Tipping

“ There is only one tipping rule for the man who travels, and that is to tip and keep tipping, particularly if you desire to get what is coming to you. Some methodical dubs have adopted the rule of giving to the waiters ten per cent of the amount paid for a meal. My plan is to give something if nothing but a cussing, but to give according to what I receive—and a good cussing is all that is coming to some of them, according to my rule.
I found a waiter in Shanley’s once 7who had been spoiled by the ten per cent habit. ”

“ Tipping—the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving them—takes up a good deal of the tourist's time in Europe. At first reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten per cent of one's bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for each small service at the time of its performance. ”

“ Everyone knows that tipping is a European custom and is entirely un-American in principle. But while the custom is observed as widely in this country as it is to-day, it is both inconsiderate and bad form to ignore it. The wages of waiters and waitresses, porters and hotel servants are outrageously small, for the reason that they receive tips for each service they perform for individual guests and travelers. ”

“ The tipping system, bad as it is becoming in America, is in Europe universal and accepted by all classes of travelers as an inevitable nuisance. It often borders on blackmail. Tippers go raving mad in recounting their wrongs under the tyrannies of the system, the newspapers by turn rail or make merry over it, the hotel keepers and other employers of the class have their excuse that they pay wages to their servants—but the tipping goes on forever. ”

“ Compare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this code with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other first-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel where the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the bell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your suit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same spirit—he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the employer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages. ”

“ I have told him that the tipping habit is just as bad in America as in France, but he says in America the servant acts as though he never had such a thought as getting a tip, and when you give him a quarter or other tip he looks puzzled, as though he did not just recall what he had done to merit such treatment, but finally puts the money in his pocket with an air as though he would accept it in trust, to be given to some deserving person at the first opportunity, and then he smiles, and gets away, and blows in the tip for something wet and strong. ”

“ Motoring now so general that an Owner of a Car is not any longer considered to be necessarily a Millionairess—Tipping should be on a sensible Basis—While the Motor-car has emphasised Tipping, nowadays the modest Shilling receives quite a Welcome—When to tip and when not to tip explained from Personal Experiences
If there is one thing more than another which the motor-car has revived and intensified it is the habit and practice of tipping. I need not give a lecture on tips. All of us agree, more or less, that the present-day tip is one of the banes of existence. ”

“ Employers, particularly in hotels and like public places, will have to give more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the swaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. [74] This type abounds and has been developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely servile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has brought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron. ”

“ So widespread has the practice become that tipping is, individually, a problem, as well as collectively. The traveler has a formidable cost to face in the tipping required. When the total passes $200,000,000 a year, it becomes a problem which the American people will find more difficult of solution the longer it continues unchecked. ”

“ I used to think that tipping was confined to porters, waiters and congressmen, but I have struck a new lead and I begin to think now that the man doesn’t live who is not either giving or taking tips, and the majority of them do both.
While stopping here at the Carrie Hotel I made friends with a traveling salesman for a lumber concern. My first meeting with him came near being my last; the little slim Jim stepped on my foot and I pasted him one in the jaw, then for a few seconds there was nothing doing and then there was. ”

“ The chauffeur is a latter-day instance of the itching palm. Like the barber, the chauffeur is paid well for his work. He does nothing for which the patron should give him a tip. The taxi-meter charges the patron roundly for all the service given, yet tipping chauffeurs is as common in the larger cities as tipping barbers or waiters. It simply shows the spread of the practice to workers who have no other claim upon it than their own avaricious impulses—and the extreme docility of the public. ”

“ That is, you have to pay to enter a hotel, a restaurant or other public place in order to spend money with the employer. The employer will smile blandly and assure you that no patron need tip the door man, but the door man will give unmistakable evidence to the contrary. The tipping of door men shows how the custom grows with what it feeds upon. To the devotee of the custom every underling has an itching palm that must be scratched with a coin and the employer rejoices because it relieves him of wage-payments. Tipping doormen is incomprehensibly weak. Elevator men are in the same class. ”

“ I heard a street preaching guy telling about the advancement of all things and he named over everything he could think of but left out the drum major of the bunch, the cap sheaf, as it were, the one great and only that heads the procession. There is an art in tipping but the art is soon learned; one of the lost arts, however, is to get along without tipping. 6The more I see of tipping the more I am convinced it is the correct thing, and the guy who started the anti-tipping club needs to roost high or he will get his tail feathers clipped. ”

