[DominikR]

> "First of all, tipping someone implicitly puts them in a servile position and says you're off better than them. Secondly, and this is probably the killer, it says that you don't think they would manage without your help."

How do you come to this conclusion? When I tip someone I express my gratitude for the good service to the specific employee of some company that did a great job.

I never thought of it as the person receiving a tip is below me or anything like that and I doubt that this is how most people think about it.

It might be true that people in Japan feel this way about tipping, but your statement was very general as if it is an observation about the very nature of tipping itself.

[_delirium]

That was traditionally the view in parts of Europe as well, although nowadays many people will be happy to accept a tip, especially since there are so many foreign tourists willing to offer one. Some people used to perceive it as an implication that you were in need of charity, i.e. that the reason you'd offer a tip to a waiter but not to an architect for rendering good service is that you didn't respect the waiter as a professional in the same sense that you respected the architect.

Sometimes it's contextual, e.g. in Greece the traditional norms were that tipping young people working at a restaurant as employees was fine, but tipping an owner-operator of a family-run restaurant could offend them, being taken as an implication that you thought they couldn't manage as an independent businessman, and needed a gift. Instead if you particularly liked their service, the socially acceptable way to show it was to either order more things, or return for another meal later; that way you gave them more money but in the form of more business, rather than an outright gift. (Nowadays this is only really an issue if you're Greek, especially a Greek from the same town, where tips, especially large ones, might be taken as having some kind of odd social implication. If you're a foreigner, tips aren't going to offend anyone, and are perceived basically the way North Americans would expect, as a thank-you for particularly good service.)

[6d0debc071]

> How do you come to this conclusion? When I tip someone I express my gratitude for the good service to the specific employee of some company that did a great job.

Maybe so, but presumably you don't tip your doctor regardless of how well they do their job.

[DominikR]

I don't tip a doctor with money (because it is strictly forbidden in Austria), but it's not unusual to give him a small gift (fine chocolate and similar things) and I would definitely do that after an operation if I had one.