The Tipping Point

Don’t call it a bribe : how the occasional well-targeted, slightly excessive gratuity can change your life.

- Dwight Garner

No one likes tipping. It’s a social tax that afflicts us when eating out and makes us feel, at hotels, like a villain for not having five-dollar bills on tap to hand anyone who so much as nods in our direction. The liveliest contemporary case against tipping appears in Reservoir Dogs, the Quentin Tarantino movie. Before a jewel heist, eight men are finishing breakfast at a Los Angeles diner. One of them, Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), won’t throw in a buck for the waitress. “I don’t tip,” he says. Collective outrage ensues. Waitresses are just doing their jobs, he says. If they don’t like their pay, they can work somewhere else. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) tells Mr. Pink he has no idea what he’s talking about. Waitressing is hard. Mr. Pink scornfully replies—and no one does scorn like Buscemi—“So is working at McDonald’s, but you don’t feel the need to tip them, do ya? Why not? They’re serving you food. But no, society says don’t tip these guys over here, but tip these guys over here. That’s bullshit.” The scene ends shortly after Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) declares, “He’s convinced me. Gimme my dollar back.”