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We can calculate complicated AFL scores, multiplying by sixes and adding on behinds and dividing by quarters, but we can’t work out 10 per cent of a restaurant bill, not even with a calculator – it’s too hard, it won’t go, it can’t be done, we tried our best, we’re sorry.

And this is not great because America is a tipping country: hospitality staff get paid really low wages so tips are pretty much their entire income – and every time an Aussie visits the States, a restaurant worker dies of malnutrition and poverty.

Now we felt bad: we’d already killed one waitress, we didn’t want to kill any more – so on behalf of all Australians, it was our duty to salvage our nation’s reputation, to make Americans love us, to plunge into a week of agonising, nauseating, brain-rewiring tipping-torture.

Our next meal was at a pizza joint in Greenwich Village and when the bill came, we decided to go for 10 per cent – ease ourselves in, let’s not go crazy here. Feeling anxious, jittery, I worked out the tip: “OK, just move the decimal point one place to the left. No no, not to the right! - that would be a fatal tipping error! TO THE LEFT AND THE LEFT ALONE!”

Eventually I did it. It felt good. Look at me ma! I’m tipping like a proper tipper, footloose and fancy-free, ha ha!

Our next meal was pastrami on rye at the famous Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side and this time I pushed harder, went up to a daunting 15 per cent (I was comfortable with this, I was a Katz, I’d be keeping the money in the family).

When it was time to pay, I breathed slowly, focused, and did advanced Year 11-level maths: I worked out 10 per cent, then I worked out half of 10 per cent, then I added those two amounts together, calculating a tip to 49 decimal places. Then I rounded down. I wasn’t ready to round up just yet. Baby steps.

By the end of our New York visit, I was the top tipper in town: I was tipping a whopping 20 per cent to waiting-staff, bar-people, taxi-drivers, hobos, the subway system, and the cabin crew on the flight back to Australia. Everybody loved us now. America loved us. Then we landed in Tullamarine and caught a taxi home. Didn’t tip the driver. No need to be loved here. We were back.

Danny Katz is a Fairfax columnist.