Back in 1972, we traveled to Italy. While it seemed customary to round prices up relatively meaningless amounts (back then, there were a ghastly number of Italian Lira to the US buck). At the end of a transaction, they would give us trivial gifts - a piece of hard candy, a pencil, a low denomination postage stamp and so on. What nice people to behave this way. I'm not sure when, but afterwards I found out that it was because of a shortage of change and this was compensation for the overcharge of rounding off.

That said, this week for the first time in a really long time, I had two merchants (an Italian/Mexican pizzeria and a Thai restaurant) shortchange me. The first blamed it on not being familiar with their own menu, the second on poor hearing (but the second, after putting an extra drink on my bill - a $2.50 bottle of water - gave back $3 and asked if that was OK.

One of my personal peeves is the growing practice of "suggesting" amounts for restaurant tips on screens and on bills. They are now politely starting at 18% or 20% and then a couple of additional notches (say 25% and 30%). OK, that's not the problem (though its annoying), it comes from the growing number of them who are including sales tax (nearly 9% in NYC) in the total before applying the chosen percentage. In my opinion, a tip should be calculated on the service, not the tax. In my case, (because I am of a generation who can multiply without using a calculator) doing this reduces the percentage of the tip, rather than increases it as I object to being taken for a fool.

I am now seeing tip cups on every horizontal surface - bakery counters, supermarket checkout lines, fast food checkouts and so on. The US fixation on tipping is a legacy of when restaurant workers made almost nothing in wages. To be honest, as minimum wages rise enough to guaranty a "living wage", I am less inclined to give a significant tip on a meal whose price has increased to accommodate that increased cost of paying more to the server (unless they offer additional benefit over and above doing their job well - or otherwise. The Europeans, Australians, Chinese et al have it right - the cost of a meal listed on a menu includes any "service charges" and the total is, well, the total paid. It is up to the restauranteur to pay and train his employees well enough that customers continue to return and, by law, their menus should be posted next to their door or on their window where potential customers can see them (next to their Health Department sanitary rating). It's high time that the US joins the rest of the developed world.

Jeff