The Not-So-Gratuitous Tipping Episode

Tipping at restaurants can be stressful for all parties involved. How much is enough? How much is based on actual quality of service? How did we start doing this, anyway? FoodStuff discusses the equally depressing and important answers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm Annies and I'm
Lauren Vogeldam, and today we are visited by anger Annie. Yeah,
pretty angry Annie. Yeah. Um, we're talking about tipping. Yeah,
and here's a tip. Get a stress ball for this
one because it is rough. It is a rough one. Yeah.

(00:29):
I knew that this one was going to make me
a little bit angry, but it's it's way worse than
I thought. So welcome, Welcome to the show. We're gonna
have a great time going through this journey together. Yeah.
So to start off, tipping, what is it? Well, it's
a it's sometimes called gratuity. Yes, it's money a customer
voluntarily gives to a service worker on top of the

(00:51):
base price. Depending on where you are, you tip everyone
from your bartender, do your hair stylist, or in other
places you don't tip at all. And since this is
a food show, we're primarily going to focus on tipping
in the food industry. Yeah, I cannot help you with cabs.
I still don't understand that. Or I've heard you're supposed
to tip your mechanic. Oh do if you should know

(01:14):
our brother podcast, I just like gestured, oh, I wouldn't
be surprised that Josh Clark was just standing there. That's
kind of his amo um. But they have a whole
episode on tipping, and you can listen to that if
you want to like more inclusive look at it. Yeah. Yeah,
we're doing a deep dive into the restaurant industry section

(01:36):
of it today. Yes, and this can be host servers,
bus boys, dishwashers, etcetera. So the reason we tip is
supposedly supposedly to reward good service. And oh, this is
so problematic for minorities and women on that a second,
for the over eleven million Americans working in the restaurant industry,

(01:59):
the minimum wage they can expect is seven dollars and
cents an hour. In eighteen states that number is two
dollars and thirteen cents an hour, and it's been that
way for twenty years. I am my brief stint in
the restaurant industry. I made to and a coffee at
Starbucks is almost certainly more than that. This is called

(02:23):
the federal tipped minimum wage. Yes, tip tipped minimum wage
appose to the regular minimum wage exactly. The tip is
supposed to cover the rest and in theory, if it
doesn't the employers cover the difference to make the seven
dollars cents, but a lot of them screwed around this.
In fact, the U s Department of Labor reports an
eight four percent violation rate, which is very high. Some

(02:47):
states have higher tipped minimum wages, and some guarantee the
state's full minimum wage. Seven states total of the fifty
if you're still counting. Yeah. Since tax holding eats through
the wages of restaurant servers, tips frequently account for the
entirety of their take home pay. It's common for managers

(03:08):
to use tips to measure performance, and a good tip
here in the US is generally considered to be in
restaurants if you're sitting down and eating a meal. Yeah.
Oh man, don't even get me started on like picking
it up and versus like delivery. A lot of confusion here,
and also a lot of controversy. A wave of restaurants

(03:30):
have started getting rid of the tip altogether. About four
years ago. One of the first people to do so,
former restaurant owner J Porter, published a pretty persuasive argument
against tipping, and in it he cited a plethora of
problematic statistics. Firstly, the whole premise of tipping improving service

(03:51):
seems weak at best. Yeah, yeah, that you know. The
the hypothetical idea is that you are rewarding good service
with tips, so therefore your servers servers will give you
better service exactly. But a two thousand three studies out
of Cornell evaluated fourteen other studies examining the correlation between
tip amount and service ratings, and it was less than

(04:12):
two In the restaurant industry in particular, it makes customers anxious,
it makes servers anxious. Tip amount can be made just
as easily by volume as opposed to like a high percentage,
if not more easily. The bill size was the most
important factor in tip percentage. This study also recommended several

(04:36):
bizarre behaviors to increase tips. Yeah, it found some some
correlations across things. Yeah, with stuff like a personalizing your appearance,
especially for women with flowers in their hair. Yeah, that
was big. Yeah, telling jokes, giving out candy like with
the bill. Yeah, forecasting the weather just even hinting that

