Asymmetrical Information

Primarily, I tip because it is the correct thing to do. I'm generally against arguments to effect that people don't get paid enough but in this instance, their salary is directly dependent on tipping and this has been encoded in the laws. Because of this, I feel that hard work should be rewarded and I do so.

By the way, is contributing to NPR altruistic? And how altruistic is it relative to how altruistic it *seems*?

Does holiday tipping even exist outside of New York?

By the way, thanks for reminding me. Gotta go figure out how much to kick up to, err, I mean tip, the building staff.

So, is this "holiday tipping" another NYC custom associated with rent control?

Must be a Northeast/City Dweller/CondoSlave phenomonen.

Other than the usual gratuities to waitstaff, who would I tip? The mailman?

"So, is this "holiday tipping" another NYC custom associated with rent control?"

Pretty much. I have to pay them because it would be a shame if my sink leaked and they were too busy to fix it, or if my packages started going missing. What am I gonna do, move in a year? Never saw this phenomenon growing up in wholesome suburbia.

"Other than the usual gratuities to waitstaff, who would I tip? The mailman?"

No, the mailman would violate federal law if he accepted a tip, although I think he can take non-cash gifts worth up to $20.

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So you're an expert on the subject? Heh, I wouldn't know a thing about it.

I tip my barber because he holds a straight razor next to my ear and neck 12 times a year. I tip the shoeshine guy because he works in the same room as the guy with the razor!

I live in Philly, and last year when I had an on-site property manager who helped me with stuff like packages and my closet door I tipped him $20. The NPR story however noted that some NY doormen get $20,000 in tips at holiday time, on top of a yearly $40,000 salary! To me that is obscene, is being a doorman really worth 60 grand a year? Or are all salaries in NY just really inflated because of the high cost of living?

This seems like a form of accepted blackmail/bribery. If you dont pay out a ridiculous amount of tips, you may or may not recieve the services you are supposed to already be getting. If I am a jerk and dont tip the pizza guy, its not like next time they will accidentally forget to deliver my pizza. The difference here seems to be the fact that you live where these people work, you cant escape them.

Speaking of mailmen, I would definitely be more inclined to give them a tip for delivering my mail during the winter snow and pouring rain than the dude who opens the door and accepts my packages for me.

It may be against fed. law but people routinely give the mailman tips this time of year. Cash makes no enemies and what the OIG doesn't know doesn't hurt 'em. Around here (Savannah) the trash guys get a tip as well.

Holiday tipping in the 'burbs is limited mostly to people who provide services on a regular basis: cleaning ladies, babysitters, barbers and beauticians. Those are fairly limited situations, not applicable to everyone, and in most cases don't result in tips anything close to those paid by urban apartment dwellers.

I tip my barber because he holds a straight razor next to my ear and neck 12 times a year.

Twelve times a year? Considering what a professional shave costs, and how long it lasts, wouldn't it be cheaper just to learn to do it yourself?

We are called upon to tip the newspaper deliverer out here in the suburbs too. I've also heard of tipping the garbage men.

In Wisconsin, we tip our Mailmen/Newspaper Deliverers(?), etc. around Christmas. It is not JUST a New York thing.

Private high-school teachers get Christmas tips, too. I've heard that cashmere sweaters and airline tickets are de rigueur at big-city prep schools. Down here in North Carolina, I have so far gotten a box of chocolates (Hershey's Pot of Gold) and a geography card game, both from 7th-grade Latin students. (I teach 6th-grade Geography, so the game will come in handy.) At the end of the week, I'll get a gift certificate to Border's. We choose our vendors, so (e.g.) one teacher asked for a Home Depot gift certificate last year since she was building a house. The amount depends on who contributes how much. I'll get a card with the gift certificate listing the names of all the contibutors, but no breakdown of the amounts given, which would be tacky. (If I were a parent, I'd give $1 each to every faculty member, even those who don't teach my child, but I suppose that would be tacky, too.)

Last year, with only six different students (it's a very small school), I got $81, not all of it from parents whose children I taught. That bought me four Criterion DVDs in the Border's Christmas 4-for-the-price-of-3 sale. With 31 different students this year, I imagine I'll get more. I can hardly wait to find out. (Come to think of it, I didn't wait for Christmas to open the first two packages. And I'm eating the chocolates now when I could be saving them to feed to my students tomorrow.)

Tips do help motivate teachers to go the extra mile, particularly at the end of a long semester, for instance by scheduling after-school study sessions for struggling students even when the students (some of them) aren't struggling very hard. And some of the money gets recycled: my next DVD will probably be Spartacus, which my Latin students will see parts of at some point.

We tip our cleaning ladies. Just seems like we ought to . . .

$40K a year is not much in NYC--15 years ago, the average person on welfare in NYC was receiving the before tax equivalent of $44K in aid.

I tip my regular bartenders this time of year an extra C-note. But it reminds me of a joke: Two economics professors were discussing tipping. One says that you tip to ensure better service the next time. The other asks him to explain why you'd tip at a restaurant you're fairly certain you'll never go to again. First professor: "You do?"

I get called upon to tip my paper delivery person every year, and every year I tell my wife the same thing: "When he can get it in the driveway instead of the ditch and bag it right when it rains, then he'll get a tip."

I'm usually a good tipper, but having been a paper boy, I'm a harder judge in this case.

I'm with Jane on this one - I don't know how much loyalty and service a tip accounts for but I do get my packages thrown in the breezeway on particularly crappy days and don't have to notify the PO if I'm away for a few days - the Poland Springs guy delivers the water and seems not to have any issues with special instructions - I figure if these people are in and around my house when I'm not there it's best to be on good terms with them - plus I thought a little generosity, especially at Christmas, was a good thing?

