Casually Jotting This Tip Down…

I recently went on my first overseas vacation ever, to Greece, and had an absolute blast. I saw ruins, explored cities, ate exotic food… and that’s where the interesting part of the trip came from.

I was with my in-laws and my wife, and naturally, we went to restaurants whenever we were hungry. Having lived in North America for my entire life, I had a certain expectation of restaurants: you go in, peruse the menu, place your order, get your food, eat it, pay, tip, and go on your way. I already knew that European countries did not generally participate in tipping culture due to paying their servers proper wages, but I didn’t understand how that fundamentally altered the entire business interaction.

Whenever we finished eating, we would chill out with the dishes that we were very obviously done with, chat for a bit, and wait for the bill.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

This happened at every restaurant we went to: after we were done and ready to pay and leave, we would end up waiting twenty or thirty minutes to actually get the bill and pay. We absolutely could not figure it out! The servers seemed to be so attentive to everyone else in the restaurants, the locals, but for the obvious group of tourists, we were just left to wait, and wait, and wait! It was actually getting frustrating!

I finally figured it out on the last day of our trip, watching the locals.

When the locals finished their meals, they absolutely would not pay immediately. Instead, they would sit and chat, and just sort of… hang out. They would pay when they were ready to leave, and no one would hustle them out of there. Because the servers weren’t working for pennies and dependent on tips, they had no reason to move people along and turn the tables over. Everyone was allowed to move at their own pace, pay when they were ready to pay, and leave when they were ready to leave. The servers would expect the customers to approach or signal them that they were done, rather than checking in every few minutes to get things moving.

What a novel experience. I wish we had figured it out sooner.