American Claims That Europeans Should Tip in the US Because of "Transcendentally Better" Service, Takes Transatlantic Tipping Discourse to Wild New Levels

Ally Perry • Writer and Editor

Sep 25, 2023 7:00 PM EDT

Most online arguments kind of feel like the banging one's head repeatedly against a wall, but few are better at this than tipping discourse. Usually, the whole thing starts when an American server complains on Twitter about serving a table of Europeans who don't tip. People from Europe take issue with this tweet, and list all the ways that tipping at least 20% is stupid. Americans retaliate by insulting stingy Europeans, and then the whole cycle gets repeated several times until everyone is too annoyed to continue.

It's predictable, and nobody comes out of it feeling happy. The one thing it can be relied upon to do is bring out some controversial takes, such as this recent ridiculousness. An American Twitter user claimed that Europeans should be happy to tip in the US because the service was better than Europe, but plenty of Europeans chimed into disagree. Perhaps it's time that we all packed up talking about restaurant tips and went back to arguing about the food itself.