Well, if you really want to carry the analogy over, you have to tweak the scenario: imagine that it&#x27;s <i>really</i> hard to know if you should take off your shoes in any particular Asian&#x27;s house, and you get multiple conflicting standards depending on who you ask, but they mostly agree that if the host owes you money, the convention is <i>not</i> to take off your shoes.<p>In that case, the host should at least <i>consider</i> the possibility that they forgot about money they owe you, or that this was an ambiguous case, before concluding that you&#x27;re committing a faux pas.<p>The analogy is that tipping is <i>supposed</i> to be &quot;optional&quot; in some sense, and there&#x27;s tremendous disagreement about what is appropriate in what context, and that &quot;if you felt this person didn&#x27;t provide you with great service, you can reduce or withhold the tip&quot;.<p>Thus, if you tip too little, the driver <i>should</i> consider it to be possible feedback about underperformance.<p>Of course, they way it really works is that they expect you to give 20% irrespective of service, but want to maintain a pretense that it&#x27;s &quot;for service&quot;, enforced by rudeness-with-impunity.