Many international fans visiting the US for the World Cup have become frustrated by the culture of tipping servers, telling the BBC that tipping fatigue has set in
England supporter Geoff Pryor said he understood tipping for good service, but he found it "weird" when buying a bottle of water and "they try to get a tip for doing nothing".
In the US, staff at some restaurants and bars are paid just over $2 (£1.50) an hour, and they expect customers to tip about 20% of the total cost of the bill so they can earn a living.
Frustrations have also been shared by hospitality staff, with one bar owner telling the BBC that many World Cup tourists have been bad tippers.
Australian supporters Chris O'Flynn and Robert McNamara told the BBC that high ticket prices for football matches have drained their finances, and paying tips is driving up expenses.
"I still find it a bit confusing why it exists... In Australia you have a flat fee, and you pay it. Here people ask for, or expect, tips. Sometimes you don't know how much you're supposed to tip," O'Flynn said.
"The way most Australians here feel is: Pay your staff a better wage. It should be on the business, not the customer, to make sure that your staff is well paid."
McNamara said they try to "abide by the customs" as visitors, but tipping has been a culture shock.
"They're expecting a tip after every drink so it gets expensive very quick. You're buying a drink and adding $5 on. It's difficult to comprehend."
Fan says the prices without tips are already expensive
Pryor, an England supporter from Norwich, is travelling around the US for the tournament. He said despite his frustrations at being asked to tip for a bottle of water, he did understand the need to tip at restaurants
"I appreciate they're not paid as much as perhaps back in the UK, but overall the service is generally good, so when it's good they deserve a good tip," he said.
Maiko Asahi and her family are visiting from Tokyo to watch Japan play in Dallas, and told the BBC that tipping is not something they do back home. "The prices without the tips are already very expensive, with tipping it is way too much," Asahi said.
Another Japanese fan, Akihiro who is travelling with his son, also complained about high prices.
"Even the cheapest meal at a restaurant still costs around $30, and when you add on a tip of say, 13-20% you end up thinking - Oh dear, I could have had another portion for that," he said.
Europeans don't tip like Americans, bar owner says
Banter, a football bar in Brooklyn, sees its fair share of British and European tourists - especially during the World Cup.
But they are notoriously bad tippers, if they tip at all, owner Chris Keller told the BBC.
"It's always the case. There's no getting around it," he said. "There's always a lack of tipping or playing ignorant like they don't know."
Keller said he's changed the system so customers with reservations have to pre-pay for drinks, including a service charge. "It's just to protect our staff," he said.
A United States-based Nigerian social worker, Akeatha Diane Akintola, has been sentenced to five months’ imprisonment for stealing more than $17,000 in Social Security benefits meant for a disabled child placed under her care in Washington State.
PUNCH Metro learnt from a statement issued on June 18 by the US Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington, that Akintola, 48, pleaded guilty to theft of public funds after unlawfully diverting $17,638 intended for a minor with intellectual disabilities.
The department stated that Akintola was taken into custody immediately after her plea and sentencing hearing before Magistrate Judge Kate Vaughan.
The statement noted that at the sentencing hearing, Vaughan condemned the offence, saying she was struck by the fact that Akintola had targeted a vulnerable victim.
It noted that court records showed that Akintola became a social worker for the Snoqualmie Tribe in January 2023 and later applied to become the Social Security Representative Payee for a minor child under the tribe’s care.
The statement added that the child’s mother had died, leaving survivor benefits for the child with a prohibition for social workers from serving as representative payees for children under the tribe’s care.
The statement noted that despite the prohibition, prosecutors said Akintola used the child’s Social Security number and her information to secure the appointment and redirected the benefits into a bank account she controlled.
The attorney’s office stated that she spent the funds on personal expenses, including purchases at a retailer in North Bend, Washington.
The statement read in part, “In September 2023, Akintola applied by telephone to be the Social Security representative payee for a minor child with intellectual disabilities who was a ward of the tribe.
“The Tribe prohibits its social workers from becoming a representative payee for any child under its care. Nevertheless, Akintola used the child’s Social Security number and her own to apply to be the minor child’s representative payee.” The attorney’s office stated that she spent the funds on personal expenses, including purchases at a retailer in North Bend, Washington.
The US noted that the theft was uncovered in July 2024 when Akintola accompanied her supervisor to the Social Security Administration to inquire about the child’s missing benefits.
