Tipping should be a bonus – not a wage supplement

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Ireland has always had an indifferent approach to the art of tipping; not like the US where it’s notionally a voluntary practice – but if you don’t do it, you’d better not be coming back.

We rarely tip bar staff – unless they’re facilitating us at a time we shouldn’t really be there. And even then, the tip is less of the five euro variety and more like: “will you chance one yourself?”

In restaurants, it’s more likely to be a tenner stuck under the salt and pepper rather than a gratuity added via debit card to the bill. And anyway, so many restaurants add a service charge in the first place that you can assume this goes to the staff, not into the till.

Except that’s not always the case – either here or elsewhere – which might be why the British Government has now enshrined this principle in stone; all tips will go directly to hospitality workers without any deductions.

Their new rules also make it illegal for employers to withhold tips from workers – a practice most of them wouldn’t even contemplate, but a few greedier ones most definitely do.

Tipping is a thing in the hospitality sector and nowhere else – you don’t tip the postman for successfully delivering your post or the supermarket for stacking your favourite biscuits, or the pilot because your plane makes it safely to its destination.

These are all things we take for granted; you order something, someone supplies it, and you pay for it at the price quoted to you in the first instance. You don’t decide it’s actually worth more because it was handed over with a smile.

You’ve a right to expect good service, given the cost of a night out; it shouldn’t be seen as an extra, but in all other fields of employment, you just do your job and you get paid for it; you shouldn’t have to depend on the vagaries of benevolent customers to make ends meet.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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