Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
In New Zealand they have a most enlightening attitude to tipping. They don't do it. Throw someone a dollar for bringing you a cup of coffee and they'll treat it as a bloody insult. They're only doing their job, and they get paid well enough without needing your charity. The average Irish person could afford to buy a ticket to New Zealand simply by saving a few weeks worth of handing over unnecessary tips. A few euro for the waiter who safely brought your sandwich. A couple of notes to the taxi driver who got you to your destination while listening to a late night phone-in show. And a wedge to the hairdresser who somehow managed to do your hair without accidentally chopping your head off.
We tip the guy who delivers the Chinese take-away, even though he's already getting paid enough for driving around the town, with his girlfriend, in his modified car. We tip the babysitter, even though she's already charging rates previously reserved for Supernanny, and she's just spent half the night smoking in your back garden and snogging her boyfriend in between his Chinese take-away deliveries.
It used to be that a select few received tips. Taxi drivers, hotel porters and waiters, obviously. A good sermon would always fill the collection plates at Sunday Mass, too. Across the service industry, though, tipping is now expected, and we oblige because the only thing we fear more than bad service, is being considered scabby. We are powerless in the face of that long, deliberate fumble for change that can only end with us telling them to "just make it 20".
There have been brave attempts to stem the flow. The public was urged not to give bin men a "Christmas bonus" for doing what they were supposed to be doing anyway. Perhaps it's because, in the age of the guaranteed minimum wage, there is much less need to tip anyone. It is, after all, usually based on some notional idea that not only does the service go beyond the ordinary, but that in the service industry people need to supplement their income.
There is probably some exhaustive economic argument against tipping, founded on the basis that tipping depresses the rise of wages in the marketplace, while at the same time forming an extra income that costs the state millions per annum in lost tax revenue. You could explain this to the taxi driver as you stand at the airport departures ramp, but he'd probably respond by dropping your luggage on your toe.