Here's A Tip

This edition of The State of the Union originally appeared on February 27, 2004.

If it is, in the end, all about the Benjamins, then I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when my friend’s garbage man asked me for a tip.

“Do we give you good service?” he asked me when I stepped outside to get something from my car.  This was shortly after New Year’s.  Apparently the holiday tipping season had passed, and my friends had left him empty-handed.

“I don’t live here,” I said.

“Well, then, tell your parents they should think about taking care of their garbage men,” he replied.

“It’s not my parents’ house,” I explained, suddenly feeling that I had already revealed too much.  What would he want next, my social security number?

“We’re here every week, you know,” he continued, apparently eager to talk trash to anyone with ears, regardless of their collection affiliation.  “We take all their trash away, and they don’t have to worry about nothing.”

He spoke as though trash collecting was some sort of philanthropic effort he did out of the goodness of his garbage-gathering heart, akin to feeding the poor or salving the sick, and he just wanted me to know that should I wish to offer him some small token of appreciation for his kindness, he’d gladly accept it.

“You tell your parents we give them good service, and they should make sure to think about that come the holidays,” he said, wagging his finger at me.  It was sounding less like begging and more like a threat.  “And tell them we don’t drink,” he added.  “Lots of people been givin’ us liquor this year.”

I said the only thing you can say when someone volunteers such information -- “Um, okay” -- and skittishly went back inside.

“So do your garbage men do a good job?” I asked my friend, after taking a moment to regain my composure.

She rolled her eyes emphatically and said, “No.”  Pointing out the window, where the garbage truck was slowly pulling away, she added, “Every week, they leave a trail of trash down the alley.  Half the time they don’t take the recycling.  If they think they deserve a tip, they must be drunk.”

“Could be,” I said.  “But it seemed like they really wanted me to tell you they don’t drink.”

While my friend’s garbage men will have to wait until next year to see if their service merits anything at the holidays, the conversation got me thinking about tipping.

I’m not opposed to tipping -- in fact, if you wanted to tip me every once in a while, for a really great column or something like that, you know, one that made you smile or laugh out loud or snort milk through your nose or pee your pants, I’d be uberappreciative, seriously -- but it seems like these days, anyone who provides any sort of service has a hand out for a tip.

Which prompts the obvious question:  Don’t these people get paid?

In my case, the answer is no, but in the case of the garbage men, yes -- at least, I know my friends pay a monthly fee to have their garbage hauled away.  How much of that gets passed along to the gents who directly handle their garbage I can’t exactly say, but I hardly see how their dissatisfaction with their wages translates into me -- or my friends -- being expected to tip them for simply doing their job.

I know, I know, I’m under no obligation to tip.  And if service is extraordinary, and I have a few extra bucks in my pocket, I’ll tip gladly, even appreciatively.  But as soon as that hand comes out asking, it means somebody’s going to walk away unhappy.

If I tip, and I don’t think the party in question deserves one, I’m angry and resentful of the tipee for even asking, plus I’m out a few bucks of my hard-earned cash, and I’m cranky for letting myself be bullied and/or guilted into giving the tip.  And I suspect only the most deranged of those tip-requesters feels good about asking; the rest, I suspect, feel some shame for groveling and imposing.  Or at least I hope they do.

And if I don’t tip, the would-be tipee thinks I’m a callous jerk, plus I feel both guilty and put-upon, I’m mad at the would-be tipee for thinking I’m a callous jerk, and now I’m afraid that the mediocre service I was already receiving is going to get even worse.

It makes a fella almost want to never leave the house.  Except for the fact that the garbage men already come to your house.

But it’s not the fact that garbage men and skycaps and Starbucks baristas expect tips that rubs me the wrong way -- it’s the very notion of a tipping “industry.”

