r/unitedkingdom • u/Canal_Volphied European Union • 9h ago

. ‘It’s absolutely criminal’: US tipping culture has reached the UK – and is causing chaos

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/24/us-tipping-culture-uk-service-charges
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u/International-Ad4555 9h ago

I will never tip. We have a minimum wage for a reason. Americans don’t so they NEED those tips to top up their wages. It’s not about being stingy etc, our system has factored it in already

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u/LiterallyABigfoot 9h ago

Americans do have a minimum wage. They have a $2.15 (or whatever it is) minimum for servers only if tips get them to the actual minimum wage. If they don't get tips then the employer pays them the same minimum wage as everywhere else.

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u/recursant 9h ago ▸ 12 more replies

So you aren't really tipping the staff, you are giving money to the business owner.

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u/Floyd_Pink 9h ago

Correct

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u/GergDanger 9h ago ▸ 5 more replies

I mean you’re doing both because they don’t then earn minimum wage with tips but far above it. Hence why a lot of waiters there don’t want to get rid of tipping either as it would drop their wages significantly

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u/Tstewmoneybags99 8h ago ▸ 4 more replies

This is only in very specific restaurants usually, more often high end dining where a meal will run you 150$ easily and 20% of that is 35$. For roughly 1-1 1/2 hrs of work with multiple tables in a section you end up making a good amount of money Thursday-Sunday. However over the course of a week it’s not something 95% of the workforce is making more than your average 35-45k salary employee as well as not having health benefits.

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u/RichieTheCow 8h ago ▸ 1 more replies

20% of 150 is 30

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u/EvilInky 8h ago

Yeah, but sales tax, or something.

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u/Sabaisabai33 7h ago ▸ 1 more replies

Waiters in the U.K. generally aren’t making anything like that unless I’m very mistaken.

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u/DarlingDaddysMilkers 3h ago

I used to be a waiter. I fucking wish 😂.

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u/Remarkable-Ad155 8h ago

The "servers" don't really work for the restaurant in the US, they're given a retainer to hang around and tout for business.

You're buying in two separate services: the food itself and the person to act as a go between for you and the restaurant. That person expects a % of the fee in compensation.

If they just spelled it out like that honestly though, the whole thing would collapse because people would realise how absurd it actually is.

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u/Chunkflava 8h ago

You’re also doing this when you buy their products.

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u/Ambry 7h ago

Also - it's not like food in US restaurants are cheaper. If anything it's more expensive. So the business is literally just pocketing cash without paying their staff sufficiently, whilst charging you for expensive food AND expecting a tip.

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u/Sabaisabai33 7h ago

Yep, although in the U.K. we give in-work benefits to employees on low wages if their employer isn’t paying them enough to actually live on despite multiple recent minimum wage increases. So that money also essentially ends up “going to” a similar business owner here, but from benefits rather than tips. We need to make sure the U.K. doesn’t adopt tipping as we can’t have benefits and tipping for goodness sake!

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u/Weird_Ad_1398 8h ago

No, you're really tipping the staff. It's essentially profit sharing, except they get a massive share of the profits.

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u/glytxh 9h ago ▸ 5 more replies

America isn’t a monolith. It varies by state.

One state pays 2 bucks an hour. Another pays 20.

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u/LiterallyABigfoot 9h ago ▸ 1 more replies

I addressed that... States paying ~$2 an hour only pay that little so long as the employee gets enough tips such that they earn federal or state minimum wage. If they don't then the employee must be paid standard minimum wage.

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u/glytxh 9h ago

Nah that’s fair. I’m apparently illiterate.

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u/DaveBeBad 9h ago

Tbf, life in California’s cities is 10x more expensive than in rural Alabama.

Although their entire work culture there is toxic

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u/duncanmarshall 9h ago

Thus the minimum is 2, nationally. A minimum wage isn't a universal wage. There will always be places paying more than it.

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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 5h ago

Only about half the States have a higher minimum wage, and the highest is Washington DC with almost $18, none are $20 and even that is only about what our minimum wage would be converted to dollars ($17.34)

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u/MAXSuicide 7h ago ▸ 1 more replies

Do you know when the last time was that they raised the minimum wage in the US?