(04:56):
it's going to be sunny soon. It was like an
correlated to an increase in tip. And for women, drawing
smiley faces on the bill, also saying the name of
the customer. As the study author put it, what's in
a name? That answer is bigger tips. The study also
found that up selling is only beneficial when things are

(05:17):
slow of selling, as in trying to get people to
buy like deserve more drinks, you know, bigger bill. Otherwise,
quick turnover is better. And sometimes tips are pooled as well.
So yeah, yeah, by by pool, do you mean yet
across across all the other servers that are working that day,
are that shift exactly? Um. In a related study, increases

(05:39):
in service quality only increased tip amounts by one five percent.
That is quite a small number, not not a lot. No.
They also found that over thirty percent of Americans are
unaware that tipping on your restaurant tap is normal. It

(05:59):
brings us to another problem discrimination. Yeah, tipping makes it
easy to pay someone less for the same amount of
service they received from someone else. Um. This in turn
opens employers up to a whole new world of lawsuits.
Another study out of Cornell from rounded up a bunch
of dad on this and found that while more data

(06:21):
is needed, it indeed seems to be a widespread problem
across many industries that depend on gratuity. There is a
four dollar per hour wage gap between white workers and
workers of color in the restaurant industry at large due
to the types of jobs that each tend to get.
Workers of color are more likely to be in lower

(06:42):
level positions at lower cost restaurants, and so racial discrimination
and tipping just exacerbates this inequality. And on the flip
side of this, tipping also encourages waiters to unconsciously discriminate
or maybe consciously, but largely unconsciously. Minorities and women often
receive poor service because they are perceived as worse tippers,

(07:06):
which brings us to another issue, sexual harassment. Female restaurant
workers are five times more likely to report cases of
sexual harassment as compared to other industries, making it the
number one industry for sexual harassment complaints and who knows
how many go unreported and it's bad for everyone. In
a survey of restaurant workers both male and female, so

(07:26):
that they had experienced sexual behavior in the restaurant industry
that's scary or unwanted, seventy restaurant servers are female in
the US, and this is compared to only nineteen percent
of women who are chefs. Despite the fact that women
still primarily do the cooking at home. And if you're
wondering what this has to do with tipping, most people
doing the tipping are men, and if you depend on

(07:48):
that for a living, there's a power and balance right
out of the gate. Female servers are sometimes encouraged to
wear more makeup, are tighter fitting clothes so they'll get
a better tip, And if a customer does something inappropriate,
you're probably going to laugh it off because you know
that your tip depends on it. I call this de
escalating and me of my friends have talked about it
a lot. It's very common problem. Um If you do

(08:09):
complain female service say, they frequently receive a response that
they're being too emotional or too sensitive, and it's like
you're you have several different bosses a day and you're
having to adjust to the attitudes of each of them.
And it's also problematic because it's a case of legal
gender inequity in the restaurant service industry. Men hold more

(08:33):
of the guaranteed minimum wage positions along with the higher
paying ones, as compared to women, who predominantly are paid
at the legal two dollars and thirteen cents an hour.
This problem is even more pronounced with women of color.
I wrote in all caps, I'm getting so angry talking
about this. Oh, you are multiple exclamation points involved in that. Yes,

(08:54):
states that stick to the federal tipping minimum have a
much higher poverty rate poverty rate for servers the than
those that don't, And since most servers are women, this
impacts women at far greater rates. Fine dining bartenders are male,
while bartenders at quick serve restaurants are female. Yeah, which

(09:15):
which you guess makes higher wages. Yeah. Men also hold
about of management positions in the restaurant industry. There are
even not too uncommon instances where people walk out, yeah,
and the server is expected to pay the bill, which

(09:35):
may mean they're paying to work. They don't have any
money to take home from that they're having to pay
to make up. Oh man, Okay. The National Restaurant Association
frequently argues that with tips, servers earn up to and
over one hundred thousand dollars a year, or this is
like a possibility, that's pretty achievable. In actuality, the average

