Tipping in America

[User74893677]

I’m going to New York and Boston at Easter with my children. The flights were a gift but I’m paying for our hotels and obviously food, activities etc.

Ive read that we should tip at least $5 per night for housekeeping. And similar if the hotel looks after our bags before/after check in/out. And generally for pretty much everything - helping take our bags to our room, provide local information etc.

Ive worked out that we will easily spend more than $100 just on tips for the hotel staff alone - for services it’s not customary to tip for here in Europe.

AIBU to consider not tipping for these things? We are travelling on a budget and $100 (or more) is a lot of cash!

I know we will have to tip in restaurants but we’re not planning to eat out much - it’ll be warm so the plan is to buy picnic/take out food for at least two meals a day to keep costs down (also I have the least foodie children in the world and they’re very happy with picnics and take out burritos etc!).

I anticipate people saying that if we can’t afford to tip, we can’t afford America 🫣

I don't have an issue with tipping and always leave a tip for housekeeping on our last morning, tip in restaurants etc but on a recent trip to New York we popped into a Seven Eleven near our hotel to get some fruit and a man held the door open as we were leaving, I said thanks and he held his hand out for a tip! I wouldn't mind but he didn't even work there

We were challenged on the way out of a restaurant in California after leaving 12 dollars on a 100 dollar meal for 2 of us ( not a very amazing one either)

To be honest they don't see it as an option- more an obligation - expect to tip for any interaction , no matter how small - I personally find it odd- given the prices over there , just pay people properly!!

I like the US for holidays but do find it enormously expensive if you want to eat/drink at a reasonably high end level- we lived in Copenhagen for 20 months and people go on about how expensive Denmark is- ( tips not expected at all by the way) I found the USA even more expensive- but if you want to live on burgers and tacos and burritos and won't be going to bars at all you will probably be fine

@EcoChica1980 me too- one reason we wouldn't live there but have been a fair few times

@Panterusblackish it's certainly very much a sell your own grandmother for a dollar country - and I say this as someone who enjoys it for the odd holiday - I've spied 80 year old bent double busboys in hotels and train stations too - much of it is like the 3rd world in fancier clothes - its the same with healthcare etc- someone has to keep those surgeons and consultants on $600k incomes etc. can be a great place if you are doing well, a nightmare on low or even average incomes. The reason credit is so easily available is the country would collapse without it- Michael Moore wrote a very good book about this years ago.

a man held the door open as we were leaving, I said thanks and he held his hand out for a tip! I wouldn't mind but he didn't even work there

I believe the British would call that "taking the piss"😂

He'd really be taking a chance trying that with a native New Yorker!

I was just in US (LA, Hawaii, Texas) and also Mexico. We didn’t find tipping too onerous. The guy running the hotel shuttle wasn’t chasing anybody for tips, some tipped him, some didn’t.
Hotel pretty much left everyone on their own re bags, hotel customers were very international, so no pressure to tip on that front.
We did leave a couple of dollars for housekeeping.
when a barista or similar presented a digital bill with a suggested tip we ignored this & just paid the bill. This is what our US friends do.
Tip 15-20% for restaurant service. Ate at food trucks, didn’t tip - it’s takeout!
We tipped guides when they were employed by a big company, but not guides who were self-employed and that we had arranged and paid directly.
I avoid paying a digital tip, always cash, that way I know the person gets it.
Don’t feel guilt tripped into over tipping.

I didn't give him anything I was half asleep from a long day travelling/flight and i only realised as I was walking away why he had his hand out, I had initially thought he had opened the door with the intention of walking into the shop so I said "thanks" then looked down at him holding his hand out and thought he was kind of ushering me out so I walked out and then saw him do it ti the next customer. Was definitely taking the piss though 🙂

I think taxi drivers are the worst for this. On one of my trips my flight was delayed and messed up my transport planning. So needed to get a cab. Just me and young (at the time) DD. Late at night.

I explained to the cab driver very politely that I had x amount in cash only, before we even got in the cab. He said fine, I can take you for that. When we arrived he suddenly asked for a tip. Explained to him I had made it quite clear it was all the cash I had on me. He then asks me for English money! Which I didn't have. He was a big guy and really intimidating. Finally he got our cases out the back and literally threw them onto the path.

Poor DD was really upset and scared and I was pretty shook up. I really don't care how much they "rely" on tips. That kind of behaviour is inexcusable.

But it's also inexcusable to expect a service for less than the customary amount.

People need to plan ahead to obtain cash. I just spent nearly two weeks in San Francisco in January, and our first stop was at the currency exchange to obtain several hundred US$ because we knew we'd need a lot of $5 and $10 paper bills for tipping. Always get more than you think you will need, for emergencies.

If the person agrees on an amount before you even use said service, then yes it is inexcusable. It doesn't matter what i "should" have maybe done. He agreed to take us for that price, knowing it was all the cash I had. And intimidated a woman with her young daughter. Amazing how people will try and defend it.

I came back from NYC in the autumn and didn’t tip housekeeping, didn’t even cross our minds. We didn’t get chased out of the hotel either 😆 we found the tipping fine, you just get used to it, and add it on at the end. Tbh it’s not that different to London prices once you add everything up.
Plenty of bagel places and whole food shops to buy picnics from we found, the weather was fab for us in October, you will have a ball, I am so jealous ❤️
plenty of people do USA on a budget just like people do Europe on a budget, it’s definitely doable.

PM me if you want, I have a pretty good daily itinerary, even if I do say so myself 😆

I live in the US and I have never given housekeeping a tip. The only people I see doing this are in films.

