Our modern world provides a myriad of opportunities to render a gratuity. Most people practice the tipping tradition with hairstylists, barbers, bartenders, and cab drivers. Travelers may offer a bonus to the hotel concierge or housekeeping staff. Some of us leave a gift at holiday time for the mail carrier and newspaper delivery person.
Our modern world provides a myriad of opportunities to render a gratuity. Most people practice the tipping tradition with hairstylists, barbers, bartenders, and cab drivers. Travelers may offer a bonus to the hotel concierge or housekeeping staff. Some of us leave a gift at holiday time for the mail carrier and newspaper delivery person.
I don't go out to eat all that often. This is not only because I am frugal, but restaurant food too often underwhelms with an overabundance of sodium, fat, and dipping sauces teeming with ingredients I cannot pronounce. Still, the occasional meal out is a treat, as long as my menu choices are careful ones. It is in local cafés, then, where my customary tipping most commonly occurs.
Part of my upbringing included the notion that what you tip your server was kind of a report card on the service you received. The theory was this: the better the service, the larger the bonus given your waiter or waitress. After working in restaurants and bars a few years, I considered myself well educated on what good service was, and strictly subscribed to the idea of tip as job performance evaluation.
But I've changed my philosophy on gratuities over the years. Fact is, the person taking my order and bringing my fare is paid peanuts by their employer. The overwhelming majority of their wage comes from what is left on the table by the patrons they have served.
What is more, your waiter or waitress often has little control over any number of elements of your dining experience, like how quickly your food is prepared. I've heard stories of people stiffing their server on the tip because diners who were seated later received food first. It is possible, you know, that your entrée took longer to prepare than that for the folks at table 17.
But putting those nuts and bolts of restaurant work aside, I've come to regard the opportunity to tip as a chance to interact generously with other human beings in the universe. Barring an incident of utter rudeness, I try to give my server as liberal an extra as I can, even if they're not totally charming or an absolute whiz at their job.
Remember, your server has to put up with a random sampling of humanity, all of them hungry and many of them carrying some sort of emotional baggage, the weight of which colors any perception of the waitperson at the mercy of their gastronomic whims.
And, honestly, how many of us have not received something good that we have not completely earned?
Besides, that server is a member of my human family, and it's always nice to share with family, even if they’re not having their finest day. No, I think the better course is to over tip, even if it may not be totally deserved.
Because that's the kind of world I want to live in, one where we treat each other well even when we’re not at our very best.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at pgwriter@inbox.com
