给小费的禁忌

It's nice to go out for a meal at a restaurant. But what makes it extra special – apart from the food - is to receive attentive service from the staff. What can leave a bad taste in your mouth, though,is to be handed the bill and see that a service charge has been added. You're faced with the dilemma of deciding to pay it, and whether you should add a tip on top.

Putting your hand in your pocket to reward good service is a personal choice, but it also depends on where you are in the world. What is the norm in one city is not necessarily the norm in another. In some places a tip is expected; but in others, good service should be expected and ought to be included in the price.

Adding an optional service charge to your bill certainly makes paying a tip less awkward because there's no need to calculate the amount. But even though it's not compulsory, you sometimes feel obliged to pay it. In the UK, where people tend to be too polite to complain, they might pay the service charge despite quietly complaining that the service they received was not up to scratch!

Choosing your own amount to tip may seem fairer, but should you pay it in cash or add it on to a credit card payment? And who will be the recipient? If we are to pay extra, we want to know it goes to the person who deserves it and that it's not used as an alternative to paying someone a proper wage. In the UK in 2009, the law was changed after an outcry over staff being paid under the minimum wage and then topping up their wages with money they had earned in tips.

However, in the US it's still customary to leave a gratuity because tips often make up a substantial part of a server's income. Restaurant owner William Beckett told the BBC that in New York, for example, "There's a tacit pressure to tip. But theoretically you (could) just stand up and walk out. You don't. Everybody tips 20%."

Maybe we should follow Japan's approach, where tipping under any circumstance may seem rude because good service is standard and expected. Elsewhere, there are calls for restaurants to replace the tipping system with a so-called 'hospitality-included' charge – a single payment which covers both the meal and the service. This basically means, don't tip - the price you see on the menu reflects the full cost of dining. That might make receiving the final bill easier to swallow!