Tipping

History of Tipping

The origins of the practice of tipping for services rendered has been contested in the literature.

A folk explanation states that in 18th-century English pubs and coffeehouses, patrons would attach coins to notes for the waiter “To Insure Promptness” (TIP).

This practice was then extended to the placement of brown boxes on the counters of pubs and coffeehouses. Customers who placed coins in the boxes were served immediately. In this early version of tipping, the tip was provided prior to the completion of the service as an incentive for it to be performed quickly.

Greta Foff Paules traces the linguistic origins of tips, noting that “tip” derives from stipend and the Latin stips, which means gift. The tip was historically presented as a gift for services. Gerald Mars and Michael Nicod note that “like the universal gift, the tip is received for services normally expected, but can never be demanded … something given—service—must typically be returned with something of equivalent value—a tip.” The conceptualization of the tip as a gift was so prevalent in the early 20th century that many courts declared antitipping laws unconstitutional, as they interfered with the common-law right to give gifts.

However, many sociologists have found that the ritual of tipping differs significantly from the idea of a universal gift exchange; specifically, the exchange of gifts demands that what is given is reciprocated with something of equal value. Often, the worker is not freely or voluntarily giving services to the customer, as the delivery of service is part of the formal duty of the server. Paules instead notes that a more appropriate historical origin of tips comes from its synonym gratuity. As she notes, “for fulfilling duties that she/he has explicitly contracted to perform and for which she/he is already paid by another party, the waitress receives from the customer a tip, a gratuity.”

Over the past century, tipping has become a customary practice in the United States. However, this is not the case in other countries. Tipping practices differ throughout the world in terms of appropriateness to tip, amount to tip, and when to tip. Sociologists have found that workers who depend on tips for their livelihood develop strategies for manipulating customers into tipping and for maximizing the chances that they will earn the largest tips possible.

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