Image: Bradley Gordon
What is the least necessary question one diner can ask another in a French restaurant when the bill arrives? You guessed. "Is service included?"
Service is automatically included in France. This is reasonably assumed to be so well known that the words service compris no longer appear as routinely as they once did on the bill.
But then as we all know, all the questioner really means is "shall we leave a tip?". Even that thought does not occur to many French people eating out in their own country. As far as they are concerned, it been dealt with quite adequately by the restaurant's addition of 15 per cent service, irrespective of whether the service was actually very friendly or efficient.
A few desultory coins may be left as a pourboire - literally the money for a drink and it is frequently less - but I rarely see a French friend or relative leave more than €5, even for a bill running into three figures.
I'll typically leave 30 centimes on top of €3.20 for two coffees but otherwise, in France at any rate, limit my largesse to between three and five per cent. If you see someone going as high as 10 on a restaurant bill, they have either had exceptional service or are not French.
But go as low as 10 per cent in the United States and, given the lamentable state of gun law there, you stand a good chance of being shot.
The memory is still strong of the day I added that percentage to the price of a single beer at Miami airport only for the young woman serving it - I imagine the use of either waitress or barmaid is a capital offence in Florida - to announce through a terrifying smile: "Sorry, sir, my rate's 15."
From Nichole Stennes, a designer at HospitalityManagementSchools.org, comes a graphic that gives the whole, grisly truth about tipping etiquette and expectation on her side of the Atlantic.
And I appear to have been fortunate in Miami.
My assertive server's self-designated tip could easily have been 20 per cent. Nichole's guide suggests 15-20 as the going rate for a bartender though, if table service meant my beer was brought to me more accurately by a waiter, the suggested range is 10 to 20.
What else does the guide say? I will stick to the American terminology it uses, even to the extent of writing waiter when I think waitress.
A barista, from the Italian and meaning someone who serves coffee (correct me if another definition applies in the States), should be tipped $1 for each "complex" drink served. A "coatroom" or "washroom" attendant should be the same, nothing extra for scarves but maybe a bonus if a visit to the latter ends with perfume, cologne or mints being offered. I must have lived a humdrum life since no one has ever pushed mints in my direction in the toilet. Indeed, when younger and prettier, I might well have suspected the motives of anyone who did.
And what of sommeliers, or wine waiters if you prefer? Another whacking 15-20 per cent of the cost of the bottle, though the guide's modest reassurance is that in most restaurants you may simply add that generous proportion to the total bill and leave them to decide how it should be shared. Leaving aside the relativity of purchasing power, I think of some of the more outrageous price tags I have seen for fine wine and shudder.
Otherwise, we have an unexceptional recommendation of $2-5 for a car valet.
Now I happen to believe people who serve us in these various ways deserve to be treated with respect. That respect should start with the rates of pay they receive; restaurateurs should be no more able than shopkeepers or airlines to rely on tips from customers to save them having to pay decent wages in the first place.
In France, there is not even any guarantee, or legal requirement, that the large proceeds from "service charges" are even divided up among staff. But at least no French waiter has ever presented me with a bill, as happens commonly in the UK, showing both a 10 per cent or higher "service" charge (ie tip), and on the credit card slip, a section left blank for tips (ie service).
But the reality is that we are expected to dole out cash to some individuals providing some sort of service and not to others. You cannot get to the detail of Nichole's guide without passing a prominent reminder that the federal US minimum wage for tipped employees is a miserable $2.13 an hour.
So we should continue to accept that while some restaurateurs are rogues, their workers should not suffer as a result. It would be better if the employers were forced to pay proper money in the first place but that would mean, certainly in France, service becoming slower and more inefficient since fewer people would be recruited.
Which leads me to one particularly contentious point in the restaurant section of the tipping guide.
If it already seems a stiff requirement to be asked to stump up as much as a fifth of an already steep bill for a good meal served with a smile, what on earth are we supposed to make of the recommendation that "no less than 10 per cent" should be added even if service was poor?
The USA likes to style itself the land of the free. Obliging a paying customer to accept surly service or dodgy food and then voluntarily pay more than the asking price enters the realms of taking liberties. Over, perhaps, to Nichole to explain (it may be covered in a section of the guide I have not yet come across).
But she must bear in mind that the biter can sometimes be bitten.
Decades ago, a great friend of mine was travelling through America with his girlfriend. At the start of their holiday, they'd leave generous tips. By the end of it, they were so broke they had perfected the art of nicking tips from other tables.
* You guessed again. Nice photo, nothing to do with the posting. See more of Bill's images by clicking here
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