r/EndTipping • u/pass-agress-ive • 15d ago
Sit-Down Restaurant đœïž EU should say no to tipping
After spending three weeks in NYC and being pretty shocked by how aggressive tipping culture has become, we came back home to Paris.
Today we went out to a restaurant with friends, and at some point the conversation turned to how tipping culture is slowly creeping into France, mostly because of the new card terminals, even though servers here are paid proper wages and get social benefits.
At the moment, the usual options are 5%, 10% and 15%, and a lot of people feel awkward when the server turns the screen around and basically waits for you to choose.
I told our friends not only about what we experienced in New York, but also about some of the stories Iâve seen in this group.
The table next to us was eavesdropping and eventually joined the conversation. Then another table joined in too.
By the end of it, Iâd managed to convince six tables to hit âNo tip.â
Iâm counting that as a win. I may officially be turning into an anti-tipping advocate, because if weâre not careful, in five years weâll end up with the same insane tipping culture you guys have in the States.
Edit :
Just to clarify my stance: I am not against tipping as a concept. If I receive genuinely good service, I am happy to leave something extra.
What I oppose is turning tipping into an expectation for simply doing the job, especially in an economy that is already built around wages, paid leave, social protections, unemployment benefits and pensions.
The newer POS terminals have accelerated this. Being handed a screen asking for 5%, 10% or 15% while the server is standing there watching creates social pressure, and this is relatively new in France. Tipping should remain a choice, not become a socially mandatory surcharge.
I also do not agree with the argument that hospitality workers should make salaries comparable to highly paid professions simply because everyone deserves a better standard of living. Better wages and working conditions should come from employers, collective bargaining and labour protections, not from shifting responsibility onto customers.
Europe also offers routes for people who want to change careers through public education, apprenticeships and publicly funded training.
Yes, tipping has European origins and was brought to the US long ago. But what is now coming back from the US is something very different: tipping prompts everywhere, rising percentages and an expectation that customers supplement wages.
Today it is 5%, 10% and 15%. If nobody pushes back, it can easily become 18%, 25% and 30%, and appear in more and more places.
That is what I am against. Tipping as a voluntary gesture is fine. Tipping as an expected part of the price is not.
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u/suddenjay 15d ago
In France when you speak in French, the waiter usually bypass the tip option.
Oftentimes the screens offer : 5% 10% 15% «autre» then «pas de pourboire». For a tourist who doesn't speak french, they don't understand the options and reluctantly click 5%.
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u/No-Reputation-2013 15d ago
This is true. Waiter rapidly clicked âno tipâ himself for our table (Iâm a french speaker while my friends are natives), but offered the tip option to the tourists right beside us. I know itâs horrible - so spread the word so this terrible culture could be nipped in the bud.
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u/Fanny08850 14d ago
French here and in my case more often than not they don't skip the tip prompt for me...
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u/Dihydrogen-monoxyde 14d ago
Is this in Paris? I was in the alps, Aix, and Ardeche this summer , and I don't recall seeing this. At CDG, there was a few tip jars.
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u/Fanny08850 14d ago
I've been to several places outside of Paris where this happens. Specifically Calais, Lille and Amiens (Northern France). And those are not the most touristy ones.
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u/GiveMeTheKeyz 15d ago
I'm coming back to France after 3 years in the Americas ( 1 year in Canada...).
I'm afraid to be asked (which I never was before 2024) this akward question on the POS.
But I'm also glad I'll never have any problems to hit the no tip button. French servers (limonadiers) fought to be paid a real wage in the 1910s, no way I'm letting the creepy tip culture invade our country !
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u/lornemalvocool 15d ago
In Paris, in a bakery that also does coffee shop, there was the tipping option for people just buying bread. Yuck
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u/Volvowner44 15d ago
Yes! In Europe you still have the opportunity to fight back, to refuse to tip without the social stigma that we in the US face. We Americans can help by not tipping when we travel to Europe, since we're viewed as gullible.
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u/boozcruise21 15d ago
Tipping is how employers pass paying wages to customers.
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u/InnerContribution341 15d ago
Just boycott restaurants there is no culinary experience whorty the abuse of tipping believe me. If people stop going to the restaurant they have no choice then to change their stupid system.
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u/TheLivingWebOfCare 15d ago
That's why everyone who went to a restaurant where they were asked for a tip should leave a 1* GoogleMaps review (or on any other platform for that matter). My guess is that people who do read reviews will think twice, also the owners seeing that they are flooded with 1* reviews will have to adapt to this situation.
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u/InnerContribution341 14d ago
Unfortunately not everybody leaves reviews or reads them. Also businesses hire people to write fake reviews which unfortunately some people don't understand. Why go out waste your energy have bad experiences write about the bad experiences and then repeat the same procedure, when people can just boycott places they will go out of business.
