About three years ago a long term acquaintance introduced me to a lovely morning Walking group. Sometimes the two of us have gone to have lunch together after the walk, choosing either a local pub or café. About a month ago we went for a sandwich in a nice café where we ordered separately at the counter. The waitress brought the food and when we were ready to leave we paid separately. Our bills were £7.50 each. My friend called across that she only had enough change to pay a 50p tip. I also left a 50p tip. I appreciate that this was less than 10% of the bill, but I am feeling the pinch a bit because I’m self-employed and have lost a couple of my clients due to the current economic crisis. After all, I was still paying my bill and was a customer that the café would otherwise not have had. My friend demanded that I tip more money in order to leave a more generous tip on behalf of us both. I declined to do so. She said ‘but you have some more coins in your change’. At least we had each tipped something even if it wasn’t 10%.
On the way back to the car she flew at me and accused me of being stingy. I said that I disagreed and that we would have to agree to disagree. But she refused to leave it there and again told me that I was stingy. Her husband organises a Christmas lunch in a pub each year for another walking group to which I and my husband are always invited and she told me that I had better tip enough then or her husband would not be happy. I assured her that my generous husband always tips generously for the two of us and she even hemmed and hawed about that. The conversation then got steered back onto safer grounds and we parted in a superficially friendly way, with me seething underneath.
When I got home I cancelled my and my husband’s places for the Christmas meal because I just couldn’t stand the vision of her and her husband looking over our shoulders to check that we were tipping enough.
I don’t have a set percentage that I tip and don’t keep score of how much who has tipped how much when we eat together. Neither do I consider people’s personal tipping habits to be anyone else’s business but their own. Sometimes I have tipped more more than 10%, sometimes less, rarely exactly 10%. Afterwards I remembered that there had been an occasion when I had to leave lunch with her early, and left her a £20 note so that she could pay my £16.50 pub bill. I told her that I didn’t need any change (and none was forthcoming when I saw her again). On another occasion I did indeed make up her perceived tipping shortfall. In hindsight I think she is the stingy one. Or maybe she is slightly struggling financially too.
I have completely avoided her on subsequent walks but this is quite difficult to sustain because it is a fairly small group and sometimes as few as eight people turn up. I feel that she was in the wrong but evidently she doesn’t because she has made no attempt to apologise. She can be judgmental about other people that we both know and has claimed the moral high ground on various occasions. But the tipping issue was the final straw. I’d rather not see her any more, but that would mean giving up my weekly walks with an otherwise lovely group with people who I really value.
I guess there is an AIBU at the heart of this, but it is not about the tipping. It is more AIBU to continue to go along to the walks and continue to avoid her? After all, it was her who introduced me to the group.