BBC 6分钟英语学习 小费的艺术

English,

from BBC, learning English. Hello, this is six minute English, and I'm Catherine, and I'm Sam Farm.

How do you feel about tipping?

Tipping? You mean giving extra money to people in certain jobs for doing their jobs?

Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that, but yes, it's giving money to waiters and waitresses, hair dressers, taxi drivers, money that's more than the actual bill.

It's a nightmare. I never know who to tip, how to tip, by cash or by card.

How much to tip? Is it 1012 .5, 20 %?

Or even if I should tip at all, because in some places, a service charge is automatically added to the bill.

Yes, tipping is a really complicated issue which will be looking at in this program.

But to start with a question What is the biggest tip that we know that somebody gave?

Is it A $10000? Is it B $250000?

Or is it see $3 million? What do you think, sam, I'm going to go for $250000.

Okay, well, we'll find out if you're right at the end of the program.

Now, back to the topic of tipping, and in particular, tipping people who work in restaurants.

William Beckett runs a number of restaurants, and he recently appeared on the BBC Food program.

He was asked about his view of tipping.

Now, as we hear him, listen out for this information.

In how many cities does he say he currently has restaurants?

It is cultural. I it differs from place to place.

I mean, we have restaurants in in London, we have a restaurant Manchester.

We're also opening a restaurant in New York.

And those three cities have quite different attitudes to tipping.

In London, the North is well, so it's there.

It's on your bill. That's not the norm, E.G.

in Manchester, and it's not the norm in New York, where we're going to open a restaurant later this year.

So 1st, how many cities does he currently have restaurants in?

That would be too London and Manchester.

He's going to open one in New York later in the year, but it's not open yet.

And what does he say about tipping?

Well, he says that it's very cultural.

What is the norm in one city is not necessarily the norm in another.

The norm is an expression that means, as you might guess, what is normal, what is usual.

So in London, E.G., a service charge is usually added to the bill, but in Manchester it isn t.

So the policy in London and Manchester differs, which means, again, as you might guess, it's different.

There's another short expression that he use that I'd like to highlight before he talks about how the policies differ.

He says, I-E, these two letters stand for the Latin phrase it S.

Now, we never say it S, but we do write and say I-E, we use it to show that what comes next is using different words to say what we have just said or written.

So he says about tipping. It's cultural I-E It differs from place to place.

Its cultural is a more general statement, and it differs from place to place is a more specific definition of what he means.

So one difference is that in some places, people prefer an automatic service charge, so that they don't have to think about or try to calculate a tip.

But in other places, people hate that.

They want to decide who and how much to tip themselves.

But do people actually make use of that freedom not to tip?

Here's William Bucket again, and this time he's talking about New York.

New York exactly the same. There's a tacit pressure to tip, but theoretically you just stand up and walk out.

You don't Everybody tips 20% or there.

There is a theory of an option, but people like that.

So he says, there is a tacit pressure to tip.

What does he mean by that?

Something that is Tacit is not spoken, not said.

Yes, this is still understood. So in New York, no one tells you that you have to tip, but everyone knows that you have to.

And because there's no service charge on the bill, and no one tells you ought to tip, you could just walk out after paying.

He says, that's theoretically possible. That means, although it may be possible, it's actually very unlikely because of the tacit pressure and the way we behave.

But he does say people like that freedom not to tip, even if they don't actually use that freedom.

Right? Nearly vocabulary time, but 1st.

Let's have the answer to our question

now, sam, what is the biggest tip we know someone gave?

I thought 250000. Well, it was actually,

believe it or not, a warping $3 million.

Yes. Now on with today's vocabulary review.

Right? So we've been talking about tipping the practice of giving extra money to, e.g.

waitresses and waiters. To differ from is a verb, which means to be different from the norm, is what is usual or normal.

I-E is a short form of a Latin expression, and it means, in other words, something that is Tacit is not said, but is nevertheless understood.

And if something is theoretically possible, it can be done, but for different reasons, it probably won't be.

And that is where we must leave it today.

Good Bye by everyone.

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