(09:58):
hourly wage of tipped workers with tip is about eight
and that's the average, meaning that while yes, some people
are making more than that, it dips a whole bunch lower.
On top of these terrible things, tipping jobs don't attract
or retained employees, and it comes with increased chance of

(10:19):
being audited. Due to relatively high cases of tax evasion.
The i R S the Internal Revenue Service here in
the u S estimate that over half of tip income
is undeclared. One study found that thirteen point eight percent
of tips were misappropriated by managers and other non tipped
employees and then not reported. Oh m hmm. And since

(10:42):
tips can vary, it impedes the ability of those depending
on them to plan financially. And for those living below
the poverty line, and many restaurant servers service jobs paid
below the poverty line, tips can mean the difference between
paying the rent or not, between eating or not, and
and this effect a lot of people. The restaurant industry

(11:02):
is one of the largest and fastest growing in the country,
and it employs almost ten percent of our workforce. So
that's where we are. Isn't that great? Yeah? Yeah? But
what about how we got here? Is that any better? Oh? No,
it's not, no, no, but we'll tell you all about it. Anyway.
After a quick break for a word from our sponsor

(11:34):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Okay, tipping tip. The
word itself is a bit of a mystery. Either it
comes from seventeenth century thief code meaning to give, or
maybe an acronym to ensure promptnist or promptitude. It's probably
not the acronym thing that was likely a clever thing

(11:54):
that someone came up with retroactively. It's It's said that
an establishment frequented by English writer Samuel Johnson in the
eighteenth century had a bowl out with the phrase to
ensure promptitude printed on it, though some sources have only
been able to trace that story back to a book
from the early twenty century. I'm guessing the to insure

(12:15):
promptitude thing was meant to be a joke origin for
a previously established word, because because it's kind of a pun,
you know, the more grammatical word is insure with an e,
not insure with an eye um. And the hypothetical thieves
can't use a tip to mean give a bit of
money too, has plausible roots back to about six hundred,

(12:36):
from a now defunct and much older use of the
word tip to mean to poke, which became to pass
some someone something um anyway, Yes, etymology, it's lovely. My
favorite part of this whole episode probably tipping. Most likely

(12:58):
I've started in the Middle Ages from the practice of
a master rewarding good work from a servant with a
few coins. Guests that English mansions were expected to leave
some money for the owner's servants if they excelled at
their duties during the stay. This expected fee was called
a veil. By the time seventeen sixty came around, guests
were expected to leave a veil for valets or valets,

(13:22):
footman and gentlemen's servants. And as you can imagine, that
meant that visiting people came with quite the price tag,
such a price tag that in seventeen sixty four and
in an attempt to get rid of the veil resulted
in riots. Oh wow, we should pass that one over
to the ridiculous history, guys, we should instead of getting abolished. Though,

(13:42):
tipping grew more and more common throughout Britain at businesses
like pubs, restaurants and hotels. Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlisle wrote
about his experience with a waiter expecting gratuity at Gloucester's
Bell in an eighteen hundred, the dirty scrip of a
waiter gumbled about his allowance, which I reckoned liberal. I
added sixpence to it, and he produced a bow about

(14:03):
a bow, a bow which was near rewarding with a kick.
A curse would be the race of Flunkey's so yeah,
strong words. When Europeans started immigrating to the United States,
they brought with them this idea of tipping, primarily in servers, porters,
and ballets, particularly on trains. Americans despised it so much,

(14:25):
so much they thought it was an American Yeah. After
the Civil War, rich Americans would go abroad to Europe.
When they returned, they wanted to show off that they
were cultured what they saw these rich people do in
Europe and now they were doing it too, and also
how much money they had by tipping. Henry James Wade

(14:45):
about dipping in his seven novel What Mazie Knew. When
young American girl Mazie was visiting her English relatives, she
witnessed the tip, and it was in quotes in the
novel indicating how novel it was very new. But yeah.
There was this huge backlash against it. For a while.
It was described as offensively an American cancer and the

