Before I became a restaurant critic, I didn't know the awful truth about tipping - it urgently needs sorting out

British people know, at some level, we’re being fleeced each time we’re shamed into adding extra cash on a dining bill for ‘service’

The tip you might think is going in a server's pocket is probably going elsewhere (AFP/Getty)

Over the bank holiday weekend, as Britain’s hospitality industry continues to thrive, Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, should be applauded loudly for tackling the slippery world of restaurant’s tipping policies.

Because the British people know, at some level, we’re being fleeced each time we’re shamed into adding extra cash on a dining bill for ‘service’. We know by now it rarely reaches the server who went that extra yard to help us, either fully or at all.

But sorting this mess out involves tackling opaqueness and skullduggery from hospitality chains, combined with a vibrant British embarrassment over ‘looking tight’ when that machine is handed over. So we continue to cough up, while restaurants continue to use the money we gave our waiter or waitress to top up abysmal wages throughout their chain and a myriad of other expenses.

You possibly thought as you paid £14 for a pizza that would cost £3 to make at home that the chain had a reasonable wage for the chef covered, plus their broken plate expenditure. No, you’re tipping for that too.

As a restaurant critic who eats out around 150 times per year, I think about the beleaguered serving staff a lot. Once, if I tipped, say, £10 on a £30 restaurant pizza bill, I did so thinking I was thanking the person on minimum wage who went that extra mile to make the hour my friends or family spent there smoother. She - let’s say it’s a female server - didn’t have to beam with false enthusiasm as I walked in at 3pm carrying a whining niece under one arm, after all.

Nor did the server need to clear and set up a corner table as the ones by the door felt chilly. And yes, other staff did contribute to the experience, but it was that server I wanted to tip as it was she who brought extra forks when we dropped them on the floor, tolerated us asking about rare (and possibly imaginary) food allergies, and smiled patiently when our under-three toddler wanted to order her own pudding despite not being able to read or really speak. The server did this while dealing with another nine tables, full of people just as demanding at an idiosyncratic level.

In my naïve days, I’d scribble 10 quid on the service charge - perhaps you give more or less, that’s not the matter here - and think before she went for her danger-filled night bus ride home, the manager would say, “Here’s your 37 quid in tips. Blimey, you did well tonight, the restaurant would be nothing without you. Thank you.’ Then she could squander it on Tampax, council tax and other ‘luxuries’ for herself.

Perhaps our confusion is a mere matter of semantics. We saw ‘service charge’ back when we started eating out en masse in restaurants in the 80’s, and foolishly we thought it was a charge for service. This was not the case. Silly us.

My latest tactic, pioneered by smooth dads in the 70’s, is to sidetrack the waitress or waiter as I leave, out of view of management, and employing a sleight-of-hand movement propel the cash into their hand with an eyebrow that suggests, ‘Yours. Not anyone else’s. Shove it in your sock.’

Patently, this is not ideal. But it is marginally better than tapping £10 into a handheld card machine for a gremlin in Head Office to sprinkle around their corporate infrastructure willy-nilly.

If you want to feel depressed, ask someone in hospitality about the worst thing they’ve heard their tips were spent on by management. Broken glasses? Booze to bribe them to work longer? Perhaps your tips were banked and a percentage added to a fund for a Christmas party to be held in February? Just don’t ask this at the table because servers are so scared of being fired that any mention of tipping will glean only a stuttered answer involving ‘fairness’ and ‘percentages’ recited in the manner of a kidnap victim being taped to say that her abductors are treating her nicely.

Sajid Javid’s focus on tipping comes at a particularly sordid time for hospitality, post-Living Wage, where some restaurants seem oddly spiteful about its introduction. The past months have seen Le Pain Quotidien reportedly stop paid breaks for staff. Zizzi have been accused of slashing staff perks while the poor souls at Café Nero have lost their free panini.

Currently, as Sajid Javid hopes to tackle, there is no legal requirement covering what proportion of a discretionary tip should go to staff and how much to the employer. Javid proposes banning automatically added tips and making customers opt in to give more.

Or perhaps Javid should make restaurants rename the charge and print it on the bill in Font Size 20: ‘Extra money added to top up, in a shadowy and unaccountable manner, the chef’s, kitchen brigade’s and floor manager’s wages, plus other miscellaneous running costs. Warning: this charge may contain traces of server’s financial reward.’

It still wouldn’t be fair, but would leave less of a bad taste in our mouths.