Tipping! It's not a city in China, but it might as well be considering how foreign it is to many Americans.

The latest example of questionable tipping that is stirring controversy on the web comes from the friend of pizza delivery guy who claims his buddy got a lousy $10 tip on an 85 pizza order that totaled $1463 and change.

As Consumerist points out, it's very possible that an additional, more satisfactory tip was handed to the driver upon completion of the exchange (its likely a delivery of that magnitude required several trips back and forth from the pizza shop).

But assuming for the sake of argument that $10 was the extent of the gratuity, did the pizza festival organizer commit an atrocious tipping faux pas, or was he right on the money?

That depends — on where you get your tipping guidelines from.

Emily Post says pizza delivery tips should be based on size of the order and difficulty of delivery, but sets the maximum at $5.

Slice, Serious Eats' pizza blog, says big orders deserve at least a 10% tip ("never less") — though that suggestion is based on a four-item delivery.

Finally, tipthepizzaguy.com has by far the most generous tipping rule-of-thumb: 15%. Their reasoning? "Instead of going out to a restaurant, the restaurant goes out to you."

According to the site's built-in pizza tip calculator, the person who purchased 85 pizzas should have handed the driver at least $219, and thank him or her for their service to our country ("Pizza delivery is considered a hazardous job by the US government").

Long story short, learn to cook.

[scan via Reddit]