Reminds me of the bar, many years ago, advertising $1 beers that expected a $1 tip for serving each one. A discussion ensued along the lines of ‘but that makes them $2 beers’ and it was finally agreed that the bartender would get a good tip at the end of the evening based on his ability to serve $1 beers on a regular enough basis.

Have also been chased down the road after not leaving a tip in a restaurant where the service was quite deliberately shit because they knew they were the only place in town.

This is one thing I don't get either. Whether it's cash or card, you still have to reach for your purse or wallet and take the time to root inside it.

OK if it's a restaurant or hotel, where you're already paying, so you just adjust the amount you pay upwards.

If you're being asked to tip for every tiny little gesture that people make to supposedly make things easier for you, it negates any benefit at all when you have to take the time and make the effort - maybe you have to put down what you're carrying to free up a hand - to get them thr expected money.

If you have people expecting a payment for something like holding a door open or pressing a button in a lift for you, they've really just charged you for unnecessarily wasting your time!

Yes, this is another aspect of it: where you're expected to hand out money in return for a gesture or service that you don't actually need or want.

It means that their job is effectively standing there and asking for money.

Fair enough if you do want their service, but if you don't - and they get salty with you for not wanting it - it's a pointless, annoying and costly charade.

Yes, totally. Traditions aside, if you agree a price and make it clear that that IS the total price that will/can be paid, you can't just turn around and growl menacingly because you want to renege on the deal afterwards.

It seems spectacularly unfair to blame you - a tourist - for not knowing what is acceptable to pay a taxi driver when the taxi driver himself apparently doesn't know or agree how much you should pay him!

It's a very basic rule of business: declining an offer if it isn't acceptable to you; then, if no further negotiation is made, you both walk (or drive!) away with no transaction taking place.

It's a terrible system because it relies on people to give a shit about social etiquette and I know many people who would not care a jot. Shaming strangers on the internet is never going to change that.

It also relies on people knowing what those social etiquettes are, and all of their nuances.

Even just from this thread, it's clear that a great many Americans don't all agree on how it all works; considering that tourists and holidaymakers are a lot more likely (proportionally) to use hotels and restaurants than locals are, the opportunities for confusion are rife.

I think, to an outsider from another western country, it's a lot to get your head around. People who visit developing countries are well used to desperately poor people following them around and hopefully viewing them as a potential source of money; and it seems so incongruous for the USA to be the same, when most other rich nations are not like that.

I realise that it's their 'job', but when that job is something like opening doors or parking a car for somebody who managed perfectly well to drive it to your door, it really does seem like the job is engineered around the desire to get money, rather than meeting a genuine need or desire and adding significant value to people's lives for which they are thus eager to pay.

When we stayed in NYC last year I wouldn't have known how to even leave a tip for housekeeping staff. We carried little cash, we never saw housekeeping staff and there was no obvious mechanism for leaving it.

I think also there is a clash of culture rather than tightness over tips. In Europe many people would feel insulted to be given a coiple fo pounds or euros for just doing their job. I refall vividly a situation years ago when I working as a research assistant for a local authority library and archive. I helped some Amercian tourists find some records to help with their family history research. As they left one of them pressed a couple of pound coims in to my hand. I was left feeling awkward and rather humiliated - like I needed more money to do my job well. It was also awkward as I could not accept it as a public servant. Obviously the Americans thought they were doing the right thing.

This time last year I was in New York with my daughter. Yes tipping was expected in all sit-down restaurants at 20%. Take out places had a pot on the counter which you could drop coins/notes in if you wished. We did sit out one day eating bagels in an open space by the Flatiron building and it wasn't too cold to do so!

It honestly never occurred to me to leave money daily for the hotel cleaners as it is something i'd never do here.

Yes Americans seem obsessed with tipping everything and everyone, even when it's culturally unacceptable in the other country.

I'm going to Costa Rica in a few weeks and am in a FB group where the topic of tipping comes up often. For restaurants there is a standard 10% service charge included on all bills, so seems quite straightforward to me. But no the US people think people should be tipping way over that amount, and giving out huge sums for shuttle bus services and tour guides, whereas I had thought $5 between us for most services would be enough.

In some cultures - Japan for one - tipping is often considered a huge insult.

Whatever your intentions, if somebody feels that they work hard to legitimately and proudly earn their wages, somebody apparently showing largesse and pressing extra money into your hand or leaving it on a table can be taken as arrogance: that you are a charity case who can't otherwise earn enough to live or support your family without Lord or Lady Bountiful 'rescuing' you.

Whatever tipping is now (in the USA at least), its origins will be in the wealthy tossing a handout to the poor. It definitely strengthens the patronising idea of an implied superior/inferior balance.

If it's nothing more than showing gratitude for a job well done, do you also tip your lawyer or doctor? Do you tip your boss for their work in paying you your wages?!

I think we Euorpeans also find the idea of buying better service or more likely mitigating against bad or indifferent service through tips very odd and awkward as well.

In fact here, attempting to buy better or more prompt service is more likely to earn you contempt or a place at the back of the queue.

Isn't the point of not paying staff that they can keep prices low and transfer the cost of employment to the customer? You have to pay $20 for mediocre pasta in a chain restaursnt and $12-15 for a glass of wine and then tip 20% on top of it.

My favourite is when I traveled in Asia. When I tried to buy something, they game me ridiculous price. When I gave them a look and said something like "c'mom" and maybe inserted some local language. They'd out the price down and said that they thought I was amaerican and they pay whatever is asked.