maleficent

A few years back, I had gone to a restaurant in the UK with some colleagues. This was a non-tipping establishment. There was an episode with me and a glass of water that to this day, they still find funny as hell. But it's an example of tipping gives me better service, as opposed to a flat rate for the employee.

I had asked for a glass of ice water, in addition to the 4 bottles of wine we had already ordered, so we weren't being cheap.

I got a glass of water that was lukewarm.
I asked for ice in it.
He takes the glass back to the kitchen and it comes back with ONE small ice cube in it.
(I'm still being polite at this point because it's amusing the hell out of me)
I asked for a bowl of ice, because I said that I wanted the water very chilled.
He takes my glass back to the kitchen again, now I'm pretty sure he's spitting in the water, and returns it to me with a handful of ice in it.
I declined to drink it...

If this was at a restaurant in the states, I could show my displeasure in the tip, I really had no other recourse except complaining to the manager, who franky didn't care cause we were Americans and probably didn't expect to see us again (we were in the UK for 8 more weeks, ate out every night, just not at his restaurant)

Tipping for service I have no objection to...

However if I were to go into a clothing store, also staffed by minimum wage employees, who do work pretty hard, and this person has assisted me, it wouldn't cross anyone's mind that this person should be tipped, so why is it just food service workers that tipping is expected?

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