According to prosecutors, Social Security officials informed them that Akintola was listed as the child’s representative payee, but she denied the claim before resigning from her position the following day.
The department further disclosed that Akintola failed to appear for an earlier plea and sentencing hearing scheduled for May 22, 2026.
The statement added, “Prosecutors learnt she had left the U.S. on May 20, 2026, and travelled to Togo in West Africa using a passport issued in a different last name.
Akintola appeared for the plea and sentencing hearing yesterday (July 15), and Judge Vaughan ultimately ordered her into custody to begin serving the sentence immediately.”
The statement noted that a representative of the Snoqualmie Tribe told the court that Akintola had abused the trust reposed in her as a social worker and exploited a grieving child for financial gain.
It added that the representative said the stolen funds were intended to support the child’s future independence and well-being and that the victim was an autistic child who depended on the benefits for support following the death of the mother.
“In our profession, a social worker is meant to be a safekeeper. A protector for children who have been stripped of their safety, family, and stability.
“Ms Akintola did not just fail in that duty; she weaponised her position of power to systematically steal from a grieving, autistic child. This money was not a luxury. It was a lifeline.”
The attorney’s office said Akintola was ordered to pay $17,638 in restitution to the Social Security Administration.
She was also barred from ever serving as a Social Security representative payee in the future.
anonimi: Trump and American lawmakers are way better than Tinubu and Nigerian lawmakers who only know how to stand on his mandate to rubber stamp loan requests and other things from Aso Rock.
Do you think that is just a coincidence or is it about the people of the two countries
Sensiblerealist: The guy has always been a proud, egoistic and bossy one. I once saw his interview around 2003 but I suppose the video was made way before that. It was a documentary of world billionaires that owned luxury items like yachts, private jets etc. The way he conducted himself was so condescending and that was my first real life impression of a white Imperialist minded person.
Trump’s Capitol visit devolves into shouting match with GOP senator he helped oust in primary fight
In the month since President Donald Trump put a decisive end to Sen. Bill Cassidy’s congressional career, the Louisiana senator has become one of the president’s sharpest critics in the halls of the US Capitol.
But as they stood face to face in a Wednesday meeting at the Capitol, the two Republicans unleashed anger at each other in a shouting match in front of dozens of their Senate GOP colleagues.
The testy back-and-forth began, according to Cassidy, as Trump demanded to know why members of his own party — including Cassidy — voted with Democrats a day earlier to rebuke the president’s military authority in Iran.
“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,’” Cassidy recalled after the meeting, describing what he told the president behind closed doors. “It was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what’s going on.”
From there, according to multiple sources in the room, a furious Trump went after Cassidy, raising his voice. Cassidy recalled that he “lost his temper” and was shouting back at the same “tone and volume” as the president.
At one point inside the luncheon, Trump ordered Cassidy to sit down — but Cassidy refused, another source said. Trump then called him a “lunatic.” In return, Cassidy shouted at Trump, in one instance referring to Trump as his “brother.” Trump told him he wasn’t his “brother” — and eventually Cassidy sat down.
Hours later, however, the Louisiana Republican switched his vote on a similar Iran war powers resolution, voting against advancing it and allowing Republicans to effectively walk back their rebuke of the president.
His vote came after he said he’d received a “thorough briefing” on Iran from Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff. “I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns,” Cassidy wrote on X.
Still, the tense, roughly 70-minute meeting between Trump and GOP senators earlier Wednesday reflected rising tensions as the president has repeatedly upended key pieces of the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill. While Trump has spent much of his second term circumventing Congress to satisfy his own aims — from firing federal workers, blowing up budgets, even waging a war — a growing bloc within his party is willing to say they’ve had enough.
ChenHao23: There's no billions anywhere to be released to Iran in CASH rather part of the frozen funds which is domiciled in Qatar SHALL be use to solely purchase AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS for Iranians FROM THE USA.
Trump also repeatedly argued that giving Iran access to frozen assets made the regime stronger and enriched a government he described as a sponsor of terrorism.
Obama has being vindicated. Obamas crime in the US 🇺🇸 is that he dismantled white hegemony and brought black diversity and then took diversity to a weird extent.
With Obama, diversity that is, all races from black to brown to yellow, even Latino, Arab, Asians with the skills worked in government spaces they only dreamt about.
But like a Samson, Obama got carried away with LGBT ++ nonsense. But like a David touch not my anointed and do my people no harm.
