试题出自试卷《北京外国语大学2017年考博英语真题》

We Americans hand out approximately $750,000,000 annually in tips, or three quarters of a billion dollars, according to the United States Department of Commerce. Of this amount about $450,000 goes to restaurant employees. The rest greases the open palms of hotel porters, taxi drivers, beauticians, barbers, parking lot attendants, bartenders, and a host of others who expect gratuities from the public for their services.
In spite of these magnanimous figures, however, tipping is generally an unpopular and disliked custom in the United States. According to a survey on the subject, 65.1% of the persons queried definitely disapprove of tipping, only 22.2% approve, 12% are undecided.
A laborer should be worthy of his hire, no matter what his field. He shouldn’t depend on the gratuities of the public. Yet, the United States Chamber of Commerce reports that there were 1,800,000 persons who depend on tips for the majority part of their income.
This dependency on tips puts the worker in an unfair position. He has grown to expect them as his earnings and not as a token of appreciation for the extra service he has given. He is often filled with resentment when he isn’t tipped, or not tipped highly enough because, to him, those gratuities are important as bread-and-butter money.
The customer, on the other hand, is placed in an uncomfortable position, as well as what he thinks is an unfair one. The uncomfortable feeling comes usually from not knowing exactly how much he should tip. Practically, everyone above the age of fifteen has read the “etiquette rules” of how much to tip and when. But if these rules were printed in books or magazines four or five years ago, he can be sure that they’re substandard for today’s tipping. Prices have gone up, and if the customer doesn’t know it, or acts as if he doesn’t, he’ll receive bullet glances which denounces him as subhuman. For instance, ten or fifteen cents to a train porter for carrying one bag used to be acceptable. The present price is twenty-five. Ten per cent of the restaurant check was a standard rule a few years back. Today, it is fifteen, and in the so-called better places, more. Since there are so many variations to the rules, a customer is often in a quandary as to whether the “rule” holds good in his particular situation.
The term “tip” originated in a London coffee house in Fleet Street where Samuel Johnson and his cronies frequently visited during the eighteen century. On the table was a bowl with the words, “To insure Promptitude,” printed around it. The phrase was later shortened to “Tip,” taking the first letter of each of the three words.
Today a person is expected to leave a tip even though the service has been slow and indifferent. The unfairness of the tipping racket, as far as the customer is concerned, hinges on the feeling that he is being pressured into carrying part of the employer’s burden. If he pays a good price for his haircut, why should he tip the barber? Isn’t it up to the employer to provide a decent wage for him? Or, when he stays in a hotel and pays that bill, why should he give the maid extra money for coming in to clean his room? Isn’t her salary a definite duty of hotel management?
It seems to him that tipping is the employers’ way out of responsibility. They pass the buck of their workers’ salaries on to the customer.
1. According to the last sentence of Paragraph 1, the author means that the money ________.
2. According to Paragraph 2, the percentage of the respondents disliking tipping is ________.
3. The customer feels unhappy about tipping for the reasons mentioned in the passage EXCEPT ________.
4. The word “tip” originated in ________.
5. It seems to customers that tipping is a good way for an employer to ________.