Reader's Digest Taiwan Ebook Sampler June 2023

22 2023年6月號 讀者文摘 I recently attended a wedding in Canada, in the countryside, and guests were provided with a car and driver for the 90-minute journey into the hills. That was exciting: A private car! I could pretend I was rich! Since I’m not, though, I had no idea how much this trip actually cost. As a result, when our driver picked us back up at midnight, I secretly fretted all the way home about tipping him. I fished around nervously in my purse and realised that all I had was a $100 note, which I was keeping for an emergency. I had nothing smaller. Ack! I couldn’t not tip him, and I had nothing else to offer but two chocolates from the wedding. So, I could tip high—or spectacularly low. I defaulted to high and surrendered the money asmy two kids and I clambered out. I was, I confess, too tipsy to think through the idea of asking for change. In my defence, I wouldn’t have known the maths, anyway. The whole matter of tipping has long been a source of awkward interactions— and, for some t ravel lers, mi ld anx iet y—throughout the world. Tipping customs vary wildly from country to country. A friend in Rome tells me that Italians get offended by excessive gratuities. “Leaving a big tip is considered vulgar,” she insists. “I’ve had Italian friends make me take money back.” Uh-oh. Our driver had said he was half-Greek and half-Lebanese. If for some reason the Italian attitude applied to Greeks or Lebanese, my big tip might have left him offended and me missing my emergency cash. When people take with them their own expectations about tipping as they roam the world, it generates no small amount of confusion. Norwegians, who come froma culture where wages are high and tips are low, could burn through Las Vegas leaving a trail of outrage with their tiny offerings. Meanwhile, notoriously high- tipping Americans might insult everyone in Tokyo because good service in Japan is a matter of honour, as in: “How dare you suggest I be rewarded for handing you a plate of sashimi without dropping it in your lap?” We’re all in an embarrassed mess because there’s no consistent logic to any of this. None! Tipping began, as far as we know, in Tudor England, with aristocrats swann i ng about one anot her’s country homes, paying the servants extra for helping them put on their ruffs. Hundreds of years later, the tradition has become totally arbitrary. A 2016 study from Cornell University, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, found that people are twice as likely to tip a supermarket delivery person than a supermarket store worker, and roughly twice as likely to tip a waiter than a fast-food restaurant worker. Why is that? A paid job is a paid job, right? The supermarket deliverer is paid to deliver and the supermarket store worker is paid for in-store work. So tipping one and not the other only makes sense in terms of what has become customary.