Despite what one poster in this thread likes to repeat, tipping as "etiquette" has not existed since "always". Earlier in the thread I posted a link to a somewhat recent article describing that the majority of people did not tip housekeeping even a few years ago. If you want to go back even further (about a hundred years), tipping was even illegal in some states.
All this to say: The time that was described is not over because it never actually existed. However, for better or worse, it is becoming that way now and the historical reasons behind tipping (or not tipping) are being replaced.
This article was actually kind of interesting.
http://time.com/money/3394185/tipping-myths-realities-history/
"In 2006,
New York Timescolumnist
Joe Sharkey admitted he, presumably like nearly all business travelers, generously tipped almost every hotel staffer he encountered but had been overlooking the maids, "perhaps because they were unseen, working in the room when the guest was gone.".....
..."Waiters haven't always gotten 20%, or even 15%. It makes sense that we tip more as time passes, just to keep up with inflation. That doesn't explain why we'd be expected to tip at an increasingly higher percentage, however, because as our restaurant bills have gone up, so have the gratuities. (If a fancy dinner in 1950 cost $50, a 15% tip would be $7.50; if a comparable fancy dinner in 2000 ran $100, the tip at a 15% rate would double too.)
Nonetheless, the standard percentage to tip waitstaff has risen over the decades. According to a
PayScale study, the median tip is now 19.5%. In recent years, some waiters and restaurants have suggested that
25% or even
30% is the proper gratuity level, and that a 20% tip, once considered generous, is just average today. As recently as 2008, though, an
Esquire tipping guide stated "15 percent for good service is still the norm" at American restaurants. An
American Demographics study from 2001 found that three-quarters of Americans tipped an average of 17% on restaurant bills, while 22% tipped a flat amount no matter what the bill, and the gratuity left averaged $4.67. Meanwhile, in 1922,
Emily Post wrote, "You will not get good service unless you tip generously," and "the rule is ten per cent."
Emily Post herself sorta hated tipping. In that 1922 guide, Post wrote, "Tipping is undoubtedly a bad system, but it happens to be in force, and that being the case, travelers have to pay their share of it—if they like the way made smooth and comfortable."
Tipping was once considered demeaning and anti-American.
Slate, the
New York Times, and
Esquire are among the outlets that have published epic rants calling for the end to the "abomination" of tipping in the last year or so. No one made the case better than the
Times' Pete Wells, who summed up of our current tipping system, "it is irrational, outdated, ineffective, confusing, prone to abuse and sometimes discriminatory. The people who take care of us in restaurants deserve a better system, and so do we."
Those who defend tipping, and/or those who just insist on always tipping generously tend to think of gratuities as the great equalizer: Tips are necessary because waitstaff and other workers aren't paid enough by their employers, and gratuities help provide them a living wage.
A century ago, however, anti-tipping groups felt they were being progressive by declaring war on the demeaning system because it implicitly created a servile class that depended on the generosity of richer, aristocratic customers—and was therefore anti-democratic and anti-American. The
anti-tipping movementgained steam in the late 1890s and continued through the 1910s, when a half-dozen states tried (but ultimately failed) to make tipping illegal."
