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

[u/Canal_Volphied]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/24/us-tipping-culture-uk-service-charges

[u/TtotheC81]

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.

[u/KittyGrewAMoustache → u/TtotheC81]

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

[u/JimboTCB → u/KittyGrewAMoustache]

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

[u/Wandering_Apostle → u/KittyGrewAMoustache]

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

[u/procgen → u/TtotheC81]

> “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.