(15:07):
breast of democracy, and an anti tipping movement launched during
the nineties, labeling tipping as violist of imported vices. Yeah.
The main argument of this group was that the employers
should be paying the wage of the employee, not the customer.
Another crux of their opposition was that tipping undermine the
American work ethic, puritanism, and democratic society. And now, if

(15:31):
you're looking for your bingo card, Benjamin Franklin said of
tipping in France, to over tip is to appear an ass.
To under tip is to appear and even greater ass.
So hopefully you're getting along on that card. Despite this,
it's still spread and quickly, like quote evil insects and weeds.
According to a New York Times editor, by tipping was

(15:56):
standard in the US. What was not standard was pretty
much everything else about it. Americans were prone to overtipped
to the chagrin of Europeans. Americans were called liberal but
misguided by the Europeans, and the Europeans were seen as
cheap by tip workers in the US. Meanwhile, as tipping

(16:17):
was solidifying its foothold in the United States, industrialization was
changing the balance of rural and urban workers. Poor white
people from the country were looking for new opportunities at
factories and cities, and at the same time, newly freed
slaves were also moving to cities to find work. The
jobs open to them were largely unskilled ones and restaurants

(16:39):
and on trains. Almost half of the hospitality industry was
made up of black laborers. By the eighteen eighties, owners
in these industries realized that they could get away with
not paying these newly freed slaves, instead relying entirely on
the tip for their wages. Racism heavily influenced the idea
that tipping was a legitimate option for wages, and it

(17:02):
went deep. Yeah. Journalist Arthur Gay wrote in eight a
tip should only be given to someone who is presumed
to be inferior to the donor, not only in worldly wealth,
but in social position. Also. Another reporter, John Speed wrote
in nineteen o two, I had never known any but
black servants. Blacks take tips. Of course, one expects that

(17:25):
of them, it is a token of their inferiority. But
to give money to a white man was embarrassing to me,
except he used worse language than that. Yeah. In nineteen
o seven, South Carolina's actively segregationist Senator Benjamin Tillman made
headlines when he tipped a black porter. He had claimed
he'd never tip a black person except to use even
worse language than the other guy. Yeah, yeah, have a stomach, Kurts.

(17:51):
Tipping still inspired extreme dislike by a fairly large amount
of people in the US, and the anti tipping movement
was still going strong. Ah. Yeah, there was an anti
Tipping Society of America that formed up in a state
of Georgia nineteen o four. Yeah, there were a hundred
thousand pledgies and they swore to do a tipping for
one year. And many famous folks were all about anti tipping,

(18:16):
including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Howard Taft, and
Leon Trotsky. Taft can Paint campaigned on the issue, labeling
himself as the patron saint of the anti tip crusade. Taft.
I know Trotsky thought it was capitalist practice that hurt
the workers, and allegedly waiters filled hot soup on him

(18:39):
while he lived in the Bronx because he didn't tip. Um.
Trotsky is also the name of my parents dog. By
the way, I don't know what his thoughts are on tipping.
Mark Twain was another famous anti tipper. His refusal to
tip a cab driver at nineteen o one inspired this
quote from an editorial in the Chicago Times. Harold claim

(19:00):
credit for its abolition. He will deserve greater gratitude from
the public on that account than for anything that he
has written or ever may write. Oh wow. Ralph Waldo
Emerson also weighed in on this. He wrote, I sometimes
to come and give the dollar, yet it is a
wicked dollar, which, by and bye I shall have the

(19:20):
manhood to an old. In nineteen ten, Emily Post, author
of several influential etiquette books, prescribed tipping ten percent, even
though she described it as undoubtedly a bad system. I
went on a very big grabbit hole reading her little
etiquette book about this. Oh yeah. If Scott Fitzgerald's nineteen

(19:40):
twenties work This Side of Paradise had this line, Alec
didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the
little bastard snitched. In nineteen sixteen, WILLIAMS. Scott published an
anti tiffing brocher titled The Itching Palm Yeah, in which
he called tipping and the aristo aristocratic idea that exemplifies
is what we left here to escape. He also argued