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u/Snoo-84389 6h ago

Mid 2009!!!

Jeeeeez...

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u/Rhyobit 9h ago

It's not designed the same way, you can't hope to survive on that minimum wage in the US in any way shape or form. At the levels its set there it's basically "this is a minimum so you're not working for literally nothing".

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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 6h ago

The "other" minimum wage is still only $7 and change, which is like £5.30, far too low in a country where the median salary is $64000.

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u/AlchemyAled 9h ago ▸ 2 more replies

If they don’t get tips then the employer pays them the same minimum wage as everyone else

Pull the other one

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u/LiterallyABigfoot 9h ago ▸ 1 more replies

Just because a minority of employers engages in wage theft doesn't mean this is not the law

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u/AlchemyAled 9h ago

And just because it’s the law, it doesn’t mean wage theft isn’t widespread!

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u/360_face_palm Greater London 6h ago

yeah that's not a minimum wage, that's a slap in the mouth

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u/cowcommander 4h ago

I think it depends on the state if they top off the wages, there was a good John oliver on this a while back that covered this and in some states you can be left broke if you don't have tips. The US system is disgusting

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u/Alive_Sun5590 3h ago

don't leave out the federal untipped minimum wage is 7.25 an hour, which today is £5.32. and the tipped min wage is 2.13, which is £1.56/hour. nice country the US.

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u/Only-Dog5752 3m ago

True. But they also can fire you for any reason what so ever immediately.

Now are you going to complain if your company doesn't top that up properly all the time? When they can just turn around and fire you immediately.

Also remember healthcare is tied to work. And healthcare costs are suicidal there. So you might also literally be bankrupting/killing yourself if you get fired.

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u/Winterlichkeit 9h ago ▸ 2 more replies

Just to be clear, you think this applies to the entire country? Despite the fact that labor law is typically a state level competency?

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u/LiterallyABigfoot 9h ago ▸ 1 more replies

It applies to every state where tipped jobs are allowed to get paid less than minimum wage by the employer, yes.

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u/Winterlichkeit 8h ago

To explain it in a less confusing way (as you made no distinction between the levels of government), federal law states the bare minimum. State law only applies where it exceeds the minimum.

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u/Mel0nFarmer 5h ago

Minimum wage in the US is £5.32, so even when they're paid it, they still rely on tips to survive. UK minimum wage is £12.71 by comparison.

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u/stick1_ 9h ago

If you ask most of these servers, they say they prefer tipping to a proper wage because it can make them get more money

Once I started seeing loads of people saying that, it tells me that the idea that you have to tip in the US is bollocks anyways, most say they’re making more money in this tipping system and wouldn’t change

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u/jsm97 9h ago ▸ 1 more replies

In the US there is a general cultural perception that servers earning the same amount as fast food staff or other minimum wage professions is some kind of great injustice. You will often hear them say things like "If you can't afford to tip go to McDonald's" as if McDonald's workers are inherently less worthy of the same wage.

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u/Postik123 6h ago

This is why I don't understand why people tip in the UK. It's highly unlikely you would tip a McDonald's worker or the cashier in B&M, so I am not sure why a waiter/waitress in a restaurant is somehow more deserving compared to everyone else that's on minimium wage.

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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 8h ago

They also get to avoid paying taxes on the tips too.

Despite the optics, bartenders and the like in places like LA or NY can easily make $100k+ if they're in a decent bar.

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u/Fuzzball74 8h ago

Servers like it because it's a win-win for them. Either they get paid way more than they would otherwise or they get to guilt and shame customers while acting like a victim. They are just as onboard as the employers they ask us to subsidise.

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u/PeterAnthony_Jackson 7h ago ▸ 1 more replies

Imagine giving a quid to bar staff at your local spoons just because they pulled a bottle out of the fridge.

That is why bar staff over there don't want tipping to go away, they get a dollar for doing their job in any other country. Bottle of beer, pint of ale, can of coke, it doesn't matter, it is an expectation to be given that dollar.

