LONDON, UK – A chilling dispatch from the front lines of cultural entropy has reached this desk, and it involves a threat so grave, so insidious, that it makes the prospect of a hosepipe ban look like a jolly good picnic. UK security experts, the sort of chaps who normally spend their days muttering about Russian subs and the durability of Sellotape, have turned their binoculars on a new menace: the tipping culture of the United States of America.
Yes, dear reader, the land of the free, home of the brave, and crucible of the 30% service charge for a lukewarm Bud Light from a man who just sneezed into the ice bucket, is attempting to export its gratuity gospel to our sceptred isle. The alarm was sounded after a deep, forensic analysis of recent posts from the orange-tinted pachyderm himself, Donald J. Trump, who apparently used his plastic pulpit to extol the virtues of the American way of shoving a few extra dollars into a jar on the counter.
Now, let us be perfectly clear. In Britain, we have a system. It is a system born of centuries of class warfare, forged in the crucible of the industrial revolution, and lubricated by gin. You get your pint, you pay for your pint, and if the barman has not been actively rude to you, you might, in a gesture of profound magnanimity, say “keep the change” for a tenner on a round of three. You do not, under any circumstances, tip your barista for handing you a cup of boiling water with a coffee bean waved vaguely in its direction. This is not charity. This is a transaction.
But the American model, that relentless death march of fiscal guilt, is creeping across the Atlantic like a malignant fog. Reports from our correspondents in the shires tell of card machines that “suggest” a 20% tip for an overpriced avocado on toast. Wait staff now look upon the table with the baleful, accusatory glare of a Dickensian orphan denied a second bun. The horror, the horror.
And now, with the combined might of the United States Secret Service, the NRA, and the Culinary Union of America (Local 87, Las Vegas Strip division) apparently backing the president’s proposal to “tip everyone for everything, everywhere, all at once,” our own Government Communications Headquarters has been forced to convene an emergency committee. I imagine the minutes read something like this: “Item one: The Americanisation of our proud, non-tipping heritage. Item two: Is it still acceptable to ask for a discount if the waiter looks sad? Item three: Procurement of extra gin for the Biff Thistlethwaite account.”
The very notion that we must now adopt the ‘Tipping Point’ as a national policy is an affront to everything this green and pleasant land stands for. We built an empire on the back of not paying people properly and then not tipping them out of sheer bloody principle. To suddenly embrace the grinning, teeth-whitened, pneumatic payment-culture of the New World would be to admit that we have lost our way, that we have become a nation of weak-kneed, socially anxious hand-wringers who would rather part with our hard-earned coinage than risk the passive-aggressive disappointment of a teenage waitress.
So, I say to the Mister Trump and his entire confederacy of gratuity goons: take your tip jars and your “suggested amounts” and your guilt trips and shove them where the sun does not shine. Over here, we tip for exceptional service, not for basic human decency. And if you try to bring your 25% “happy hour” surcharge to the Dog and Duck, you will find yourself on the wrong end of a swift pint glass and a stony glare. This is Britain. We do not tip. We complain. And we are very, very good at it.