Trump’s Iran agreement embraces sanctions relief, a policy he and his team once denounced
For years, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance argued against deals that provided financial concessions to Iran, saying that giving the regime money fuels terror. But now the agreement they’ve reached to end the war with Tehran is poised to hand the regime billions.
For the better part of a decade, Trump’s central indictment of former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was simple: Giving Tehran access to frozen assets enriched a dangerous regime and got the United States little in return.
Trump’s current secretary of state and vice president went even further, co-sponsoring legislation as senators that argued Iranian frozen funds could not be safely released because the money, even with rules governing its use, could end up being utilized in a dangerous way.
Now, all three are backing an agreement that spells out US commitments to potentially release those funds and lift sanctions on Tehran but leaves specific details on Iran’s nuclear program to future negotiations.
Administration officials have downplayed the significance of the written document and said the movement of any money will be performance-based. They also have said the atmosphere of this deal is different from previous ones because the US has degraded Iran’s military.
“We have great confidence that we’re going to be able to see if they try to fund terrorist organizations,” Vance said Thursday.
However, the signed memorandum of understanding nevertheless embraces the same type of incentivized financial relief that Trump, Rubio and Vance spent years warning would enrich a nation they described as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Under the terms of the 14-point memorandum of understanding formally signed and released by the White House on Wednesday, the US “undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MOU,” “to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions,” and to immediately issue waivers for the sale of Iranian oil.
The Trump administration has vehemently argued that its agreement is stronger than Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, despite many analysts and critics arguing it appears to give Iran significant concessions.
Significantly, a number of Republican senators, including those who typically stay quiet, have openly questioned the terms of Trump’s Iran negotiations.
Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories” of the war and that the plan for a $300 billion reconstruction fund would make the financial incentives in the JCPOA “look like a pittance by comparison.” The administration said the US would not contribute to that fund.
Trump has long criticized the JCPOA, from which he withdrew the US in 2018, in large part because it gave Tehran sanctions relief and access to frozen assets.
In an op-ed in September 2015 — ahead of the deal’s implementation — then-candidate Trump castigated the JCPOA for the prospect of lifting “all nuclear related sanctions” and handing Iran “a windfall of $150 billion, which will no doubt fund terrorism around the world.”
“It appears we wanted a deal at any cost,” he wrote.
As recently as 2016, Trump argued that Obama had made a basic mistake by relieving pressure on Tehran before obtaining stronger concessions. “We took the sanctions off, we got nothing for that,” Trump said at a conservative summit in Denver. “It’s like 101, Trump, ‘The Art of the Deal.’”
“Why did Pres Obama remove sanctions against Iran prior to negotiating rather than completing successful negotiation & then remove sanctions?” Trump tweeted in 2014.
Trump also repeatedly argued that giving Iran access to frozen assets made the regime stronger and enriched a government he described as a sponsor of terrorism.
Mankinde know he is ahead of fayose by all ramifications. Hence his snubbing the hungry man.
donself9: I still can fathom Fayose obession with SEyi makinde, for a man is age this is sycophancy gone tew far.
To think Fayose granted an interview yesterday n said Seyi makinde is why pdp n opposition lose in Ekiti to the imcumbent despite acknowledging He worked (pdp member) for APC success
He was boasting he said it Oyebanji will win, before nkor ... those that contested against APc what capacity do they have to challenge APc, the pdp we don't even know which fraction legit or ADC that are yet to find a balance
I don't understand why Fayose always feel he the best man to attack SEYI ...even thou makinde have never honored him with a Reply since the obsession began
How can yiu say SEyi is the problem of PDP .. So wike dancing on your mandate in apc house is solution of PDP
Difrent: Since SA took Israel to ICC them don by US market.
And not allowing Elon use his Stralink to spy on them for the Americans was the final straw that broke the Carmel's back They don't give shit about no HIV patients
Amotolongbo: El Rufai, we understand. Which one is Nnamdi Kanu? Which election has Nnamdi Kanu ever influenced? The result from South East has always been the same. Was Nnamdi Kanu supporting Peter Obi during the last election after calling Obi numerous names like “gaybriel”?
naptu2: The NDC spokesman said that all parties had their primaries and other processes last year but NDC was only registered in February, so they could not take part in this election.
Travel › Re: World Cup Fans Frustrated By 'confusing And Expensive' Tipping Culture In US by Ironfaceman(op): 10:05pm On Jun 28
very good. Give those jihadist a run for their money.
Haba na...