Tipping: Cash, Card, and Culture

Another thing I learned from the trip last month is on tipping. Different cultures have different views on tipping.

I am from Indonesia where we don’t usually give tips in restaurants. But we perhaps give tips on other things on certain context such as administrative matters or service such as massage. I have been in Singapore for almost half of my life. So I am not that used to it anymore.

We went to Spain last year where tipping culture is also not that strong. So it was a shock that in Germany we even met waiter who specifically say that the price is not including tipping. We began to give tips in the meals. I tried to use the same standard as Singapore which is 10% of service charge. So I tried to gave 10% and then rounded up to the nearest integer.

However, as the days went by, I started to use credit card to avoid the possibility of not having enough cash that can last until the end of the trip. That is where the challenge came. When we pay using credit card, that means we have to prepare a small amount of cash for the tip. This is different than cash where we just need to indicate how much we expect back from the cash that we gave. Sometimes I don’t have small notes and so I didn’t give tips. So I think tipping is easier done when we deal with cash.

Habit is hard to change. Our last destination was Spain and on my first night I still gave tips as it feels usual to give one. Whereas when I compare to Singapore, we even still get the small coins when we pay to taxi.

I guess different cultures have their own views on tip. Some may consider as a requirement, some may consider it as normal, some may consider as rude or even contra to the meritocracy point of view. And we are human who may not be able to understand all cultures. So do our best, but it is ok to make mistake.