The decline of tipping

It is no longer always possible to leave a restaurant tip and feel like a gentleman, the columnist writes. Several establishments have recently refused to add a tip to the bill when the customer presents a credit card. Faced with losing the money or becoming entangled with the tax authorities, they appear to prefer losing the tip.

The customer may save a few euros and leave with a clear conscience. But leaving a restaurant after good service without tipping affects the columnist emotionally, because it marks the disappearance of another outdated custom. The practical solution is simple: carry cash. Yet that, the writer jokes, makes a person look either suspicious or impossibly old-fashioned.

Tipping once reached across a wide range of professions in Spain, from gas delivery workers and undertakers to cloakroom attendants and theater ushers. Now, the columnist says, only restaurants remain, and perhaps not for long.

The piece acknowledges that not everyone will mourn its disappearance, especially those who left insulting handfuls of small change. But tipping also allowed people to be generous by choice rather than obligation. In the columnist’s view, it revealed something about the person giving it and put a final mark on a good meal, a setting where friendships grow, romances begin and business is concluded.