Map Monday, What’s the deal with tipping?

What’s the deal with tipping? It seems that every country has a different understanding and implementation of when and how much to tip. With more and more of us traveling, these cultural differences have the potential to create serious misunderstandings between servers and customers. This is particularly true in countries like the US where many service workers rely on customer tipping for a large part of their income. 

This reliance is strengthened by the practice of cash tipping in the US. Many establishments leave it up to the receiver to report their tips each night. Self-reporting as it’s called, encourages under-reporting, which is in the financial interests of both the server and management. Basically, both avoid various payroll taxes on the unreported income. It also skews government data which is used to calculate benefits like unemployment and other subsidies.

So where did the concept and name for tipping originate. Despite popular belief, the word tip is not an acronym for ‘To Insure Profit.’ There is no agreed definitive etymology for the word tip. It first appears in 1707 and refers to an unnecessary monetary gift for something that was somewhat taboo. The practice of leaving a small monetary gift for service began a century earlier in Tudor England. Overnight guests would provide small monetary gifts to the servants of the home’s owners. In a relatively short time gratuities spread to other businesses and countries. For unknown reasons the slang term of paying for taboos attached itself and the practice of paying a gratuity became tipping.