Living in New York is different than living anywhere else in the U.S. I don’t mean on a cultural level, of course there is that, but in an everyday sense. Everyone living stacked on top of each other and an extensive public transit system makes owning a car pointless, most of the time. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. You save money on car payments and insurance (though, like everything else, it’s probably made up for in the cost of rent), you don’t have to worry about sobering up for the drive home from the bar, and you have a smug sense of self-satisfaction for being “eco-friendly.” But sometimes, it really sucks. You can’t jump in to your car and cruise over to a Wall-Mart or Target to pick a few things up. You have to plan out what you want to buy, go to the different stores, and carry all that back to your apartment—and, if you’re like me (living in a walkup), up four flights of stairs.
So whenever they can, New Yorkers try to make things easier on themselves. The city’s Chinese restaurants and pizza places employ an army of deliverymen that bring takeout to your door; any business that sells merchandise that can’t be easily carried out offer a complimentary delivery service; and one of the most popular grocery stores in the city is just a Web site. If you’ve never heard of Fresh Direct, the concept is simple: order your groceries through their site and they bring them to your apartment. Yesterday, my roommate off handedly mentioned that it was how he would get his groceries from now on. I had used the service years ago, but don’t anymore. “What’s a good amount to tip the delivery guy?” He asked me. “Do you think $5 is enough?” I paused for moment to consider the question. “Actually, I don’t think I think I ever tipped them,” I said. My roommate was shocked. “Dude,” he said, “you have to tip.”
For the rest of the day, all I could think about was the act of tipping. I kept replaying Steve Buscemi’s rant in Reservoir Dogs about throwing in a gratuity for your dinner. In the film, Buscemi’s character, “Mr. Pink,” regales a table of career criminals just after breakfast on the morning of a heist on the inequality of tipping guidelines. He points out that it’s good manners to tip a waitress, yet no one gives anything to someone working the register at McDonald’s. “I don’t tip because society says I have to,” he explains. “All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I’ll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it’s for the birds. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just doing their job.”
Okay, I don’t know what it’s like to be Fresh Direct driver. Maybe it sucks. Maybe they pay next to nothing and you need tips to get by. But in all honesty: the job doesn’t seem all that different from Fed-Ex or UPS and we don’t tip them. Is it because they’re delivering food? What if you’re a diabetic and UPS guy brings you a package with your insulin that keeps you alive in it, do you tip him then?
A friend once told me that you tip to ensure good service for NEXT TIME. And I get that for certain situations—try tipping a dollar or too more the next time you order from your favorite pizza place and you soon get a reputation among the delivery guys and they’ll get your order to you way quicker….and probably won’t spit in your food. But it still bugs me that there is this odd dichotomy about tipping, like slipping your barber five buck but leaving the dental hygienist hanging. The only remedy I can think of is to not tip anyone (people will think you’re a cheapskate) or tip everyone (they’ll think you’re an obnoxious big shot). In closing: tipping is weird.
[Pic via]
February 23, 2010 at 11:58 pm
A friend of mine picked up the bill at a restaurant once and left a 10 percent tip for our waiter who returned to our table as we were leaving to complain that the gratuity wasn’t big enough.
I’d like to say that my friend gave the waiter a penny instead, but I’m pretty sure he felt more embarrassed than angry about the situation and raised the tip closer to 12 percent.
Things like this might not happen if restaurants weren’t allowed to pay their waiters a lower minimum wage than workers can expect in other parts of the economy.
Wordy Ninja responds: Your friend should have totally done that. He should have also said something like “Keep the change” or “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
February 24, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I used to deliver pizzas. It was in the rural appalachian town where I went to college. About a buck and the leftover change was customary there. In other (i.e. not backwoods redneck) parts of the country 10% is customary for delivery drivers.
I made minimum wage plus a whopping $0.25 per delivery. So yeah, I was happy with whatever extra people were willing to part with, especially considering I wasn’t exactly delivering to the wealthy elite (or even middle class for the most part).
But I don’t think you do need to tip FedEx or UPS guys. They make Union wages.
Wordy Ninja says: I’ve never had a female pizza delivery person…EVER. So I’m immediately suspicious of your claims.
February 24, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Who it’s acceptable to tip and who isn’t is totally a cultural thing. I moved to Israel after growing up in NY and was shocked to discover that here you don’t tip cab-drivers. Ever. And at restaurants ten percent is the norm.
But you do have to pay 25 cents to use a lot of public bathrooms, which blows.
Wordy Ninja: 25 cents to use the bathroom isn’t bad. Have you ever been a situation where you really needed to go but it was all “restroom for customer’s only?” I end paying for the most useless/cheapest thing and asking where the bathroom was at the cash register.
February 24, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Tipping gets weird when it’s allowable to pay below minimum wage (like with waitstaff) with the assumption that tips will supplement the income. Because WTF is that? And who decided it wasn’t illegal? Compulsory tipping ceases to be tipping and becomes PAYING SOMEONE’S SALARY.
I tip everybody (housekeeping at a hotel, the coffee guy, my milkman on holidays) because I’d rather not try to figure out when it’s appropriate. And I prefer it when I feel like I’m tipping someone who doesn’t expect it – I think the first person who discovered the act of tipping for service wanted to show an additional appreciation for a job well done. How sad would he/she be now?! (at least, in the US)
Wordy Ninja say: You have a milkman?
February 24, 2010 at 9:25 pm
I tend to agree with Mr. Pink, even though I understand that not tipping a waitress/waiter is kind of an a-hole move. I’ll never stiff anyone or pull one of those penny maneuvers but I’m not going to give the full 10/15% if I’ve had poor service.
My great-grandmother worked in a hotel, I think, when she was younger and she sort of ingrained the housekeeper tip thing into everyone in our family. Cleaning rooms is a pretty thankless and, I’m sure, disgusting job, so that’s one case where I always leave a couple of dollars.
Wordy Ninja responds: Oh, I have to leave something for the chamber maids in hotels. I feel sorry for them cleaning up after the mess I leave…usually a dead hooker.
February 25, 2010 at 4:30 am
I hear you on the tipping thing. Someone needs to write a universal manual on the subject and then make it law. A recent math fail resulted in me tipping a hair dresser almost $10 on a cut that only cost $30 in the first place. Needless to say, she instantly became my best friend and I can never get my hair cut there again.
(PS: Hi, I’m Melissa.)
Wordy Ninja: S’up, Melissa. Why can you never go back? It’s the perfect setup! Now, when you just tip the hair dresser normally, she’ll think that it’s because she didn’t do as good a job as last time and keep going out of her way to give you a better and better haircut each time.
March 11, 2010 at 4:35 pm
[…] post up about how to act well read and a couple new posts over at Wordy Ninja, one’s on the strangeness of tipping and the other is about how spell check has ruined me. Possibly related posts: (automatically […]
August 11, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Was looking for a wav file of Buscemi’s rant and that led me here. I was pulling through a drive through dunkin donuts for a large coffee and they had a tip jar on the ledge of the drive through window. This is what it has come to? A person turns around and fills a cup of black coffee and hands it to me and I am supposed to give them MORE than the 2.50 it cost? I tip the hell out of wait staff and bartenders, delivery guys (food and extra heavy merchandise) but as Patrick Stewart said in First Contact “The line must be drawn HERE! This far! No further!” (of course he was talking about an invasion of zombie cyborgs and I am simply defending my right to decide to whom to give my money, but you get my point).