(20:02):
that it was as Unamerican as slavery and democracy's mortal foe.
He went on to say, the custom announces to the
world that we do not believe practically that all men
are created equal. Unless a waiter can be a gentleman,
democracy is a failure. If any form of service is menial,
democracy is a failure. Those Americans who dislike self respect

(20:24):
and servants are undesirable citizens. They belong in an aristocracy. However,
he also blamed the tip workers of having an itching
palm and suffering from a moral malady. So you know,
a string of states tried to outlaw tipping, beginning with
Washington in eight Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and

(20:46):
Mississippio all passed anti tipping laws, but by nine all
had been repealed. Even when they were law, they were
rarely enforced. In nineteen nineteen, union member TiO Smith wrote
in a trade journal for hotel l and restaurant employees,
waiter was not the author, but the victim of the
tipping system. In his view, all the arguments against tipping

(21:08):
had been made with thought for the public, but not
for the waiter, who must quote learned the art of
smiling under even the most adverse circumstances, and funnily enough,
or not really at all. This movement spread to Europe,
this anti tipping movement, where tipping had begun exactly and
you're pretty much did away with it. It succeeded there.

(21:30):
Uh they largely have like a fifteen percent service charge,
but not really a tip um. Restaurant and other hospitality
owners fault to then nail to keep tipping, though, as
it had become even more popular to make up profits
lost to prohibition, they didn't have to pay their employees
as much in wages while customers were tipping, and because

(21:52):
of that, lobbyists in the restaurant industry successfully lobbied to
get Congress to exclude them from the minimum wage included
in the new deal. In essentially, businesses not involved in
interstate commerce, including chain restaurants, somehow were exempt from paying
minimum wage, and then a series of laws followed. In

(22:15):
nineteen forty two, the Supreme Court rule that tips were
the exclusive right of the employee and that they could
not be forced to share their tips. Good times uh huh,
a couple of decades later, in nineteen sixty six, Congress
past something called Tip Credit, which allowed for sub minimum
wage and tips would cover the rest. However, the one

(22:35):
vague silver lining to this law was that it tied
the tipped minimum wage to the regular minimum wage. The
tipped minimum had to remain no less than half of
the full minimum. Meanwhile, in Europe, Britain decreased servers reliance
on tips with their Catering Wages Act in nineteen forty three,
which established a service minimum wage, and in nineteen fifty five,

(22:57):
France started requiring that restaurants as a service charge to
their bills, kind of codifying what Annie was talking about earlier.
And then if we jump a boy ahead to the CEO,
the then CEO of Godfather's Pizza and head of the
National Restaurant Association, Herman Kine, and yeah, that Herman Kane. Uh.

(23:18):
He persuaded the Republican led Congress to create a two
tiered wage system tipped workers and non tipped workers. The
minimum wage of tipped workers decided to be two dollars
thirteen cents an hour, and it's been that way for
a lot of states ever since. And at the time,
that was half of the regular minimum wage, which was
four dollars and twenty five cents an hour um. But

(23:42):
but but this, this law in particular, is why although
the regular minimum wage has slowly been creeping up, the
tipped minimum has stayed the same for twenty three years.
Due to inflation, a loan prices are sixty higher today
than they were in meaning that to keep up with inflation,
and the tipped minimum today should be at least three

(24:02):
dollars and forty cents. And this TechNation hit right as
the United States economy was heading towards recession, hitting many
consumers really hard. A poll of more than twenty dred
American adults in the year found that about half of
the respondents tipped less than they had five years prior,
and the majority listed the reason for that being that
their financial situation had changed. And today, with the speed

(24:26):
of internet incredulity, we've all seen viral posts about moments
when a denied tip sparked a larger debate and sometimes
larger consequences. There's a my my personal favorite may or
may not be that woman who was fired from Applebe's
after posting an image of a receipt where someone had
crossed through the eighteen percent service charge. It's given to
parties of six or more and written in I give

(24:48):
God ten percent, why do you get eighteen? Wow, which
which I don't find very Christian personally. There are whole
treatises online of how everyone should just stop tipping, thus
grinding the whole restaurant industry to a halt, sort of
fight club style, except with fewer explosions, I think, hopefully, hopefully. Uh.

