Ah, the holidays — a time of giving, of good cheer and perhaps most of all, of cherished family traditions. Who doesn’t feel a little thrill from, for example, taking down from the attic all the holiday decorations — to be replaced immediately by the bathroom scale, the services of which will not be needed for the duration of the holidays, thank you very much.
One holiday tradition I still have trouble with is the issue of tipping. Nowadays whenever December rolls around, I can’t help but feel like everyone I come into contact with has a hand out, whether it’s the mail carrier, the garbage collectors, the newspaper delivery person, the neighborhood delinquents, etc.
Why, yesterday even the dog walkercame by, not so subtly hinting that he would be expecting a holiday gratuity this year. I was halfway through digging a $20 bill out of my wallet when I stopped myself. “No,” I thought. “I’m taking a stand. Twenty dollars is too much to tip a guy for walking the dog, particularly when, as far as I can tell, we don’t even own a dog.”
Now don’t get me wrong — I’m not some cheapskate who doesn’t believe in tipping. I learned the importance of gratuities as a kid when I used to deliver newspapers. At the end of every week, I had to go door-to-door to collect from all my customers, and while many of them were perfectly generous, a few always stiffed me — even on those weeks when I’d been particularly attentive and delivered their paper all seven days.
Later on, when I worked as a waiter, I remember meeting these same tightwads who seemed to view the entire dining experience as an exercise in tip negation. They were the customers who, as soon as they sat down, would start the tip meter at 15 percent. The rest of the meal they spent grousing about even the tiniest misstep so they could shave a percentage or two off the tip like an Olympic figure skating judge deducting points for every two-footed landing.
In the restaurant where I worked, we had a name for these patrons. We called them “people who wouldn’t be so eager to get their food if they knew what we were doing to it in the kitchen.”
Of course, today kids on bikes delivering papers have been replaced by adults in cars. It appears that having thoroughly covered the issue of inner-city gang violence on the news pages, the industry has decided to adapt the highly effective model of drive-by shootings to the newspaper delivery process. As a result, we subscribers no longer know the identity of the person tossing the paper into the puddle at the end of our driveways each morning. Not until December, that is, when one day the paper arrives accompanied by a self-addressed, stamplessenvelope just the right size for a check (hint, hint).
In truth, I don’t think I would mind all the holiday tipping so much if I had any idea what the proper protocol is. Do I lie in wait for the mail carrier so I can hand her the tip in person? Or maybe I should mix an envelope in with the outgoing mail and turn the holiday gratuity experience into a fun little scavenger hunt. It’s a cute idea, but I don’t think it would go over quite so well with the garbage collectors.
In the end, I’ll probably just hope for the best and give a $20 bill each to the mail carrier, the garbagemen, the newspaper delivery person and any other service providers who show up with a hand out. What the heck, even the dog walker. It is the holidays, after all.
Don’t get Examiner columnist Malcolm Fleschner started on the proliferation of tip jars these days. I mean, come on, at the DMV?