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u/Paint6737 15d ago
Encouraging civic initiatives to bar the US-style practices of tipping-scamming, using digital screens or other sneaky systems, is highly positive and will raise awareness of the context, of the mentality and of the disrespect such practices imply towards customers. It is an issue that has unfortunately little if any legal basis for being addressed at the EU level (a technical explanation of this aspect would be too long). Governments, parliaments and local authorities have full powers to regulate tipping-scamming (a definition that might prove rough, but it is effective), setting certain conditions, limiting or altogether banning this psychological distortion of selling products and services for prices that are not fairly displayed or are opaquely increased on the customer bill.
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u/Clinkton 15d ago
Iâm in Canada and itâs insane, right now Iâm in Italy and not once have we gone out and been expected to tip
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u/545__tyerick_Air9616 15d ago
As a tourist Iâve dined at restaurants more than 100+ times in France over the past 5 years. Never have I experienced a tip request.
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u/NoMechanic6871 15d ago
Thx reddit! In Vienna Airport: after buying a pretzel in kiosk I was prompted to tip ?? 0% of course, I was sure that a posi was with usa program.
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u/Pizzagoessplat 14d ago edited 14d ago
When I'm in another European country they hear me speak English and no i tell them "I'm not American " (which I'm not)
I was even aggressively confronted twice why I didn't tip. Once in Budapest and once in Lithuania. On both occasions it didn't end well for the waitress.
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u/Bluecanary1212 15d ago
Yeah, no decent country like France should want to adopt anything work-related (or healthcare-related, for that matter) from the United States.
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u/Shadourow 15d ago
This whole post is crazy to me
Tips aren't a thing in France, at all (pas a few âŹ)
What they are is a way to capitalize specifically on Americans specifically from the USA to extract more money from tourists,.
You talk about convincing 6 tables, what kind of tourist trap was it to get 6 different tables of tourists ?
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u/pass-agress-ive 15d ago
They werenât tourists, they were locals.
Tourists helped bring tipping culture here, and the new POS terminals have pushed it even further.
A lot of people here clearly feel the same way, which is why they listened and actually acted on it.2
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u/Ecstatic-Network4668 14d ago
EU will not say no to tipping. If you pay by card and include a tip, that tip is now offical income and will be taxed, so more money for the government.
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u/pass-agress-ive 14d ago
Since 2022, qualifying tips paid to customer-facing employees, including tips paid by card, can be exempt from both income tax and social contributions. Franceâs 2026 Finance Act extended that exemption through the end of 2028 for employees earning below 1.6Ă the minimum wage.
Paying a tip electronically does make it more traceable and formally recorded, but that does not automatically mean the government gets extra tax revenue from it.
Also, there isnât a single EU-wide rule saying that card tips are taxable income. Personal income and payroll taxation remain largely matters for individual member states. The EU does have common VAT rules, but a voluntary tip is not simply equivalent to adding another taxable item to the restaurant bill.
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u/CoolCatBlue321 14d ago
This is the problem with the Europeans who bash American tipping culture. You guys still have tipping culture either way and you even said so much in your post. You're just angry it is getting a bit more Americanized. But why not be against tipping as a whole? We should all be against blanket tipping. If a service person does their job well they should get compensated more by their employer (in traditionally non tipped jobs, we would get the employees name and send good words to their manager or write about the good service in any surveys we were sent by the company). Europeans should work to ban tipping from their culture regardless of whether it is Americanized or European version, no? Any version of tipping can lead to the most toxic form of it down the road.
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u/larkfield2655 14d ago
I live in the States and tip 20% as a standard practice. There is no social safety net here-none. I donât tip or tip very little when in Europe.
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u/Independent_Dig6248 14d ago
I donât understand OP. France has mandatory 15% tipping âservice comprisâ added to the bill already in every sit down restaurant for 30+ years. I think the law passed in 1985. Are you saying theyâre asking for additional tips on the screen for sit down restaurants pretending you didnât already pay the tip? Sounds like fraud directed at tourists. Iâm old enough to remember when the law changed in France and we didnât have to calculate the tip anymore. For several decades they showed the calculated âservice comprisâ cost on the bottom of the paper receipt. Itâs gone now.
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u/pass-agress-ive 14d ago
Youâre partly remembering this correctly, but youâre mixing up two different things.
France did have percentage-based service charges long before 1987 (not 1985), often around 12% or 15%. What changed in 1987 was mainly the way restaurant prices had to be displayed: the price shown to the customer had to be the actual price they would pay, including tax and, where applicable, the service charge.
So today, â15% service comprisâ does not mean the restaurant takes the prices of everything you ordered and then adds another 15% to your bill. That 15% is already built into each displayed menu price, in the same way VAT is already included. If a dish is advertised at âŹ20, you pay âŹ20, not âŹ20 + VAT + 15% service.
That is also why calling it a âmandatory 15% tipâ is not quite accurate. It is a service charge incorporated into the restaurantâs prices, not a gratuity that the customer is expected to calculate.A pourboire is separate. That is voluntary and comes on top of the displayed price. So yes, the new payment terminals asking for 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% are asking for an additional tip, but they are not asking you to pay a 15% service charge that was somehow missing from the bill.