(25:10):
There have also been a few high profile lawsuits over
tipping practices within companies like Starbucks, which had to pay
out a hundred million dollars to employees whose tips had
been given to shift supervisors up to hight and uh In.
A couple of related bills were introduced in the U. S.
Senate that looked to gradually increase the minimum wage overall

(25:34):
throughout the country and in parallel, to increase the tipped
minimum until it could be held study at no less
than seventy of the regular minimum. The bills never proceeded, though,
perhaps largely due to the debate over raising the minimum
wage at all. And it's just so curious to me
how culturally speaking we we got here and how it

(25:56):
seems like a large part of the population flipped from
being stridently anti tip to steridentally anti removing tips um.
In two tho five, The New Yorker reported that of
diners pulled preferred tipping to a set service charge. They
and lots of other articles that I read, argued that
as consumers, we like or at the very least, have

(26:16):
grown accustomed to the power the tipping gives us. Some
compare it to our general anti tax, pro private charity
vibe that we've got going on in the United States,
and the moral and economic implications of that are a
much larger debate obviously, but it's it's clear that legally speaking,
the current tipping system is broken. Yeah, and um, I

(26:39):
find it hard to believe for me tipping both when
I worked in the industry and like now, it's stressful. Yeah,
I'm just stressed about it, Like did I do the
math correctly? Oh? What are they going to read into this?
And I don't know. I generally am just no matter what. Yeah,
that's kind of what I've settled on, is just a
flat flat twenty Yeah, lesson like at a bar with

(27:00):
my friends or something, and like someone's done something really
nice or yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, So that's the state
of things and how we got to this state of things.
But but don't worry, oh, worry a little bit. I
don't know, but there there, there are there are some
things that might be done to help fix this, and

(27:22):
we'll get to those right after we take a quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So, as Annie said
at the top of the show, on a local level,

(27:43):
some restaurants are doing away with tipping. They're switching instead
to a flat service charge for all tables, usually between
fifteen and eighteen percent, which customers can tip on top
of for exceptional service if they would like. Lots more
restaurants do this for parties above a certain size, usually
six or more, and some of these establishments do have
house rules about how those fees um how how tips

(28:06):
and other gratuities are split among servers and support staff.
That does help fix some of that um inequality that
we talked about earlier. It is easier to find and
support these type of places if you live in a
big city, but you can also ask around your community
or the internet about your own hometown too. And all right,
so you know, case studies here, like like what about

(28:28):
the states that have laws ensuring higher tipped wages, or
what about states that have raised the minimum wage in general?
The short answer is that it's complicated, and researchers are
still compiling data from the states and municipalities that are
trying these things out. A couple of preliminary kind of
bits of data getting in here. According to the albeit

(28:51):
slightly biased co founder of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, that's
RSC United UH, who is also the director of the
Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley, the
seven states that pay their full minimum wage to tipped
workers actually see customers tipping at higher rates than we
see in states with lower paid tipped workers. Also, some

(29:15):
research indicates that states with higher server wages also enjoy
higher restaurant sales per capita. The idea here is that
if workers make more money, there's less employee turnover and
greater satisfaction and thus greater productivity. Plus those people are
better able to spend money at restaurants themselves. Back in,

(29:36):
former president and CEO of McDonald's U S division, one
Ed Renzy gave an interview, saying that if the minimum
wage was fifteen dollars an hour, it would be cheaper
to just replace most workers with robots. M hmm, And okay,
that is a whole can of robotic worms. And and
the veracity of his statement depends a lot on how

(29:57):
technology advances in the immediate future. Also, experiments with dramatically
raising the minimum wage like Seattle has been doing over
the past three years, are incredibly multi factored, and more
research needs to be done into how changes like this
should best be implemented and what support where education would
help small local businesses get through those changes, because right