In the restaurant and hotel businesses, tipping isn’t just a kindness, it’s part of the economy.  Restaurant workers in particular get awfully defensive about their right to be tipped.  Some recent Googling led me to a website called Tip20! -- so named, I assume, because its founders believe they should be tipped 20 percent -- where in an article entitled “Why Should You Tip?” site founder Thomas A. Mason holds forth on tipping thusly:

“Do you want hot food?  Do you want your drink refilled?  Do you want the person taking your order to care about the quality of food you are going to eat?  The answer to these questions is always yes.  So why would a person that is getting paid hourly whether you eat there or not care about any of those things if there is nothing extra in it for them?”

I don’t know, Tommy.  Maybe because that’s their job?  Maybe because if they bring cold food and don’t refill drinks and don’t care about the quality of food I’m going to eat, their customers will complain to the managers, and they’ll get fired?  Or -- and I know I’m going out on a limb here, but try to stick with me -- maybe because they have a soul?

Stop me if this is all just crazy talk, but whatever happened to pride in a job well done?  I’ve never waited tables, but I have done some of the most sweaty, thankless, backbreaking jobs you can imagine, often for bosses that I absolutely loathed, and despite no promise -- not even a hope -- of a tip, I still managed to care enough to do the job well.

Now, I understand Tommy represents all the service employees in the world who bust their butts for us -- the humble customers, the very people who make the restaurant industry possible -- and he just wants us to appreciate them as much as they appreciate us.  That’s probably why you can go on his site and buy a baby-doll t-shirt that shows the depth of that appreciation loud and clear.  It says:  “Finish your food. Leave my tip. Get out.”

I tell you what, Tommy, I am feeling the love.  How much did you say we should tip again?

But as obnoxious and arrogant as I found Tommy’s article to be, I’m trying my best to understand his perspective.  And certainly, you can argue that Tommy is just making the most of the cards he’s been dealt -- cards that say waiters earn about three bucks an hour, with the rest of their income generated from tips.

And most people don’t even question the logic in that, because as my friend Bruce Hornsby so aptly put it, that’s just the way it is.  Well, people, I’m here to question the logic.  How does it make sense that a corporate giant like T.G.I.Friday’s rakes in millions of bucks, and pays their wait staff three bones an hour?

The argument servers make in their defense is this -- if people weren’t expected to tip, restaurants, be they corporate behemoths or not, would have to raise their prices to compensate.

But the flaw in that argument is this -- what’s the difference?  If restaurants raise their prices and I don’t have to tip, how is that any worse than keeping the prices where they are and expecting me to tip -- or if I show up in a party of six or more, actually putting a tip on the bill and forcing me to pay it, as so now often happens?

Perhaps it’s my distrust of corporations, but I suspect that just like at the casino, the house always wins on this one -- and the servers and the customers lose.

Now, I’m not suggesting that when you go out to dinner tonight, you don’t leave a tip, and whether you tip your garbage men (or women -- I wouldn’t want to suggest that women aren’t qualified for positions in the waste technician industry) or not is totally up to you.

But I am suggesting that we question the status quo.  If you’re reading this and you’re the owner of an establishment whose employees regularly accept tips, or you’re a member of the United States Congress, or perhaps you’re George Michael and you’d really like to reunite with Andrew Ridgely because you believe the time has come for Wham! to be retro-cool again and you’re willing to let bygones be bygones, all I’m asking is this -- look into the possibility of bucking the system.  Explore the prospect of changing the rules of “etiquette” and making the world a better, less guilty-feeling place for customers and service people alike.

And while you’re at it, maybe you can explain this to me:  when I’m already paying more than three bucks for a tall café mocha, does the Starbucks barista really expect me to leave a tip in that tip jar?  I mean, if you’re not there to make that drink for me and take my money, what are you there for?

And while we’re at it, why is that jar always half empty?  With that jar perpetually half empty, it makes me wonder if any money I might actually give as a tip will ever make it to the wallets of any of the baristas.

But I’m willing to admit that maybe I’ve got this whole tip thing all wrong.

Maybe the jar is really half full.