To Tip or Not to Tip?

For Americans in Italy, that is the question that’s

bigger than a few euro; it’s a clash of cultures.

My father once told me, in reminiscing about his days abroad in the 50’s, that a British expat approached him one day somewhere in Spain to say, “You Americans are ruining this place for the rest of us.” The man was referring to the tips Americans gave liberally. Apparently, the locals were coming to expect them when they’d been perfectly happy without them before the Yanks started showing up.

It's a complaint that I suppose was justified. And yet tipping is so much a part of our lives – and becoming more so all the time.

These days in the U.S., we’re expected to tip almost anyone who stands behind a counter because employers prefer not to pay them a living wage. ‘(One newspaper article even recommended tipping dry cleaners around the holidays.) What’s more, the default rate is rapidly becoming 20% at a minimum. Still worse, we’re asked to tip folks when they’re not even there. Not long ago, I was flying from JFK (or maybe it was LaGuardia) and stopped into one of those snacks-and-sundries shops to find a hummus wrap. There was nary a soul in sight, and after a few minutes’ bewilderment, I realized that the place was entirely self-serve and self-checkout. So, imagine my surprise when I inserted my credit card and the screen asked if I’d like to leave a tip. A tip. Let that sink in for a minute. For what phantom creature on God’s once-green earth might I be leaving a tip?

With tipping in the U.S. “gone wild” and acting like a drunken co-ed on spring break in Florida, it’s small wonder we’re all flummoxed when the check comes in Florence.

Almost every Italian will tell you that absolutely no tipping is ever required in dining establishments (or hotels); that if you do feel like you got service above and beyond, rounding to the nearest or next-nearest euro will do. They’ll say never to calculate a tip as a percentage of the total.

Still, I’ve had countless conversations like this one with fellow travelers at hosts of tables across Italy:

Is service included? I can’t tell. It doesn’t say it is.

So how much should we leave? Should we add something even if service is included?

Everybody says the going rate here is nowhere near what it is at home. We don’t want to be suckers.

But we don’t want to stiff the poor guy.

Is service included if it doesn’t specifically say service is included?

What’s that coperto charge? Does that mean service?

(It’s the small charge some restaurants assess for the place-settings and/or bread. Paying it is not optional, but you could consider it a kind of service charge.)

In the end, Italian friends’ advice notwithstanding, force of habit and fear of appearing penurious make it difficult for many of us to stay our hand from reaching for that 20% tip.

Moreover, the tipping extends beyond the dining table.* That same father of Spain fame (who apparently never learned his lesson) always used to say to me as I left for parts abroad, “Don’t forget to tip the concierge and the chambermaid.” To say nothing of the porters and room service staff.

So something the concierge at the Hotel Indigo in Rome said to me a few weeks ago stopped me in my tracks.

Upon check-in, I’d failed to tip the porter who’d brought my very heavy bags to the room simply because I didn’t at the time have smaller bills or euro coins. I later asked the concierge to give that porter the sum I proffered. He responded that if I really appreciated the service the porter had provided and thought it exceptional, of course he’d be happy to relay it. But otherwise, it wasn’t necessary.

I must have looked at him quizzically, because he went on to say he didn’t want the tipping culture to take over Rome. I ventured to remark that perhaps that particular horse had long since left the barn, to which he offered no reply.

I was a little non-plussed by the episode and I’ve been mulling it since. In all my stays in Rome, I’ve never come upon an employee of the service industry who frowned upon tips and hoped to curtail them.

I understand why other visitors and even residents would rather not compete with American-level tipping.  But why would someone who might be on the receiving end of that largesse suddenly be looking to stem it? Did he just have it in for the porter or was he in some way representative?

In recent trips, I’ve noticed that servers at restaurants thronged by Americans are getting aggressive when it comes to tipping. They used to count on our deep-seated aversion to “stiffing” anyone. These days, they’ll tell you clearly that service is not included while they look over your shoulder as you sign the credit card slip. That’s new to my experience, and, I would have thought, something reserved for Americans. But maybe such behavior now has extended to folks without American accents, and even to the locals – as it seems it had more than half a century ago somewhere in Spain.

The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe the tipping pendulum has swung to its extreme and is heading back in the other direction. Were those brazen servers emblematic of a “tipping culture” that had pushed its luck too far?  Were their fellow countrymen finished with being pressed for tips they’d never even considered leaving? Are Romans like this concierge giving us leave to stop the insanity, precisely because the tipping culture isn’t doing them any favors when they compare their own accounts receivable with accounts payable? And, importantly, is the number of people who feel that way approaching anything like critical mass?

I guess I’ll have to keep an ear to the street to find out.

In the meantime, this is a bit of a conundrum for those of us who want to be good citizens of the world (doubly important for Americans in these times).

On the one hand, most Italians would probably say that service is by definition included, whether or not any bill states that. Restaurant and hotel employees in Italy purportedly do earn a living wage from their employers and needn’t rely on customer tips to make ends meet -- though entry-level workers in major cities sometimes need to share apartments to make rent. (Many of us are familiar with that particular rite of passage.) There isn’t such a thing as a minimum wage law, but hospitality employees have unions to negotiate wages. They get paid vacation and the so-called 13^th month of pay annually. And Italy’s public health care system obviates the need for citizens to spend excessively for care or coverage.

On the other hand, it’s true that Italians on the whole have much less disposable income than do many of us who travel there.

It seems we might have to decide between a) being generous if we can afford to be and b) making life more expensive for others who live and visit there.

Will I unshackle myself from the tyranny of the tip? For now, probably not. I think I’ll adjust rather than overthrow my old habits. To wit:

-Inside major cities, I’ll leave a few euro and a few more for an expensive meal (unless the check clearly states something like x% service included); my tip will not be a percentage of the check.

-Outside major tourism cities – e.g., in places like Abruzzo, where most of the clientele is Abruzzese and therefore not tipping, I’ll leave a token of appreciation only for exceptional service.

-In hotels, I will continue to tip as I would in the States: a few euros each time a porter picks up a bag; a few per night for the chambermaid; as appropriate for concierge services.

Anyway, that’s my plan.

What would you do?

*Private drivers and tour guides don’t enter into this discussion, but should definitely be tipped in accordance with their performance and length of time you spend with them. Taxi drivers don’t necessarily expect a tip, but you’re safe following the “round-it-up-a-euro-or-two” rule. Make it three if you have a lot of heavy bags.

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