William M. Lynn, nations that tip usually embrace materialism and status. Egalitarian-minded nations tend not to have robust tipping cultures. Furthermore, tip prevalence seems to be negatively related to the tax burden within a country. It’s harder to tip when more of your money is heading to the state.

So, to some extent, it’s unsurprising that Americans leave big tips. We are an avidly materialistic country, obsessed with status, and fearful of taxes. America’s tradition of embracing commerce, individualism, and independence from the government seems consonant with the mundane act of leaving a few extra dollars after a meal. Our liberal economic policies have preconditioned us to tip.

But it seems that our love of tipping goes even deeper than this. The act of leaving a tip is complex and has many ramifications. When Americans go to restaurants and leave tips, we shrewdly reward good service, signal to others that we are wealthy, and show a bit of kindness to a server.

This mixture of self-interest, pride, and kindness seems distinctively American, in the best tradition of a pushy, bold, but charitable people. With this national character, tipping is bound to continue and even expand. Many restaurants are now adding a mandatory service charge (sometimes up to 18 to 20 percent) to checks, and some consumers have even started tipping Starbucks baristas. As we enter what some call a second Gilded Age, it is appropriate that we may see increased tipping.

Charles R. Drummond IV ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Adams House.