One difference between Europe and America that always hits me right away is tipping. In England your pint of beer costs you $4.00 or so (about two to two pounds fifty), but there's no ten to twenty percent tip expected by the bar tender, or even for the waitress if there is one (there almost never is). In a restaurant a small tip for service is nice, but not essential except in quite upmarket establishments. Ten percent is almost always adequate and zero percent is still considered fine if service or food wasn't satisfactory. In the later case Americans seem to prefer to tip the waitress and complain except in cases of extreme customer abuse.

I was remdinded of the tipping issue last night at around 3:00am when my baggage finally arrived courtesy of United Airlines. Having experienced a six hour mechanical delay in Chicago I was offered a switch by their customer service people to a flight to Oakland instead of SFO which meant no trek across the Bay to home. That sounded fine by me, but I was warned that my bags "may not make it". Feeling lucky and tired after 24 hours of travelling I went for it. Had I known that "may not" was actually a "definitely wont" I might have stuck out at Chicago to get the proper flight.

A day after arriving and still no bags I finally waited out the long delay on their automated customer service line to speak to a real person and was instantly told that my bags were not actually "in transit" (whatever that meant) but were actually sitting at SFO which is exactly where they were told to go. Apparently United had no record that they were supposed to be going to Oakland and even though my address was in Oakland and my phone numbers were with the claim no one in SFO had thought to ask me if I wanted them. So the switch to the Oakland flight apparently being ignored and I was immediately told that the bags would be delivered to me later in the day or tomorrow. At 11pm I got a call to say that the bags could be delivered that night if I wanted, "Yes", I said. The bags finally arrived at 3am (or it might even have been closer to 4am, I don't quite recall having being deeply into jet lag induced sleep deprevation) and then it hit me. Do you tip the guy who delivers your baggage that is over a day late at 3am in the morning?

In American the answer is clear: of course you do. He wasn't responsible for delivering the bags late. He's doing you a service and is working late into the wee hours to get you your bags. In this case he didn't actually wait around for a tip, but I gave him one anyway, its the American way: reward those who do what they are supposed to do, complain to those that don't.

Will I complain to United for losing my bags? Probably not. I've flown dozens of flights with United and hundreds of thousands of miles and only twice have my bags gone astray. Both times were caused by a switch to a different flight route after checking bags, something I advise against doing unless you really don't care if you see your baggage when you arrive.

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