BBC Learnings · Section 10

The art of tipping

Sam, how do you feel about tipping? Tipping – you mean giving extra money to people

Level: B1 · 117 sentences

Transcript

  1. Sam, how do you feel about tipping?
  2. Tipping – you mean giving extra money to people
  3. in certain jobs for doing their jobs?
  4. Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that.
  5. But yes, it's giving money to waiters and waitresses,
  6. hairdressers, taxi drivers – money that's more than the actual bill?
  7. It's a nightmare.
  8. I never know who to tip,
  9. how to tip, by cash or by card,
  10. how much to tip, is it 10, 12.5,
  11. 20% or even if I should tip
  12. at all because in some places a service charge
  13. is automatically added to the bill.
  14. Yes, tipping is a really complicated issue
  15. which we'll be looking at in this programme.
  16. But to start with, a question.
  17. What is the biggest tip that we know that somebody gave?
  18. Is it a $10,000?
  19. Is it b $250,000?
  20. Or is it c $3,000,000?
  21. What do you think, Sam?
  22. I'm going to go for $250,000.
  23. OK. Well, we'll find out if you're right
  24. at the end of the programme.
  25. Now, back to the topic of tipping
  26. and in particular tipping people who work in restaurants.
  27. William Beckett runs a number of restaurants
  28. and he recently appeared on the BBC Food Programme.
  29. He was asked about his view of tipping.
  30. Now, as we hear him, listen out for this information.
  31. In how many cities does he say he currently has restaurants?
  32. It is cultural, i.e.
  33. it differs from place to place.
  34. I mean, we have restaurants in London,
  35. We have a restaurant in Manchester.
  36. We're also opening a restaurant in New York.
  37. And those three cities have quite different attitudes to tipping.
  38. In London, the norm is it's there, it's on your bill.
  39. That's not the norm, for example, in Manchester.
  40. And it's not the norm in New York
  41. where we're going to open a restaurant later this year.
  42. So first, how many cities does he currently have restaurants in?
  43. That would be to London and Manchester.
  44. He's going to open one in New York later
  45. in the year, but it's not open yet.
  46. And what does he say about tipping?
  47. Well, he says that it's very cultural.
  48. What is the norm in one city
  49. is not necessarily the norm in another.
  50. The norm is an expression that means,
  51. as you might guess, what is normal, what is usual.
  52. So in London, for example, a service charge is usually
  53. added to the bill, but in Manchester it isn't.
  54. So the policy in London and Manchester differs,
  55. which means, again, as you might guess, it's different.
  56. There's another short expression that he
  57. used that I'd like to highlight.
  58. Before he talks about how the policies differ, he says IE.
  59. These two letters stand for the Latin phrase id est.
  60. Now we never say id est
  61. but we do write and say ie.
  62. We use it to show that what comes next
  63. is using different words to say
  64. what we have just said or written.
  65. So he says about tipping it's cultural ie
  66. it differs from place to place.
  67. It's cultural is a more general statement and it differs from place
  68. to place is a more specific definition of what he means.
  69. So, one difference is that in some places
  70. people prefer an automatic service charge
  71. so that they don't have to think
  72. about or try to calculate a tip.
  73. But in other places people hate that.
  74. They want to decide who and how much to tip themselves.
  75. But do people actually make use
  76. of that freedom not to tip?
  77. Here's William Beckett again and this time he's talking about New York.
  78. New York, exactly the same.
  79. There's a tacit pressure to tip,
  80. but theoretically you just stand up and walk out.
  81. You don't.
  82. Everybody tips 20% or there is a theory of an option.
  83. But people like that. So he
  84. says there is a tacit pressure to tip.
  85. What does he mean by that?
  86. Something that is tacit is not spoken,
  87. not said. Yes, this is still understood.
  88. So in New York, no one tells
  89. you that you have to tip,
  90. but everyone knows that you have to.
  91. And because there's no service charge on the bill
  92. and no one tells you what to tip,
  93. you could just walk out after paying.
  94. He says that's theoretically possible.
  95. That means although it may be possible,
  96. it's actually very unlikely because of the tacit
  97. pressure and the way we behave.
  98. But he does say people like that freedom not to tip,
  99. even if they don't actually use that freedom.
  100. Right, nearly vocabulary time
  101. but first let's have the answer to our question.
  102. Now, Sam, what is the biggest tip we know someone gave?
  103. I thought £250,000.
  104. Well, it was actually, believe it or not,
  105. a whopping three million US dollars.
  106. Yes. Now, on with today's vocabulary review.
  107. Right, so we've been talking about tipping,
  108. the practice of giving extra money
  109. to, for example, waitresses and waiters.
  110. To differ from is a verb
  111. which means to be different from.
  112. The norm is what is usual or normal.
  113. IE is a short form of a Latin expression
  114. and it means in other words.
  115. Something that is tacit is not said but is nevertheless understood.
  116. And if something is theoretically possible it can be done
  117. but for different reasons it probably won't be.