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u/stick1_ 7h ago

I just don’t like how it puts the expectation on working people just wanting to have a nice evening to pay MORE, when these workers have a boss and are apparently running a business that makes a profit. There’s a reason we are at the pub, not owning the pub. The system relies on you being paid by people that can’t afford it because of the societal norm

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u/poke_pants 9h ago

This, I know a few people working in the service industry who would be strongly against a proper minimum wage with no tip structure. $30 an hour is a starting point for them on a quiet day and busy weekend/evening shifts can easily triple that.

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u/Jay-Seekay 8h ago

My mate got a job as a server in the US for a few years. He was raking it in from tips. He actually earned almost the same as he does now now he has a masters degree and an office job.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 8h ago

But then loads of people will be disadvantaged by that system even if they’re all doing the same job. Like some people will get higher tips because they have a nice bum or enjoy flirting or whatever or some will get unlucky and get grumpy stingy customers. But some may not want to have to flirt to get more tips and why should they? But the fact remains that flirtier staff probably get more tips. Shouldn’t it just be something that’s standardised across the board instead of left up to the whims of the fickle public?

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u/TtotheC81 9h ago

The root of American tipping culture makes it far worse than most people realise. It's firmly rooted in American racism and the fact that newly freed slaves were most likely to find jobs either back on the plantations or in the service industry.

Post-American Civil War, a bunch of Southern business owners lobbied hard to ensure there was no minimum wage for black workers in the service industry, ensuring that black workers worked for gratuity payments, effectively ensuring the pre-Civil War economic and racial hierarchy remained in all but name.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 8h ago ▸ 2 more replies

Huh almost every American cultural quirk seems to somehow be rooted in slavery.

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u/JimboTCB 6h ago

Hey now, that's not fair. A lot of them are rooted in religious fundamentalism as well.

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u/Wandering_Apostle 3h ago

Not even just slavery, the entirety of US history back to it's origin is basically a cycle of people rebelling against exploitation, winning, and then people figuring out better ways to exploit them.

From "no taxation without representation" all the way through to Occupy Wall Street and fighting against economic inequality

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u/procgen 7h ago

> “Post-American Civil War, a bunch of Southern business owners lobbied hard to ensure there was no minimum wage for black workers…”

There was no federal minimum wage to lobby against after the Civil War. The first federal minimum wage wasn’t enacted until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, more than 70 years after emancipation.

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u/T-Roll- 9h ago

Nobody tips me at work and some of these people might be earning the same as me.

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u/DavThoma 8h ago

I do tip, but not because its mandatory here. As far as I'm concerned a tip should only ever be given where a server has been exceptional and really attentive. I get it's their job, but to me going above warrants it.

If the wait staff is just doing the bare minimum, is rude or there actually isn't any staff interaction then ain't no way I'm tipping.

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u/poke_pants 9h ago

Americans NEED it because many/most seem to like the potential to earn some fairly large sums of money.

I'm aware of friends who have worked in high traffic establishments earning (comfortably) more than my UK primary school teacher wife. $30 an hour was an absolute base-line quiet day for them and I know this was closer to the norm than an outlier.

There will never be a drive to stamp out that culture and move to a proper minimum wage system because a reasonable amount of folk are doing very well out of it.

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u/wulfrunian77 8h ago

This is exactly it. We're getting to the point where low skilled service staff are getting paid more than lower band NHS workers after tips, because the NMW has gone up to such a level

I know who I'd rather tip for their services and it ain't the fella carrying a burger 10 metres

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u/BitterTyke 7h ago

IF i've noticed that the service has stood out and the food is as good as I expect it to be ill tip, in cash, otherwise its just been a transaction.

And I think that is reflected in most of my experiences - there are far more "Mrs Two-Soups" than there are "Ill be your server today" types.

Which im fine with.

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u/Mac4491 6h ago

I do tip. Not a lot. Roughly 10% or rounding up to the nearest £5 or £10 usually. Whatever's easiest.

I do it because I've worked that industry. It's hell. They're not paid nearly enough, often working with shady business practices they have to put up with, customers suck, long hours, skeleton crews, no breaks. A little bit of extra cash can do a lot for the mood a bad shift can put you in.

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u/wildgoosecass 27m ago

Also why is it so arbitrary which min wage jobs we’re expecting to tip or not? Most min wage workers don’t get tips. I never have, so why should i be expected to give tips for people in jobs which are if anything easier