Every journey in Bangalore begins the same miserable way. I leave the apartment and walk down our bomb-scarred approach road to the auto stand where a pack of flea-bitten rickshaw drivers try daily to extract every last paise from my pockets. A short ride to the “sig-nill,” 2 km away on Wind Tunnel Road, costs 20 rupees and anywhere beyond this natural boundary, the price jumps to 100 rupees, an arbitrary amount they know the can get from me. The current dollar rupee to dollar exchange rate is 47 to one, so why get in a tizzy about two measly bucks? After a while in India, it’s necessary to stop thinking like an American and behave like a local.
I don’t mind paying a little extra, but I abhor the feeling of being scammed. When I get a driver who seems nice and charges the metered rate, I don’t mind throwing in a little tip, which I’m told is a big no no!
When I told my roommate how much I dislike being overcharged for rides by rickshaw drivers, he told me it was my own fault and then fault of every Western bleeding heart who comes to Bangalore. It seems there is blame aplenty. Could the fault lie with multinational corporations, whose giant campuses have caused property values to soar and kickstarted neighborhoods overnight? Is it the flood of expats and Non-resident Indians who brought their Western customs and hard currency to the local market? What about the tourists who cling to Bangalore’s scant cultural offerings for out-of-towners? Why not call it a little bit of everything. After all, this is India.
The pyschology of tipping has many layers. As an American in India, I’m happy to pay the same off meter price I consider extortion, if I get to feel it is given as a tip instead of an overcharge. The notion of a choice, however, is crucial. In the U.S., we’re expected to tip enthusiastically and often. It’s not a choice; it’s a hard and fast social convention with little or no escape. Cab drivers, barbers, waiters, mechanics, bar tenders, florists, and delivery boys are just a few of the folks who expect tips for their work, in New York, arguably America’s most expensive city. With already high sticker prices, people in service industries earn meager wages in exchange for generous tips–the adage goes–in order to survive. In Bangalore, says my other roommate, a tip of five percent is considered acceptable, depending on the nature of the service, but there is no hard and fast rule.
A gratuity or a “tip” is a word of mysterious origin, but the meaning is clear. A tip of some amount is given to the servicer on top of any standard charges as a gesture of appreciation for outstanding service and a measure of goodwill.
According to Straight Dope columnist, Cecil Adams, the practice of tipping may have Latin origins, in which case it was a “stips” or gift, but tipping as we know it today has its origin in Great Britain. Adams writes,
Tipping spread from England to colonial America, but after the revolution it was frowned upon (temporarily) as a hangover from the British class system. One only tipped one’s social inferiors, which, lest we forget, did not exist in the brave new world. Unfortunately, the working class eventually got around to swallowing its pride, and tipping returned with all the fervor it possesses today.
As an American, the very idea of being someone’s “social better” makes me as squeamish as paying. From that point of view, its easy to see how a display of largesse is not about altruism at all, but instead reinforces the class standing of the server and the served. In India, with its outlawed though well-reinforced caste system, the idea of different social classes doesn’t strike anyone as a big deal from my personal observations.
The Wikipedia entry on gratuities is not to be missed and includes significant discussion on the pernicious practices of tipping in The States, as well as academic research to support the idea that tipping is economically inefficient.
Some believe the custom of tipping helps to improve service, as workers may receive higher tips from satisfied customers. In the United States, employers underpay workers with the expectation that tips will make up the difference. The practice of tipping is controversial, with numerous criticisms. Some have criticized the inherent “social awkwardness” in transactions that involve tipping, the inconsistency of tipping for some services but not similar ones, and the irrationality of basing tips on price, rather than the amount and quality of service (a customer pays a larger tip to a server bringing him a lobster rather than a hamburger, for example)…
Others have criticised the belief that “Waiters know that they won’t get paid if they don’t do a good job,” with one study from a Cornell University professor concluding that “consumers’ assessments of the quality of service correlate weakly to the amount they tip,” relying more on superficial factors such as the attractiveness of the server or how large the bill is.
Embedding of this clip has been disabled, but you owe it to yourself to watch this video that scarred a generation of lousy tippers and bad customers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyYS6SrDkBg
I’ve worked in various service positions where tips were a common practice. As a short order cook at the West Point golf course, tips were a nice supplement to my wages of $10 per hour and each tip of a $1 or more signaled the pleasant conclusion of a customer interaction. Without that $1 in my pocket after an order, I wouldn’t have been much worse off, but the transaction would somehow feel incomplete. Similarly, when I worked as a trash hauler, we routinely received cash tips equivalent to an hour’s wages for a single job, in addition to as much valuable junk as we wanted to take back to our apartments.
Perhaps our desire to tip in foreign countries is borne out of a sense of altruism. Perhaps it is guilt. In India, we feel that our money has much more buying power and when we see good people with reasonable ambitions working for low wages, we feel compelled to lend a helping hand. At Imperial Residency Road, one of my favorite eateries, a very filling meal costs around $4 per person. If the cost of food, building rent, electricity, insurance (?), how much could possibly be left to pay a waiter? Surely an extra Rs. 20 ( approx. 50 cents) makes a difference. Furthermore, when eating at any decent restaurant, the level service borders on obsequious; fawning waitstaff monitor your every spoonful, poised for the moment when your plate needs more rice or another steaming paratha.
I can’t say for certain, but I think people here see it differently. Those who work in restaurants and service professions are grateful to have a livelihood of some kind, and their personal expectations are commensurate with other members of their caste/social class. Whether they actually receive the tip or not, it’s often concealed in the bill as a service charge, so an additional 5 percent in cash is adequate to demonstrate appreciation. My venture capitalist roommate says a common tipping convention for restaurants, taxis and other service industries is to round up to the nearest 5o, either from 17 to 50, or from 71 to 100.
It all boils down to expectations. In the U.S., the expectation is that one can better himself with a little hard work. By day, your waiter may be taking orders at a restaurant to fund his or her dreams of acting (Los Angeles) or modeling (New York) or to graduate from college, and by tipping generously, you are helping him or her reach his dreams.
The downside of tipping however, is that far too often we are contributing to a cash addiction. It’s no secret that bar tenders, waiters and those in the service industry often have serious problems with drug addiction, especially cocaine. Waiters and bartenders I know in New York often leave work with hundreds of dollars in cash each night, but have little or nothing to show for it by the end of the week. With such high untaxed earnings, they could easily afford to own their own homes or vehicles, or build their savings, if they had a little discipline, however, this is almost never the case.
Almost seems like a reason not to tip, right? OK, only kidding.
