If we’re now such snowflakes we can’t confront an underperforming server, maybe we really do belong in Europe. Photo by Stephanie Pilick/picture alliance via Getty Images

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Now that we’re going to be joining Europe in some capacity, I’m thinking of buying a beret. Is there a more sophisticated un-American look? Amazon offers a wide choice, though all made in China, of course, not France. For 10 times the Amazon price you can get water-repellent ones made in the Basque region of Spain. I wonder if they can add ear muffs for Canadian winters?

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Or maybe I’ll get a kilt. Amazon has those, too, cotton-polyester ones starting at under $20, though for a regulation eight-yard kilt in the Watson tartan, handcrafted in Scotland to my exact measurements, we’re looking at $899.

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I begin to see that Europe may be expensive — though you’ve got to think 100 per cent worsted wool will be better in our Canadian winters than cotton-polyester.

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I wonder if we’ll still have tipping after we get associate status with Europe. Many EU countries don’t have tipping. Or rather they have it but the tip is built-in, with 15 per cent or so automatically added to the bill. You pay but you don’t have a choice, which lots of people think is the problem with the EU itself. The Brits who voted to leave certainly do. Also the Danes, who at first voted against the Maastricht Treaty but were browbeaten into endorsing it second referendum around.

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In some places in Europe they give you the chance to add even more to your bill, though the options are small single-digit percentages, given you’ve already given. These days in this country, the lowest option credit card readers offer is often 18 per cent, neither the traditional 15 per cent nor whatever the HST produces, which became traditional soon after we got HST, since it makes calculating easy. (Once upon a time, long ago though not far away, the traditional tipping percentage was 10.)

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Credit card terminals do give you the option of “other,” which you can put at zero. During COVID I would tip the cashier in the pizza joint even though I was just picking up an order I’d phoned in. I figured they were taking a chance by showing up at work. As “front-line workers” they deserved more recognition than simply the regular early-evening banging of pots and pans. (Did we really live through all that or was it just a nightmare?)

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Now though, with times back to normal, I choose the zero option when I’m just picking things up or a cashier is only handing me something off a shelf. Yes, it’s unfortunate to have to punch zero in with the person standing right there. But you’ll live. It’s your money. They don’t have a right to it. And have they done anything to deserve it?

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I’ve got tipping front of mind because I spent last weekend helping teach 28 Canadian journalists the rudiments of economics, which two active profs and I (a retired prof) have done for the Fraser Institute at least once a year (COVID excepted) for the past 15 years.

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We finish up the sessions with an application: the economics of tipping. We get them to read short articles on tipping and then ask them leading questions about any possible effects on wages, relations between servers and owners, servers and diners or servers and cooks, likely incentive effects, and any other consequences, intended or unintended, they can think of.