Taiwan : The no-tipping culture

One of the first positive culture shocks I encountered in Taiwan had to do with restaurant culture. Everyone eats out, all the time, with an endless variety of restaurants of all kinds, ranging from street dirt-cheap to the most expensive 5 star restaurants (at least in Taipei, in Tainan they’re a little bit harder to find). The way food is being ordered and how you pay for your food was a complete revolution in my way of thinking.

Israel? Here’s a sign I saw today on an Israeli blog – Room404.

It reads : “Hungry? going out for lunch? great! bon appetite. Just don’t forget to leave a tip to the person that served you (at least 10%). Just so you know, the waiters’ wages depends on your generosity. Have a good day and thanks for your attention”.

That pretty much sums how things are when it comes to tipping in Israel. Waiters get paid minimum wage, sometimes not even that, and their whole income depends on the tips they get. It used to be 10% but now if you tip under 12-15% you’re being frowned upon. In this case, the ad was posted in the hi-tech silicon valley area and I think it was meant especially for those who have company coupons for lunch. Yeah, even if your company is paying for your lunch, you’re still expected to tip the waiter. Restaurants in Israel are way more expensive than in Taiwan, but we won’t go into that. Having to tip at least 10% more makes that difference even bigger. I’ll even go as far as saying that for the tip you give in Israel you’ll probably get a decent full-meal in Taiwan. True, in some high-end places in Taiwan a 5-10% tip would be appreciated, but that depends on your satisfaction with the service. If you didn’t like the service in Israel and you didn’t tip, your friends would think your cheap and the waiter would spend the rest of the week telling all his/her friends about the man who didn’t tip without thinking what it was he/she did to deserve not getting a tip. I’m always amazed at the high level of service I get from mid-class restaurants in Taiwan (saying welcome and goodbye, filling the water in your glass, checking that you’re okay), and amazed by the level of annoying nonchalant unfriendliness I get in mid-class restaurants in Israel.

Home delivery is the same. My mom kept giving 20-30 shekels to the delivery boys who carried stuff from the near-by grocery store – 1 block away, which goes beyond the delivery fare she gave the grocery store for about the same amount. It doesn’t matter the the whole delivery could be less than 500 shekels. When she failed to present such a generous tip, the delivery boys would actually made their dissatisfaction known. Fast food is the same. When I was about to tip the Burger King guy in Taiwan (forgive me father, for I have sinned), my Taiwanese friend asked me what I was doing, and when I say I was going to tip the guy, he took the money from my hand and said – don’t need to, it’s his job. Aha. Makes perfect sense to me, so how come it’s different in Israel?

(Just thought of mentioning one of the comments on that Israeli post – “Here’s a tip for you – don’t use that many font styles and sizes in one banner”. )