(30:21):
now they're kind of standing it, like is it good?
Is it bad? But hey, minimum wage, let's talk about
that for a second, because we haven't had enough fun yet.
The last time that the overall minimum wage was raised
was two thousand nine, and it also has not kept
up with inflation. By the government's inflation calculator, the minimum
wage should be at least eight dollars and forty seven

(30:42):
cents in today's money. And okay, that's only an increase
of a dollar and twenty two cents an hour, but
that is a lot of money assuming you work a
full forty hours a week, fifty weeks out of the year.
That adds up to two thousand and forty dollars before taxes.
So smilarly, if the tipped minimum had increased with inflation,

(31:02):
since tipped workers would be making at least a dollar
twenty seven more per hour and thus two thousand and
forty dollars more per year. Yeah, if you're as frustrated
as we are about this and are looking for possible solutions,
you can check out Restaurant Opportunities Centers United or r
o C United dot org, which is the organization Lauren

(31:25):
mentioned earlier. But okay, let's talk about tipping around the world,
because it's not like this everywhere. Nope. According to the Internet,
North America is really the only place where restaurant tips
of fift or above are widely expected. It's appropriate to
tip in Canada and Mexico as you would in the

(31:45):
United States. Egypt is another place that's big on tipping
ten is expected, and much of South Asia Thailand, India, Malaysia, Vietnam,
and Indonesia operates similarly on the other end of the spectrum,
though it is so uncommon that it can be considered
rude to tip in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Nepal,

(32:06):
and most other places range somewhere in between. Most of
the world adds a service charge, like most of the
world like. The more I looked into this, the more
I was like, no, really is everyone but us? Everyone okay? Cool?
Most of the world adds a service charge of around
ten to their bills, and tipping a little bit on
top of that is polite, especially if your server went

(32:26):
above and beyond. If no service charges added, it's generally
expected that you'll tip ten. Of course, it is a
wide world out there, and there are tons of guides
available for specific countries and cities. Even in countries that
don't have a tipping culture at large, cities that American
tourists frequent may expect tips. If you're going someplace, consult

(32:46):
a guidebook. I will say most places I've traveled. It
varies everywhere, and even in um. I lived in Belgium
for about eight months. I guess if you can call
that lived, I don't know there's rules about that. I
think that the quality is more than what right did
did it count as living? In my book? I was

(33:08):
living it up, But they had rules where if you
were a university student, you weren't expect to tip at
all ever, but if you had a job, then you
were supposed to tip, so that like little rules like that.
And then in Australia they definitely in some places I
was in, they knew that American tourist would tip, so

(33:30):
they expected it from you, but they didn't expect it
from anybody else. Yeah, yeah, I heard that. I heard
that about Australia New Zealand in particular. I was like that,
my guide book says it's outdated. That's what they told me.
And then definitely in Japan, I had several people tell
me it would be rude to tip. So it it

(33:52):
just varies all over. I want one thing we didn't
mention that is concerned I guess I heard when I
was telling people I was doing this episode and how
mad it was making me. My mom said, I got
rid of tipping. Does that mean all of the menu
items would go up? The price of like the food items. Yeah.
This is kind of part of the part of the
debate about what to do about it, because I think

(34:16):
that that's certainly a concern for for small business owners.
They don't want to potentially drive away customers by raising prices.
And furthermore, it would be unfair to people who are
getting take out at a place instead of coming and
sitting down. So a good A good solution for that,
I think is is that that service charge appended to
sit down parties. Although that makes people angry too sometimes. Yeah,

(34:40):
it's weird and it's funny too that I read somewhere
like leaving a bad tip. People just appreciate the satisfaction
they get from leaving a bad tip. The service was bad,
not just like I'm sure there are some vindictive people
out there, just like I have a good, crappy Tuesday. Yeah,
bad tip for you, Yeah if I probably a lot

(35:03):
of times that happens. Um, So there's yeah, it's kind
of a much more interesting look in the human psyche
it expected it to be. It is. I guess, I
don't know. I never feel good after I've left a
bad tip, like once in the past, I don't know,
six or seven years and I still it's one of
those It's one of those things that my brain brings

