Tipping on Wine and Sandwiches

A consideration of why I tip, why I don't and the new culture of tipping

Standing at the cash register of the sandwich shop, I told the young woman ringing up my order, “Can you put a fountain drink on that?”. She did. Then I looked at the payment screen in front of me. It had the total price of the sandwich and the fountain drink. It also asked me “No Tip, 10%, 15% or 20% tip”? I tapped “no tip”. The counterwoman turned around the payment screen after I finished the electronic transaction, looked at me, and neither asked nor stated, but rather observed with a sour look on her face, “No tip?!”

It was an attempt to shame me into tipping her for taking my money (which I keep in a bank without providing anyone with a tip) and a relatively feeble attempt at that. Rarely cowed by attempts to shame me, I replied, “No, no tip”.

It’s also true that I don’t tip the people who take my money when I buy AA batteries or milk.

When I returned to my car (which was purchased without providing a tip to the salesman) I took a sip of my drink and put it back in the cupholder (which had been recently hand cleaned at the carwash where I provided a tip to the person who cleaned the cup holder and the rest of the interior). I sat thinking for a second, amused, at the shaming attempt of the sandwich shop woman and appreciated her misplaced gumption.

I started the car and began to drive home (which Kathy and I purchased without providing a tip to the sellers, title company, or the mortgage company). As I drove I began to think about tipping and my own haphazard philosophy of tipping. I realized that my tipping habits are built on both societal expectations and an appreciation of personal service.

I’ve never possessed any expectation of providing a tip to a person who hands me things over the counter and takes my money. In fact, up until the past few years, no one who handed me things over a counter and took my money seemed to have any expectation of receiving a tip. Admittedly, there are different types of “counter experiences”. On the one hand, there is the woman who hands me a sandwich. On the other hand, there was a time I used to buy Kathy a good deal of jewelry (Some time ago she asked me, “Stop already”, so I now buy her other things.) Even though there were many occasions when the shop owner worked with me to buy just the right piece then handed it to me, wrapped, over a counter, and then took my money, there was never any expectation or offer of a tip. And that seemed right.

Restaurants have always been places I’ve tipped. It’s what you do. I never thought about it. Early on in my restaurant-eating career I automatically gave 15%. Sometime, maybe 20 or 25 years ago I started giving a 20% tip automatically. But I never thought about why I gave a tip in a restaurant. It’s just what you did.

This idea of auto-tipping at restaurants stayed in my head after I pulled my car into the garage and took my sandwich and drink out to the patio in the backyard (where I recently paid and tipped a young man who had tidied up the edges of our back lawn). I sat at the patio table under an umbrella (both purchased at Amazon without a tip) and thought about my automatic 20% at restaurants.

The idea for tipping at restaurants migrated to the United States from Europe (a place I’ve been to many times and where I’ve tipped many people). This migration happened years before my own tipping career began.

Finally able to self-assess honestly (Incidentally, I’ve never tipped my various therapists) after having been satiated by the sandwich, I realized there was no good and rational reason to tip a waiter bringing me food at a restaurant that didn’t apply to the jewelry shop owner who helped me pick out a bracelet for Kathy. What is it about restaurants?

I started to think about how I tip at restaurants: 20% on the pre-tax price of the meal. The thought brought me back to a meal I once had in Vegas at my Bachelor Party trip there prior to my wedding (a beautiful event and process with many friends and family that involved a great deal of tipping). I and three friends were eating at Le Cirque at The Bellagio (that trip too included a great deal of tipping from the bellman and parking attendant to the dealer at the poker tables).

The Le Cirque meal was ridiculously satisfying, fun, and expensive. One of my three friends offered to pay for it all. He’s the kind guy who would have done this whether or not he was drunk on the six bottles of wine we had ordered. I insisted I pay for the tip. I had done well at the poker table that day (at a poker table it is customary to tip the dealer a small portion of the chips you rake in from any winning hand) so it wasn’t too much of a lift to peel off the $800 tip—20% on $4000.

What’s interesting to note is that on the $4000 bill, a great deal more than half was for the wine we had ordered. If we had not ordered that older Burgundy, that hard-to-find Loire white, or the old port, but still ordered the same amount of less expensive wine, I may have paid $400 less in tips, BUT the Somm would have done the exact same amount of work.

The question of how to tip on wine at a restaurant is one that serious wine folks have always confronted and debated. A good deal has been written about whether diners should offer less of a tip on expensive wine for exactly the reason I note above—the waiter is generally doing the same amount of work whether the bottle of wine cost $40 or $400.

My backyard is attractive, filled with lots of green and lush plantings (I’ve never tipped when purchasing plants at a nursery), and is conducive to sitting and thinking. So, with my sandwich all gone I continued to sit and think about tipping.

What I came up with was that I will not be changing my tipping habits even though it appears new expectations are growing with regard to tipping in American society. I still won’t be tipping the person who hands me my purchases across a counter and takes my money. I’ll still be tipping 20% when a person brings me my food and wine at a table where I am sitting. And when someone provides me with a personal service (edging my lawn, taking my bags to my hotel room, dealing me Queens then pushing the pot toward me, helping me load heavy objects into a vehicle) I’ll tip them some appropriate amount.

It’s not that I’ve determined that my tipping habits are rational or appropriate. It’s that after a lifetime of tipping practices, I can’t find a good reason to alter them. I can’t uncover a compelling or ethical reason that would demand I tip more or less on table service of food and wine. And I certainly can’t spend any more time thinking about whether it’s right or wrong to offer a tip to a young woman who hands me a sandwich over a counter. Put another way, the societal conventions and my own appreciation of personal attention paid to me have served me just fine over the years.