Increasingly, I find myself pondering over some very
existential issues. Sample these : Does God exist? How do I respond when my
wife asks me if she has lost weight? How different would my life have been if I
had Salman Khan’s looks? You get the drift…
But few questions have tied me up in knots as much as this
one : What is an appropriate tip?
Seems like an innocuous question, right? However, when I
look back honestly, I guess I’ve got it wrong most of the time. It is
bewildering that such a simple thing should have so much complexity built into
it?
Picture this in a restaurant –great meal, everyone happy and
satiated, mood generally on a high, and then the bill arrives. I have no
problem with the bill. It tells me what to pay and I pay. I knew what I was
getting into, and while I normally experience a good deal of acidity when I
look at the sum total value of all the choices we had made during the meal, it
is usually not such a surprise. It is the tip where I am supposed to exercise
discretion, and this is where the trouble starts.
I can feel my wife’s eyes hawkishly watching the tip amount.
She feels that I am too lax with money and gets palpitations every time I open
my wallet. Even during a business lunch, away from my wife’s prying eyes, I am
not spared the scrutiny. I am in the investing business. And for some reason,
people think that my personal habits reflect more about my investing style than
anything else I say or do. Which means that if I leave generous tips around, my
investors start to choke. How can a guy who doesn’t respect his own money
respect other people’s money, they think?
On the other hand, I am cognizant of the expectations of the
poor chap who served us. These guys live off the tips we leave, I’m told. What
that basically means is that these fancy restaurants pay them minimum wages and
feel they can sponge off us for the balance.
So, inevitably, between a generous tip and keeping the wife
/ business associate under control, it becomes a very difficult balancing act. It’s
no wonder that quite a few people end up under-tipping. And you can identify
them quite easily – they are the ones that refuse to make eye contact with the
waiters as they leave the restaurant. I also know when I have over-tipped. At
such times, when I look at the gleam in the waiter’s eye as he notices the tip
amount, I do feel a small pang of anxiety. Did my wife notice the gleam? Have I
set a bar, which I must now meet every time I show up in this restaurant? Ever
tried to compensate for a large tip with a small one the next time? Take my
advice – don’t even go there.
And how do I approach it when I tip at a restaurant that I
know I’m never going to come back to? Do I risk their contempt, secure in the
knowledge that our paths will never cross again? Cheap thought, but kind of
tempting, right?
Too many factors to be weighed before making a decision. And
that’s why I feel this tipping business is yet another contributor to the
general stress in our lives.
At least in a restaurant, there is a bill that creates some
benchmark for the tip value. What is the right tip for a parking attendant? Or
for the security guard who helps you park? The days of handing over coins are
long gone, so it has to be a note. Does the minimum ten rupee note suffice?
Does it equally suffice whether it is Park Sheraton or Saravana Bhavan? And in
any case, the whole sequence of the tip is flawed, to my mind. If I could tip
the valet generously before he parks my car, I am sure he will take great care.
However, in all cases, we tip when we are leaving. This is where game theory
comes into play. Surely, the valet would have made his assessment of the tip
value when he saw me getting out of the car and handing over the keys. By the
time he gets the car to me, if his assessment of me is that I’m a cheapo, he’s
already dented the car and burnt the tires as he screeched to a halt, so how
does my tip help things? And if by chance he overestimated my potential generosity,
I have to go through the painful process of confronting the body language of a
man in whose eyes I have fallen rather rapidly and entered cheapo territory.
And how does one deal with not having change to tip? It
happens more often that I would like, and I’m damned if I’m going to tip the
valet a hundred bucks for parking the car. It never helps when I explain that
I’m out of change - the inevitable know-it-all, cynical smile that follows cuts
me to the bone. So, usually, with a sad smile meant to indicate that life is
not always fair but will level out in the long run, I just get in and move on,
without a single glance in the rear view mirror.
It doesn’t end there. I face even more confusion on a
continuous basis in regularly visited places like the gym or the club. Do I tip
a small amount daily or a larger amount monthly or do I just give a mega tip
during festivals? Each of these approaches has its pros and cons – these are not
trivial decisions. I have actually left this one to market forces. Nowadays,
when the valet smiles more than usual and goes out of his way to catch my eye,
I know it is time for me to fork out a tip. Behind that smile is a nasty glint,
and ignoring it is going to be at the peril of my car’s well being.
And then there was this time when I was checking into a very
swank hotel. The front desk attendants were all females, and one of them took
charge of walking me to my room. I was sweating. Now, this girl was quite a
looker. Moreover, she was oozing sophistication from every pore and generally
giving me quite the complex. All through the lift journey, while she was
prattling in a very practiced manner of this and that, I was agonizing over
just one thing – do I tip her or not? At these stratospheric levels of
sophistication, would she take affront at being tipped? She looked quite the
kind of person who was eminently capable of looking down her nose and refusing
the tip with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. Ugh – nightmare scenario.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want such a pretty thing to think of me as a
cheapo. And then again, if I do tip, what is the right amount? An inadequate
tip is probably worse than no tip and I’m firmly back in cheapo territory.
And so it goes. Why does such a simple thing as a tip add so
much unnecessary complexity to an already complex life? I’m sure there is an
answer out there – hell, I see a lot of people not breaking a sweat as the
valet approaches or sporting a careless smile as the bill arrives. Obviously
there are people who have cracked the code, and I sure wish someone would show
me the path.
Any helpful tips, anyone?
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