While their colleagues across the Atlantic are suing their employers over tips, baristas at Starbucks in Britain appear to have taken the law into their own hands. Local stores decide on their own methods of managing tips, Starbucks told The Times yesterday, but company policy generally dictates that they are split between all shop-floor staff: baristas, shift supervisors, and store managers included.

At one bustling Central London coffee house yesterday, baristas told a different story. A tentative shake is all that decides whether the tip box, placed on the counter as a matter of company policy, is ready to be plundered directly by baristas and shared out without the supervisors getting a look-in.

Starbucks employs just under 8,000 staff in stores across Britain but neither company policy on tipping nor the renegade activities of the baristas are likely to incite revolt. Among the international staff at the London branch, it was not the method of distribution, but the fact that British customers are such terrible tippers that made them angry.

“It’s not like the US where you get a tip from everyone,” said one barista. “The only time anyone puts anything in the tip jar is when they get change from paying for their coffee.”

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge