It depends and also is culture based.
In Spain you can find some places (eg coffee place) with 1-2 workers.
Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get your order at rush hours, but the culture tolerates patience and waiting.
Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get your order at rush hours, but the culture tolerates patience and waiting.
If the service is extra good I might tip extra.
If the service is very bad (unreasonably slow, or staff forget or mix up the order in a significant way, or they are very rude), I tip 0%. Of course everyone can mess up things a little so it’s not like I immediately tip 0% just because of some minor thing. It has to be properly bad.
Also something I have learned from the Spanish is to always order something small and quick for the table even before we have decided what to eat. Then if it takes 40 minutes before the food comes it doesn’t matter that much compared to when you are starving for food. So this is a very neat trick that helps a lot to have a good experience even at slow places, and something I have started always doing.
Setting a baseline of 10% just says to me that the restaurant owners can just pay their staff less. And if the server is having an off day or just didn't meet your particular standards then they're losing money.
It would be a bizarre approach in Scandinavia because the consensus here is that companies must pay their employees a decent baseline salary -- which unions negotiate across the whole sector -- so there's no expectation of a tip by default.
But for much of the rest of the world, it's not a given that working conditions are as good.
People who are not used to tips (i.e. foreigners visiting the US) don't necessarily know when they should and when they shouldn't give a tip. When in doubt, should they or should they not tip 20%? The whole concept is just very weird.
Thank you, A Swede.
However, contrary to what many might say, tipping has been a part of European culture for a very long time (especially in the UK, Germany and some Slavic countries). You won't offend basically anyone if you don't tip, since it's basically considered an extra thanks for the service, but small tips/round-ups are fairly common[0] and sadly somewhat important in countries with lower minimum wages or heavily seasonal tourism.
*That said*, while I have nothing against tips as a purely voluntary contribution, I'm of the idea that - regardless of traditions and customs - the push to de-normalize compulsory tips is of fundamental importance for establishing (and keeping) decent wages for staff.
[0]: from a few euros, up to 10%. The new 15/20/25% model is purely American and predatory in nature
I can't think of any long-term outcome of a tipping culture that is efficient for the workers and employers, even if the amount the customer tipped was correlated with quality (the research I've read shows it's got more to do with looks). It is simply more efficient that both parties know what they are agreeing to up front when (1) the worker still has to go to work for 3 months when they resign and (2) the employer has to pay them (and their replacement) full wages during training.
A couple of decades ago I had a waiter run out to the street after me, midtown Manhattan, a sushi/tappas place, sternly inquiring as to why I didn't tip them. I simply forgot, it was very late. I didn't need that.
It should also be said that restaurant staff in Norway make a much better living than in the US, both relative to other Norwegian workers and their US counterparts.
She was non-Swiss herself though and I read it as trying to take advantage of a tourist
Why would being non-Swiss make someone more likely to take advantage of a tourist?
Which is it - low gini for talking to a waiter, high gini for starting a fam?
Spain’s gini coefficient indicates it is much more equal than USA, but not as equal as, say, Denmark.
In fact I'd say gini has nothing to do with birth rate. Birth rate declines when parents have confidence that there is a good likelihood their children will survive to adulthood.
It is often easy to forget that just five hundred years ago almost one of two infants born didn't survive into adulthood. Low birth rates are good. Don't let anyone say otherwise.
Gini: Spain << US
Youth unemployment: Spain >>> US
Living with parents: Spain >>> US
First birth age: Spain >>> US
Fertility: Spain << USBut those nobles had limited power because they didn't have the communications technology we have today.
All these generalizations are as slippery as a bar of soap.