Listen up, you gin-soaked bastions of British stiff-upper-lip-ery. The yanks are coming, and they've brought their cursed, compulsory gratuity with them. Yes, the same culture that requires a calculator to buy a coffee is now washing up on our shores like a particularly aggressive tide of fiscal incontinence.
I have infiltrated a brasserie in Soho, a place where the staff once understood that a 12.5% service charge is the thin end of a very greasy wedge. But no more. Now, beside the port and Stilton, there's a tablet screen that presents you with a menu of percentages: 15%, 20%, 25%. And if you dare to type in a custom amount, a guilt-ridden pop-up asks if you're sure you're not a communist.
Our hospitality sector is in open revolt, not against the customers, but against the very concept of optional generosity being turned into a mandatory shakedown. ‘We are losing staff to America,’ wails a man in a bow tie from the Savoy. But he's missing the point. We're losing our souls to a system where every interaction is monetised, where a smile is just prelude to a payment request.
Let us be clear: this is not about the plight of the underpaid waiter. This is about the encroachment of a service industry dystopia where the customer is not king but a nervous ATM. I have seen middle-class couples in Islington argue over whether to leave 10% or 12%, their faces contorted in penny-pinching agony. This is the new class war, fought with contactless terminals.
The government, naturally, is useless. They're too busy rolling their eyes at the EU to notice that the pound sterling is being debased by a culture of transactional guilt. We need a royal commission, a public inquiry, or at least a stiff drink and a national strike by customers. Let them have their tips. We'll take our custom to the pub, where a nod and a fiver for good service is still a transaction between gentlemen.
But mark my words: if I see a tip jar in a greasy spoon, I shall personally lead a charge of outraged literati to smash the damn thing with a copy of the Guardian. The tipping zeitgeist is a parasitic vine strangling the oak of British hospitality. We must nip it in the bud before every pint of bitter comes with a side order of anxiety.
In conclusion, the death of British tipping is the death of a social contract. We are becoming a nation of guilt-ridden consumers, each meal a moral calculus. Enough. Let us reclaim the art of leaving a few quid under the plate, without the public theatre of digital shaming. The yanks can keep their culture of compulsory gratuity. We'll keep our dignity, thank you very much. And if that makes me a dinosaur, then pass me the pterodactyl gin.
