Don't tip unless this one thing happens

You might recall the sign in diners and cafes: Tipping is not a city in China.

First of all, we don't know that. The Communist Party was notoriously secretive when it came to cartography. Second, Tipping sounds like a nice little town in England. Welcome to Tipping, down the road from Pudding Abbey.

What the sign meant, of course, is that tipping is an expected conclusion to your meal, a fulfillment of a social norm that signaled your appreciation and consideration for the server. As a veteran of the Waiter Corps, I tip. But we are in a new age of expanded tipping, and I think we're a year away from the self-serve gas pump screen asking whether you'd like to add 20% because the clerk said, "Go ahead on two."

You'd stare at the gas pump screen and think: "Am I angered by the creep of tipping culture, or am I just using my outrage to mask my own cheapness?"

Well, I am here to tell you exactly when you should or should not tip.

Here's a good example: The other day I ordered a meal online. Pail of glop with chicken fragments, side of rice, ersatz waterfowl aka mock duck. I would pick it up. There was an option for tipping, which suggested amounts that went from 15-25%.

I declined the opportunity, and checked out ... no, it wouldn't let me. The webpage bounced back to the tip options.

I could not order food unless I committed to a gratuity. So I hit "Custom Tip" and entered 0.00. I hit checkout ... No. 0.00 was unacceptable, too.

"Just put in one cent," my wife said.

"Then I'll look like a jerk!"

She gave me a curious look. "Who will notice?"

"The proper response was, 'Of course my dear, you're not a jerk, why would anyone think that.' But let that go for the moment. One penny is a statement. It's contemptuous. You can't do that before they've made the food. They'll spit in the sauce. Twice. 'This one's from General Tso,' ptui."

I closed the app and placed the order by phone.

Here's why I didn't tip. I was driving to the restaurant, toting the package to my car and driving home. If anything, I figured that I should I get a 20% discount. For a tip to be required, there must be some locomotion involved, an act of conveyance.

Even at a diner, where the waitress — Flo, pink uniform, white apron, wisecracking, knows everyone's name, married to Bob, who always stops off after his shift at the grain elevator for a piece of pie and of course she charges him like everyone else but maybe he gets a bit more of the chunks of apple that slopped off from the rest — if she just takes the plate of eggs and bacon from the warmer lights and walks a few steps, that's a tippable action.

If footwork is involved, you tip.

Youtip, by the way, is probably a city in Cambodia, so keep that in mind.