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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9153373" data-attributes="member: 18">It's a backronym therefore there is a 98% chance it's completely and totally false and made up by some raconteur (often in the early through mid 20th century). Almost all backronyms are false, very very few exceptions. I can't offhand think of a single exception. The actual origin is unclear but the word appears first in English as being associated with "giving" when it's used in the 1600s to mean "tip" as in the sense of tell someone some useful-to-them semi-secret information (i.e. that the cops are coming, or which horse to bet on or whatever). Then by the 1700s it means "gratuity for service", which is probably an evolution from the information-tip sense. Before that? Who knows, but it's thought to be Thieves Cant related (as a surprising number of English words are).Personally I tip 10-20% depending on the nature of the service in the UK, and 20% on food service in the US, because US food service workers are underpaid deliberately (whereas in the UK they are not). This means I tip more than most by UK standards. I hate situations where you're supposed to tip but it's unclear how much or who or when or how, which is often the case with hotels and the like, they trigger the hell out of my ADHD-related anxiety (which is otherwise rarely seen). Unfortunately the US seems to have more situations where you're supposed to tip than the UK - but I least I got sit-down or delivery food service locked down.I've almost never reduced a tip for service in the US, it really has to be clearly intentionally crappy service from the actual wait staffer and at an expensive restaurant for me to consider reducing a tip. Some poor waitress as a 24-hour breakfast place or something, I don't care if she's slow or inept, I'm not not tipping her.I agree, it's the absolute killer of places I like.Unfortunately in London there's been this recurrent pattern, for like, 15+ years, where a new restaurant will open, and it'll be excellent, like undeniably great. For six months, sometimes a year. Then the quality slips - usually either the ingredients get worse, or they get much lazier about putting them together. This applies to high and low end ones. And it can even apply to chains - when Papa John's came over here to the UK, initially they imported US ingredients, and held franchisees to very high standards - I forget how long that lasted, like between 2 and 5 years maybe, and then the quality just dropped, and it's never come back up. It's sad because whilst Papa Johns isn't remotely as good as [local pizza place] in the US, it was better than the vast majority of UK pizza places and no longer really is (which is sad, because it's a low bar).This doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it does happen like, 50% or more of the time I'd say.There are also of course restaurants that are just consistently inconsistent and that's really annoying - we had a really good Chinese takeaway, but it was actually only really good on certain nights - it seemed like they had a "good chef" and "bad chef" or something. And whilst we tried to only order on the "good" nights, even then it wasn't 100% so that kind of sucked.Of course there are some restaurants that come in sucking and keep sucking and you have no idea why anyone goes to them - Taco Bell in the UK for example, is just inedible.</blockquote>

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