Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A Tip on Tipping

As I mentioned in my last Dianna's Dash of Different Diction post, I wanted to let you all know about tipping in the United Kingdom. It's quite different here than in the United States where, in my opinion, tipping is a large part of society and is expected. Here are some examples:

-In America, if you're given a tour, you would tip the tour guide if they're good. Here no one tipped the tour guide (see the upcoming post on the trip I took to Loch Ness).

-In America, if you take a taxi, the driver waits for you to give them a tip. Here they run/drive off before you can give them one. For taxis, I usually just round up my fare and tell them to keep the change. If I don't have exact change and they give me money back, it's their loss because they usually drive away right after I had them my change. But I especially try to give them a tip if they helped me with any luggage.

-In America, waiters and waitresses rely on tips. They get paid a really low salary and make all of their income on what you leave behind for them based on their service. In general, you can give someone around 15%. I usually give that on average but more likely I'll give 20%. If they were extremely horrible and rude, I will leave 10%. In the UK, 10% is more like what you leave behind. As a former waitress, t's really hard sometimes for me to leave only 10% but my friends always give me my money back when I try to leave more.

-You don't tip the grocery delivery man who carries your groceries all the way to your flat for you.

Those are all of the examples I can think of now. If you have any questions about other situations, leave a comment and I'll ask my flatmates!

1 comment:

  1. Do you tip people at the hotels? And how much do waitresses get paid there?

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