Mark Palmer on tips being added to the bill - "it's just not British"

We’re in a terrible muddle on the tipping front. And it’s getting worse by the day, in part because no one – except, perhaps, Jacob Rees-Mogg – carries cash about his or her person.

This means we are careering down the American route whereby a whole raft of businesses that in the old days never would have expected tips, now add gratuity prompts on their card payment machines. It’s a tyranny of sorts.

Contactless payment company SumUp reports that the number of firms applying a suggested tip prompt – normally 10%, 15% or 20% – just before you tap the machine has risen by over a third in the past two years.

Who knows where the money goes, but, for sure, it causes hideous embarrassment.

Frankly, it’s just not British. We don’t like feeling coerced or trapped, but at the same time we don’t want to come across as stingy.

So, most likely, we fudge it by opting for 10% – but resent it. The transaction leaves a nasty taste.

The young tell me that even some high street coffee shops now give tipping prompts on their machines, just as they do in America.

I consulted my daughter and son-in-law on this vexing issue. "Tipping is a nice gesture to acknowledge good service," said Kyle. "But I don’t think it should be an expectation."

But, of course, that is the problem – it is an expectation. Worst of all is when a restaurant adds a 12.5% service charge and then expects you to come up with a further tip.

I asked Kyle if he tips Uber Eats or any other company that delivers food to his door.

"I know there is an option but for the most part, I don’t. There just isn’t much personal involvement. Rightly or wrongly, I feel like I’m tipping the company and not the individual who makes the delivery.

"I could keep a jar of pound coins by the door – but who does that?" 

Well, I do, actually. Not in a jar but in a little biscuit tin. Comes in handy. 

I give the friendly delivery man from our favourite Indian takeaway £3 on an order costing £28-£32. He’s always grateful and I feel good about it, too.

Whenever the question of tipping comes up with my children, I remind them of the excruciating assignment I was once given by a senior editor on a national newspaper.

I was sent to New York, where for the first 24 hours I was not allowed to tip anyone and for the following 24 hours I was told to tip all and sundry generously. The idea, obviously, was to note how differently I was treated, and the answer was… a lot.

Indeed, it was obvious that once word spread in the hotel where I tipped no one, I was a man to be avoided – a pariah – whereas in the second hotel where I flashed the cash, I was everyone’s friend amid much bowing and scraping.

The best kind of tipping in the UK is, sadly, almost extinct. I’m referring to the practice in a pub of asking the bartender, "Can I get you one?" Or, "One for yourself?" To which the answer normally is something along the lines of, "Well, thank you, that’s very kind."

The problem is that the cashless society in which we now live makes this age-old gesture unnecessarily complicated.

The bartender can add what might have been spent on a drink to the card payment but how can this be extracted to cash to put in their own pocket?

It’s another example of technology getting in the way of decent human interaction – of which we desperately need more, not less.