Sir, – I must protest at Corinna Hardgrave’s assertion that 10 per cent is the bare minimum to tip in Ireland (“New tipping law: How to leave a gratuity in an Irish restaurant after December 1st”, November 5th).
Anything which is the bare minimum should be included in the menu price and if restaurants are not paying staff fairly, it will not change while consumers and the law continue to enable the deceptive practice of tipping and service charges.
Tipping culture in Ireland (or indeed, anywhere in Europe), particularly as a percentage of the bill, is based on an ill-placed and ill-informed admiration for “the American way”.
In the US, wait staff are almost always paid less than comparable jobs such as retail, often considerably so, on the assumption they will receive tips.
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This is not the case in Ireland.
If we believe the minimum wage is so low that it is unconscionable for diners not to “top it up”, why then are we content to allow almost every other industry’s minimum wage workers to go without the same?
One could argue tips are a form of profit sharing. But what if we imagined a system where this profit share is included in the menu price, and paid directly to staff out of that price? The staff would still receive a proportional share of proceeds, but without the deliberate underpricing where tips or service charges are expected.
Of course, we don’t have to try hard to imagine such a system since it already exists. We even have a word for it: commission. Yet I can only imagine Corinna Hardgrave’s reaction if she entered a shop to make a purchase, only to be expected to pay a staff commission on top of the marked price.
There is a reason there is hostility to tipping culture and not to commissions. It is not about being stingy or cheap: it is because one is upfront and honest, the other one is a textbook example of drip pricing, which relies on social pressure to guilt you into paying more than the advertised price.
But since we seem so content to uncritically go down the American route, why not start removing VAT from menu prices too? Instead we could have a footnote in very small text at the bottom of the menu: “A 9 per cent VAT charge will be added to your bill. All VAT charges go directly to Revenue”. – Yours, etc,
GERARD BONNER,
London.