Michael Lynn, a marketing professor at Cornell, has studied tips for forty years, beginning when he was a bartender in graduate school. “When you think about it, you go, ‘Why would people give up money they don’t have to?’ ” In restaurants, he has found, the answer has to do with social approval. Lynn almost never tips for takeout or counter service, the domain of the iPads. (“I get pissed,” he said.) To study how the new tip options affected customer behavior, he conducted research with a laundry-service app, which randomly suggested different gratuity amounts. He found that the more the company asked for the more customers paid. Ratings and retention were unaffected. (When the chain Joe’s Crab Shack eliminated tipping, customer satisfaction actually went down.) The dynamic can be compared to masochism.
Do you know which issue this is published in? I’m about 3.5 months behind 
, but I can’t wait to read this!
All I can see is the date in the link, of Dec 25.
I remember many Chowhound tipping threads where it was fairly clear to me (a European) that this is a strong element for many Americans tipping, not only in restaurants but in other scenarios. And that tip levels rarely varied much from the usual expected amount, regardless of service quality. It is about feeling that they were seen to have done the “right thing”.
I’m currently following a cruise forum where most contributors are American and there’s very much the same pattern. Even when the cruise line adds automatic gratuities to your account, many Yanks mention that they like to tip more - handing cash to servers or cabin attendants, so they are directly seen to be tipping.
I don’t pretend to understand this motivation but accept that American culture is different from European culture.
Not that there is any such animal as a monolithic “European culture.”
So I’m glad you are having a great trip, finally! Thanks for your reports. I agree with you about the tip situation in the US, and so do many who live in the US.
This is a sincere question: The way Brits label Americas as “Yanks” makes no sense to some Americans from some regions of the US. Do you mean “Yankees”? I was born and left the US South when I was 18. “Yankees” mean to some of us the people from the North who fought the US south during the Civil War. I think “Yanks” might have come into use in the UK when American troops arrived after WWII ended. I am probably wrong.
I am totally supportive of the “Yankees” in the American Civil War.
As the term “Brits” I am using probably isn’t appropriate to many people who live in the UK.
Could you clarify if you mean by “Yanks” all people from the US?
And especially, could you advise me on how to refer to UK citizens in general? As I am sure “Brits” isn’t helpful
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I too wonder what “European” culture as a monolithic means. Even “American” culture meaning US as single country varies so much from region to region, and even in my part of Massachusetts, two blocks from Boston, varies so much 10 miles away…
Amazing.
No. “Yanks” is a generic slang word in British English to describe folk from the USA.
I rarely use the abbreviation “Brits”, preferring to use “Britons”. But that’s a personal thing. How folk describe themselves is entirely a matter for them. They may choose to describe themselves as Scottish, Welsh or English in preference to British. There is the added complexity of folk who live in Northern Ireland, who may describe themselves as Irish or British.
And context can be important. For example, I might use any of the following tags in a particular situation to describe myself. I’m a European, a citizen of the United Kingdom, living in Northwest England, where I’m both a Cestrian and Mancunian. And always a Manchester City Football Club supporter. Hope that helps.
Thanks! Sort of what I thought; good to have it confirmed.
That can be similar here. My accent is very much that of the southern part of Greater Manchester, where I’ve lived for all my life. But the accent in the town where I worked is different and only 10 miles away. And different again in the northern part of the metro area. And Liverpool, only 35 miles away, has a completely different accent. I know there to be vocabulary differences between those areas and, I suspect, some cultural differences as well.
Reminds me of the time quite a few years ago (and on another, non-food board) where one frequent poster from London used to refer to a particular person from Japan as “that Jap chap.” I think he thought it was clever because it rhymed, but he was quite gracious when I privately pointed out that Japanese folks consider it a pejorative term, and he stopped using it.
Ah, right. The best football club money can buy!
I recall at least a couple of Chowhound posts where reference was made by Americans to “Pakis”. I presumed that this was written in ignorance of the fact that, in the UK, it is racially offensive and on a par with the “N word” (or, in British terms , also the “W word”.
As for Man City, Dad used to take me to Wednesday night matches at Maine Road. That would be early to mid 1960s. Like most folk of my generation, I didnt choose which team to support - I was born into it.
the usage of “Yank”/“Yankee” stems from the Colonial and Revolutionary War era(s) - which simply ‘stuck.’ the ‘colonies’ were referred to as “Yankees.”
Not to open that can of worms again 
, but there is a MA term for convenience stores spelled with a C. No relationship whatsoever with the slur.
Didn’t mean to imply you had jumped on the Sky Blue Bandwagon post-Thaksin - although that is certainly a very big bandwagon! Your allegiance is certainly more authentic than my own, that’s for sure. One match back in the Malcolm MacDonald era was enough to hook me!
Getting back to the topic at hand, I generally would prefer that restaurants pay their waitstaff a decent living wage so we could get away from tipping as a custom. Last night, though, Mrs. ricepad and I went out with friends and the server was one of the best we’d had in quite a long time. The biggest difference, IMO, was his attitude. It was clear that he wanted to be as helpful as possible, in as friendly yet professional way as possible. He wasn’t perfect - he could have filled our waters more regularly, for instance - but his attitude more than made up for it. Even if the restaurant had had a ‘no tipping’ policy in any form, I would have slipped him a few bucks extra, on the down low, if necessary.
Madrid. I agree w Harters on this. From the outside, the similarities between different regions of the US make them look nearly monolithic from the outside, even though the regional differences seem so large from inside.
So to a non- American, the moniker “Yanks” does as well as any other to describe Americans as a whole.
