Thumbs down to tipping in restaurants. A report in a Sydney newspaper this week says the day of the standard restaurant ‘dinner for two’ at a posh city restaurant is now $100 or more. Included in the reviewer’s costings is a 10 per cent tip – eg, a $1000 dinner means an obligatory $100 tip. For what? For the waiter just doing his or her job and already getting various pay loadings? In the US, the tip appears on the bill as a matter of routine 10 or 15 per cent whether the food and service have been stellar or pathetic. We are getting to that stage now in Australia, apparently.

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