A Foreign Tourist Tipped Me a Buck for Being American ... What Does that Say About Our Empire?

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.

New Year's Eve often sucks because it rarely lives up to expectations. Sure, the party might be a good one, but don't you just spend the whole night with this nagging suspicion that you're missing a much better celebration right nearby?

I had one of the best NYE ever, simply because I had no expectations of a wild night out.

I mentioned my plan yesterday. Sticking to it, I stuffed my pockets full of treats -- cheese, roast beef and a pig's ear for Daisy and a few of those airline-sized bottles of Maker's Mark for daddy -- and we set out to see the fireworks down by the bay. It was a bit hectic when we hit the streets, so in the end we decided to head for high ground closer to the house where we could watch the show instead, and hiked up to Alamo Square Park.

So we're sitting on the side of this hill overlooking the city. I'm chewing on a pig's ear and Daisy's sipping bourbon -- or maybe it was the reverse, I can't say for sure -- and this Asian man with a toddler comes up to say hello to the puppy. I'm pretty sure he was South Korean.

So I do the usual routine -- drop a treat into the 2 year-old's hand and hold it flat so Daisy can grab it without nipping the little tyke by accident. We do this a few times, the baby giggles, momma gets some video and everyone's happy.

Nothing noteworthy about it until poppa thanked me in halting English and shook my hand. And when I withdrew it, I was a bit surprised to see a crumpled up single in my palm -- the guy'd apparently given me a gratuity for my small part in his family's U.S. vacation.

It was an interesting cultural moment. I certainly didn't see any benefit in trying to explain to the young father that tipping wasn't required for random Americans one might encounter on the street -- assuming the language barrier would have permitted explanation in the first place. Why embarrass him in front of the family?

I had a chuckle, and then as Daisy and I made our way home through the crowds of drunken hipsters, I had a couple of thoughts about this somewhat odd exchange.

First, I thought about those people -- shysters or earnest, struggling actors (or both), depending on your perspective -- who dress up in super-hero costumes and hang around Hollywood Boulevard skimming a few bucks off of vacationing suckers who want a picture.

And I thought about how many people we tip who wouldn't expect gratuities in other countries. The truth is that tipping plays a much greater role in our economy than in other wealthy nations -- probably because we tolerate poverty wages in service industries that the citizens of other countries do not. (When I tended bar in Berlin, I earned a minimum wage of around $11 per hour, and that was almost 20 years ago (for perspective, the federal minimum wage here in the U.S. was under $4 an hour that year). I didn't see a lot of money in tips, but I didn't really have to in order to eat and pay the rent.)

I'm hardly an old man, and I can remember a time when it was unthinkable to tip someone who handed you a muffin or a cup of coffee in a shop. We've always tipped waiters and waitresses who served us in bars and restaurants, but I was a teenager when I saw my first tip jar at a deli counter. So, if you come from another country where people don't ask to be tipped to take a photo with you and haven't invented a new category of service worker -- the  "barista" -- whose hands need to be greased for a latté, why wouldn't you end up thinking that we're all part of the floor show? Why wouldn't you think slipping a buck into a cute puppy's collar is as expected as a folded five inserted into a stripper's garter-belt?

I also thought about what this little exchange says about the state of Pax Americana (because my brain works that way).