Have to agree with Dan about newspaper delivery. When I delivered newspapers in junior high (back before all of the paper delivery people in our area became adults with cars) the newspaper provided plastic bags with handles for their papers. It was a lot easier to put them in bags then to try to mess around with those cheap rubber bands that always seemed to either break or rip the papers (plus I could bag with work gloves on and not have to spend the day at school with newsprint on my hands).

I delivered in a small town for about two or three years and usually tossed the papers onto people’s porches or steps from my bike. I never broke a window nor knocked over a potted plant.

Only got it on the roof once was able to retrieve it. Other than a couple of times where the truck was one or two hours late (at which point I had to be in school), I never missed a delivery and only got attacked by one dog (still have the teeth marks on my old ten-speed to show for it).

Good times.

In my neck of the Midwest netherlands, we don't look at that as "tipping" per se, but rather as gift giving. Mailmen, dry cleaners, school bus drivers, teachers, etc. Usual amounts are in the $10-20 range, more if you have any kind of relationship with the person.

To answer the question of an earlier commenter: No, the pizza guy will not forget your pizza if you do not tip. However, if you choose to use pizza delivery, you should seriously consider tipping generously. There are a lot of benefits to keeping those guys happy.

And a lot of reasons you won't want to eat your pizza if you get marked as a "stiff."

The thing I don't like about tipping is the uncertainty of it all. If I'm expected to pay extra for a service over and above the standard price, I'd like to know how much and when so that I can plan. The fact that newspapers print all this New York specific stuff doesn't help. For example, in Houston, apartment complexes don't really have doormen or supers like they do in New York. There's an office staff that you almost never see.

I never see the garbage collectors and don't know them. I never see the mail man and don't know him. I let whoever is free cut my hair.

All this talk of "If you don't, you'll get crappy service" makes it feel like extortion, too... so it ceases to be altruistic at that point. Now I'm scared to screw up the tip or I'll get mistreated.

Just tell me how much I'm supposed to pay and I'll pay it. If I'm "expected" to give a gift, it's not really a gift.

EI

only resturant staff should get cash tips. why? because their hourly wage is is small because of the expectation of a tip.

My mom puts a plate of treats out for the garbage men and the postal worker.

I tip my dogs an extra strip of bacon.

In Wisconsin, we tip our...

Cows?

I'm usually a good tipper, but having been a paper boy, I'm a harder judge in this case.

Having delivered papers myself, I know how frustrating it is to deal with overly fussy customers who don't tip (e.g., the customer who expected me to walk through his always-on sprinklers to drop a double-bagged paper on his porch without hitting the door, which I did without fail). Because of that, I now make sure I tip the newspaper deliverer every year.

I tip because that's how waiters, valets and others make their living. I know going into a restaurant that part of the reason I am there is to be waited on. I expect to pay for that service. The better the service, the more I expect to pay--it's implicit in the transaction.

If I had a super, I'd tip him/her. I don't, but I have employees and I give Christmas bonuses based on production, effort and collegiality. Implicit in my agreement with my employees is that performance at or beyond a certain level produces a greater reward. Both sides come out just fine on the deal.

I don't care what anybody else has to say...I want to hear the true story about the toilet. It sounds like a good one.

If I had a super, I'd tip him/her. I don't, but I have employees and I give Christmas bonuses based on production, effort and collegiality.

My employer gives me a bonus too, but my clients don't tip me.

Implicit in my agreement with my employees is that performance at or beyond a certain level produces a greater reward. Both sides come out just fine on the deal.

If your employees ignore you or do bad work, you can fire them. If my super ignores me or does bad work, I can't fire him and have no remotely convenient recourse. I can't just walk away.

When I was a paper boy we didn't toss papers. That said, people who slipped me an extra quarter or two at collection time(this was the early 1970s, when money was worth something) didn't have to wait or get shorted if I was short a newspaper.

Simply, cut out the middleman: "Be mercenary, even in your altruism."

We're not going to get to hear about the toilet, are we?

There aren't that many ways for a latrine to break. Short of the master boiler overcoming a backflow valve and exploding every throne in the building, I don't see how the story could be too extraordinary -- just use your imagination.

I only tip those service people for whom it is an accepted part of their compensation. In this day and age, only waitstaff receive tips from me. Tipping the mailman or the super, if I rented, seems ridiculous to me, but then, I don't live in New York.

It was just before Christmas, and as the letter carrier walked his regular route, some of the people slipped him a card with some money in it, or offered him hot cocoa or a cookie. One woman invited him in, took him to the bedroom, made love with him, and handed him a dollar. Pleased but puzzled, he asked for an explanation. She said "I told my husband it was Christmas and we should do something for the mailman, he said 'F*ck him, give him a dollar,' so that's what I did."

I tip 20% to waitri and my fabulous hairdresser every time, nothing extra at Christmas (except a card for my hair guy). That's it.

Last year, I was going up for promotion, and I blanketed the college with Christmas cards with a little gift enclosed: a Christmas light bulb necklace. Little cheap thing from China, didn't light up or anything. People LOVED these necklaces and it created good will. Of course I was promoted for my accomplishments and value, but creating warm fuzzy irrational feelings never hurts. Mercenary of me, I know, but heck, it made people happy.

OK, I can't let this slide. Our Miss Jane Galt, if she uses unusual language or spellings, it's British. BUT she wrote "y'all" -- a Southernism!

Nothing wrong with that. I moved to the South in 1994 and unconsciously started using "y'all" but it seems to me it's grammatically appropriate to have a plural you as many foreign languages do.

I just had to point it out!

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