One of my favourite movie scenes kicks off Quentin Tarantino’s ’Reservoir Dogs’. A group of bank robbers are ready to pay for breakfast in a diner but one of them, Mr Pink, played by Steve Buscemi, refuses to leave a tip, stating that he doesn’t “believe in it”. The group goes on to debate the pros and cons of tipping before Mr Pink is pressured by the others into leaving some cash for their server. It is a great piece of writing that Buscemi later confirmed is “pretty much exactly how Tarantino feels about tipping”. In the US, it is not so much a question of “to tip or not to tip?” but rather “how much to tip?”, or – in my case – “how small a tip can I get away with?”, especially now that establishments are harnessing technology to extract larger tips from customers, but more on that later.

My experience of tipping in the........

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