Ahem…one of the major legal exports.

Let me answer this fascinating question in the form of a short play.

THE SCENE: An underground physics lab full of impressive looking scientific equipment which beeps and pings in a seemingly random fashion. Test tubes bubble, oscillators oscillate etc. Two white coated scientists, THREEPGOOD and GARCIA are preparing an unspecified experiment.

THREEPGOOD: I say old boy, did you catch the cricket yesterday – that Khan fellow was smashing them out of the park, touch of Bradman about him.

GARCIA: No chance, I had to go to Ikea with the wife to look for more bloody light fittings.

THREEPGOOD: Again? I thought you went last week, and the week before that?

GARCIA: I did! We got the new towel rack OK but the lights we got had some pieces missing – I’m sure they leave some out on purpose. If only there was some way of getting back at them – I can’t go back there again next week…I, I just can’t …(begins softly weeping into a test tube and walks out of room).

THREEPGOOD: Hate to see a chap down in the dumps like that…if only we could use our super high beam VCOL pulse modulator as a tight field positron disruption unit…(rubs chin in meaningful way)

Two weeks later. GARCIA is a wreck of his former self – dishevelled and with sunken eyes. He listlessly twiddles a few knobs on the flux capacitor but his heart’s not in it.

GARCIA: Did you see the news about those huge earthquakes in Haiti and Chile?

THREEPGOOD: Oh crikey.

So in summary, yes the two things may very well be connected..

There are serious discrepancies in tipping etiquette from country to country. Countries seeped in western capitalist dogma seem to be very much pro-tipping, the USA in particular, where you are expected to tip absolutely everybody and in fact it is very difficult to walk down the street without random people thrusting dollar notes at you. In countries where the workers actually get paid the practise is less prevalent.

However I think there is a need for a set of international guidelines based on my personal ‘reverse tipping system’. It’s very simple – if someone provides a service above the call of duty you can bung them 10- 15%, but if they do a bad job they have to give you a discount of the same amount. And if they do a really bad job, punch them in the face.