It seems the best tippers in New York are… New Yorkers.

From Village Voice:

New Yorkers are the best tippers on earth. They’ve been aware of the minimum dollar-a-drink rule ever since they got their first fake ID on West 4th Street. Some don’t like it, but most know it. And most do it.

Tipping in the UK is still a voluntary thing, where we tip either because the service was out-standing or because we don’t want to look cheap. In New York tipping forms an essential part of a person’s income - a fact understood by the worker and her boss. (And, I’ll wager, the average New Yorker):

Cocktail waitresses, unlike waitresses and bartenders, usually don’t even get a piddling shift pay. As far as my manager is concerned, there is a direct correlation between my income and my ability to hustle. There are no guarantees, he once told me, but if you really work your ass off you can succeed here. And if you make $37 one night . . . hey, shit happens.

I’ve probably had some of the best service of my life in New York. I’ve definitely had the worst. I felt happy to tip at just over 15% for the former (in England I’ll make it about 10% normally) but for the latter I resented paying the bill let alone paying over the odds. I flat refuse to pay over the asking price for service that deserved a slap round the face rather than a gratuity. Would a New Yorker have tipped regardless?

Foreigners often don’t understand the American way with tipping. The waitress staff have their own way to deal with this problem:

Without the option of auto-gratuity they’d have in tonier restaurants, some servers resort to drastic measures. On one of my first days working at a little tourist hot spot of a jazz club, a bartender I used to work with let me in on a little secret. “Overcharge whenever possible,” she cautioned. “If you hear a weird accent, if you can just tell by the look in their eye, the beer is eight bucks rather than six. You keep the extra two—they’ll never know.”

She’s right. Fumbling drunk people in a strange, crowded setting will almost always fork over whatever money you ask for. “Aida,” one of my former co-workers, overcharged all the time. “That’s $118,” she announced one Friday night, without so much as a stutter, to three toasted, cavorting Floridian lushes she “had a bad feeling about.” The real amount was $98. A silicone-breasted blonde handed over her card, not even asking for a printout. Sure enough, the gratuity line on the charge slip later read $5, but Aida just shrugged. “I took care of the tip,” she said. “Works every time.”

We have been warned, methinks…