(35:24):
up to me sometimes just to just to me just
go like, oh, hey, hey, you're a terrible person. Remember that,
you know, he left a bad tip. And then if
you eat in a place like waffle house and would
be like ten cents or something, So I just leave
like way more money than what it was worth yea,
or not even worth, but what I paid the cost

(35:45):
of the bill. Um. So there's a lot of there's
a lot of strange social dynamics going on in there.
It would make me really happy to just have a
flat service fee that I could add something on top
of if I if I still chose yeah, right, yeah, okay,
so that's so that's tipping. Yeah. Um oh man, my

(36:07):
heart's beating so fast. Uh, let's move on. Yeah, we
have some listener man, we do, and before we read it,
just a reminder we are still looking for toast. If
you have toast is in raising a glass and what
do you say during it? Just to be clear. Yeah, yeah,
if you've got a favorite one or a local one

(36:28):
that you think is found or something in your family.
A few of you have written in with things. Have
we gotten some audio files. We haven't got any audio yet. Okay,
all right, if you want to record yourself, maybe we
can maybe we can get ahold of that that hotline. Yes,
there is a phone number you can call. We don't
know what it is, but we could post it when
we find it. Yeah, and or we can magically edited

(36:48):
into this episode. Wo yeah if we if we figure
it out before this publishes, it will go right here.
But if not, if not, then you just heard nothing. Yeah,
so thanks, thanks for that, and you're welcome for that. Okay,
So the first listener mail we're going to read is

(37:09):
from frequent writer inner Jessica. Hi Jessica. She wrote in
about chocolate, I'm making Frencher Christmas today, so it was
a great companion or chocolate episodes. Did you know it's
actually super easy to timber chocolate using your microwave? And
I'd forgotten this, but yes, tell us, Jessica, that's how
I make fudge. You take two bags of chocolate chips
if your choice, Toss them in a microwave safe bowl,

(37:31):
microwave thirty seconds at a time, no your microwave, stirring
each time until there's only a few large chips left.
Add another tiny handful of chips and stir until melted.
Then stir in one can of condensed milk and any nuts,
etcetera microwave thirty more seconds and put in your mold
and leave a few hours to set if you want fudge.
But I learned this technique from a teacher of mine

(37:53):
who worked in a chocolate teer. Also, red chocolate announced
in the baking world this year. Looks cool, but I
don't think it's too and enough to be worth the hype.
And Veronica also wrote in about red chocolate. I had
heard of this, but um, it definitely looks cool. It's
like pink m Thank you, Jessica. I've done that too.
I didn't know that was tempering, but I suppose it is. Yeah, yeah, uh.

(38:18):
Emily wrote in your Toasting episode, you talked about how
bread used to be put in wine. I am here
to tell you that this practice is still alive and
well sort of in Greek Orthodox churches and possibly other
forms of Orthodoxy. When one receives communion, the bread symbolizing
the body of Christ is soaking in the wine symbolizing
his blood. You wait in line. The priest gets a

(38:39):
piece of wine soaked bread on his tiny spoon, says
a prayer, and you are fed the wine bread. You
also get a piece of non soaked bread afterwards, but
the wine bread is way better. My favorite part of
church as a child was getting the wine soaked bread.
I don't know what that says about me, but I
do know it tastes really good. The wine used a
Greek Orthodox churches is really sweet, so biting into the

(39:00):
bread is like a delicious explosion of grape juice in
your mouth. I love it. Ah. Yeah, yeah, I've never
seen it done that way. Me neither, but that's so
interesting it is. Um. Emily also writes send a lot
so hello Emily. Hey, Emily, Hi, Yeah, thank you, thank
you all so much for writing. If you would like
to do that thing, you can, yes. Um. Our email

(39:24):
is food Stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter
and Facebook at food Stuff hs W. We're also on
Instagram at food stuff. Thank you so much to our
amazing producer Dylan Fagan who puts up with us, and uh,
thanks to you all for tuning in and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way