US-style tipping is destroying France’s famous café culture

If you are looking for a passage of English literature that best describes the simple joys of life in France, try the first chapter of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of being a struggling writer in Paris in the 1920s. 

While the city can be extremely harsh and money is hard to come by, the message is clear: refreshment and an uplifting atmosphere will get you through. 

The young Ernest immediately finds both in a café on the Place Saint-Michel, across the River Seine from Notre-Dame Cathedral, where he first orders a soothing café au lait.

A century on, I regularly do the same, in exactly the same place. 

Parisian hospitality is eternal, and its rituals are hugely reassuring. 

There is life-affirming chatter, light pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a constant sense of movement. 

Unlike Hemingway, I don’t drink alcohol but whatever you order, you will likely experience the same joie de vivre because you are in a place of buzzing humanity.

The waiters might be arrogant, not to say rude at times, but decorum is all part of the choreography. 

This is why it is so shocking to now see them forced to act like traders on Wall Street arguing over a commission. 

My usual exuberance in my favourite Place Saint-Michel café took a turn for the worse on my last visit, and it was all down to settling up. 

There is usually a delightful ritual to it: a paper bill is delivered to your table, you deal with it unfussily, and then depart. 

I sometimes leave a few coins, but service compris – the standard gratuity of around 15% of the total price – is still the convention in France, so adding anything more is unnecessary. 

Waiters have even been known to take offence at overpayment, saying they do not expect charity.

Not so nowadays. As in Britain, multiple cafés, restaurants and other businesses across France are adopting the highly aggressive tipping culture of the US, and an extra charge of up to 30% is now routinely “suggested”. 

The figure appears on the card payment machine, which is held in front of you by a member of staff. 

It can feel as if he or she is monitoring, and indeed testing, your generosity, as they hover above your shoulders, squinting at the screen. 

In this sense, the extra is not really being “suggested”, it is recommended.

If you donate the lowest figure – usually 10% – you feel like a terrible person.

This feeling only diminishes slightly as you move up the percentages (do not even try to leave nothing!). Even the full 30% can feel mean because – yes – there is also an option to ignore the limits and add your own amount.

Now visitors to an already massively overpriced café get the full “give me everything you’ve got” treatment, as the brutality of bottom-line capitalism replaces any sense of cheery relaxation.

There were plenty of people negotiating with waiters in Place Saint-Michel, as if they were trying to cap an already inflated mortgage rate.

There is no fiscal constraint whatsoever – clients are reduced to compliant fools, as a culture once renowned for placing civilised relations above easy cash changes for the worse. Passive intimidation replaces genuine generosity, and – ultimately – everybody is poorer for it.