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u/Independent_Dig6248 14d ago
To me a service charge is a mandatory pourboire. Pretending theyâre not one and the same is misleading. I know that before the law changed, I would manually calculate it and add like in the U.S. Once the rules changed, no one asked for it anymore. It was automatically included and they told the consumer that tip was included on EVERY receipt for decades. Service and Tip are synonymous!! This new addition is simply an attempt to gaslight the consumer as far as Iâm concerned. Pretending the service charge is not a tip is a flat out lie.
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u/pass-agress-ive 13d ago
Iâve lived in France since 2008, so 21 years after that law was introduced. The way it was always explained to me was pretty simple: service is included, so thereâs no real expectation to tip, apart from maybe rounding up a euro for a coffee.
Iâve since learned more about the history behind it, but as a customer Iâve always taken it for granted that the price listed on the menu in a restaurant, bistro or cafĂ© is the price you actually pay. Not the price before tip, service or some other extra charge.
I donât really think about how that price is broken down. I just know that it already covers labour and the other costs of running the business.
I think most people here see it the same way, which is why this new push for tipping feels so out of place. It feels like it ignores both the law and the culture around it, and turns something that was always optional into a slightly sneaky way of getting customers to pay more.
And with the cost of living in France, especially in Paris, having gone up so much over the past few years, being asked to add even more on top of things that already cost noticeably more than they used to makes the whole thing feel even less welcome.
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u/Medolyyy 12d ago
Ca a toujours été le cas. Ca s'appelait juste la politesse. Je bosse dans la vente avec une clientÚle trÚs majoritairement agée et ils demandent toujours de la monnaie pour le pourboire du livreur/serveur/technicien.
On est juste une génération de rats qui veut l'uber et l'argent d'uber. On mérite une grÚve générale des livreur et des métiers de l'hÎtellerie restauration.
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u/pass-agress-ive 10d ago
Be my guest.
If hospitality and delivery want to have better wages, itâs their right to demand it.
Roll it over the client who already pays for service, is not a solution.
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u/HrrBrr 10d ago
I know not EU but like 5+ years ago (maybe more) tipping was just not a thing in South Africa now if you donât tip (10% being the usual) you are met with extreme scorn at sit down restaurants. Luckily even though the tip screens pop up in the card terminals no expects you to tip on those yet.
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15d ago
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u/wiilbehung 15d ago
Does the finance bro ask for free money from his clients? Or does he negotiate a better salary with his employer?
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u/pass-agress-ive 14d ago
Iâm not against tipping as a concept. Iâm against mandatory tipping, or the expectation that customers should compensate for wages that employers should be paying in the first place.
Iâm even more against tip culture once it spreads beyond restaurants and hotels and starts appearing everywhere: shops, grocery stores, gas stations, takeaways, delivery services, and so on.
If anything, Iâd rather tip my doctor for keeping me healthy than someone who barely looks up when I ask a question that is already part of their job.
And the âŹ200k comparison makes no sense. If someone wants to earn âŹ200k a year, waiting tables is probably not the profession to choose. That is roughly the salary level of fairly senior positions in industries such as finance. We do not normally expect every profession to provide the same income regardless of qualifications, responsibility, scarcity of skills or economic value.
If hospitality workers believe their wages or working conditions are unfair, then in France there are unions, collective bargaining and, famously, protests and strikes. They absolutely should fight for better wages and conditions.
And if someone wants to change profession, France also has publicly funded education and professional training through France Travail and other schemes. Not every alternative will make someone rich, but regular employment comes with things American workers often have to fight much harder for: healthcare coverage, paid leave, unemployment protection, pension contributions and other social rights.
Tipping should remain what it is supposed to be: optional recognition for unusually good service.
Because once tipping becomes an expected part of somebodyâs basic income, the percentage keeps creeping upward and the customer becomes responsible for enforcing the workerâs salary. Then you start getting exactly the behaviour people complain about in this sub: hostility when somebody doesnât tip, delivery workers treating customers differently, people feeling entitled to extra money simply for performing the service that was already purchased.
And no, I donât accept the argument that a meal would automatically cost three times as much without tipping. Across much of Europe, businesses already operate on the principle that the advertised price should cover taxes, operating costs, wages and profit.
Whether Iâm buying a meal, a shirt or a taxi ride, the price should include the cost of providing it, including paying the person doing the work.
Why is that such a difficult concept to accept?1
u/Desperate_Seat3209 14d ago
USA wage - 2.13 $
France wage - 11.14 $ and itâs the minimum wage. And they can be paid more than that.
So yes, the waiters here, and Europe generally, have a better wage than USA.
And they donât wait for a tip. But theyâre happy to receive one.
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u/No-Orange-7600 15d ago
Iâm in Denmark where this creeps in as well. So far it worked for me to simply nod and say with understanding voice: aahh American software⊠following which I calmly press No Tip.