“ Writers of books on etiquette uniformly accept tipping as the correct social usage. They state just the amount that it is proper to give on various occasions and thus do their utmost to rivet the custom upon the people. ”

“ If the tipping custom were abolished, the wages of these people would be correspondingly increased; but as things are now, it is inconsiderate to deprive them of the tips that both they and their employers expect that they will receive. ”

“ I lie down and nap until dinner time. I have dinner in my cabin. Now comes another great problem.
Tipping. One has the feeling that if you are looked at you should tip. One thing that I believe in, though—tipping. It gets you good service. It is money well spent. But when and how to tip—that is the question. It is a great problem on shipboard.
There's the bedroom steward, the waiter, the head waiter, the hallboy, the deck steward, boots, bathroom steward, Turkish bath attendants, gymnasium instructor, smoking-room steward, lounge-room steward, page boys, elevator boys, barber. ”

“ Tipping Tips, or the giving of gratuities by the patrons of the hotel to workers who serve them, is the most unstandardized part of the earnings of the worker. Because the giving of tips depends not only on the whim of the public but upon the general prosperity of the country and the individual prosperity of the patron, it admits of no standardization. ”

“ A few extracts from such books will be given here to show how the custom is strengthened by the arbiters of etiquette. Those masses of Americans who are aspiring to a broader culture naturally turn to these books, and have their Americanism poisoned at the very start. They are educated to believe that tipping is essential to social grace. The feature departments of newspapers in answering queries about tipping usually confirm this impression, though now and then a side-swipe is delivered at the extortionate attitude of the serving persons. ”

“ This means that in round numbers 4,000,000 Americans of both sexes and all ages were engaged in the lines of work specified in the foregoing list, with certain additions as mentioned. [21] These are the citizens who profit by the tipping practice.
Since 1910 the growth in population to one hundred millions, and the steadily widening spread of the tipping practice will increase the beneficiaries of tipping to 5,000,000. ”

“ Some clubs have handled the tipping custom by forbidding gratuities during the year and then allowing the members to contribute to a fund to be divided among the servitors at Christmas. This is a great improvement over the tipping custom but it is still short of the democratic ideal. A servant who is adequately paid for his work throughout the year has no more [120] call upon the generosity of patrons at Christmas than a clerk in a shoe store from whom you purchase shoes four or six times a year. ”

“ The solution of the whole tipping problem lies in the foregoing postulate—that if any employee is in a position to render an extra service there should be a regular scale of charges for such service. It is the irregular compensation, depending upon the whim of the patron, that makes the practice economically unsound. ”

“ Some day this majority will rise up and deal as summarily with the tipping practice as our forefathers dealt with the Mediterranean tribute custom!
A great number of servants and workers in such lines as barber shops, restaurants and other public service positions are equally opposed to the custom. They are caught up, however, in a system where they must conform to the custom or lose their employment. Many a barber or waiter or chauffeur whose self-respect [40] rebels at taking a tip is forced to do so in order not to offend patrons. ”

“ The Pullman porter or the waiter who can succeed in making a patron feel a sense of obligation knows that he has assured a tip for himself. The company or the restaurant business is a vague fact, while the man hovering over your berth or table is a most tangible relation. His art is to make the patron feel that he is responsible for the careful attentions. In a subconscious way the patron knows that the price of the ticket or the food includes the service (wages of the porter or waiter) but the obsequious alertness of the attendant overshadows this knowledge. ”

“ For sleeping car porters there is no rule, the amount of special attention required during the journey influencing the amount of the tip. Twenty-five cents for each day of the journey is adequate when the traveller has asked for no special services.
Q. Is not tipping un-American?
A. It is. Unfortunately the custom has become so universal, and some employees are so inadequately paid otherwise, that for comfortable travel reasonable tipping is almost a necessity. ”

“ This manager indirectly admits, however, that tipping is an imposition on the patron when he assures his guests that no discourtesy will be shown a guest who does not tip. If managers were candid they might admit that they wish the public to tip because it enables them to pay their employees a lower wage rate. ”

“ Tipping men who call for and deliver trunks has become a fixed custom in the cities and is expected, though not so often practiced, in the smaller towns. The transfer company theoretically charge for the complete operation of moving the trunk from the home or hotel to the railroad station. But the men on the wagons or trucks exact tips for carrying the baggage up and down stairs or elevators. The question is, are they entitled to this extra compensation? ”

“ The opposition to tipping is unorganized, undisciplined and inarticulate, while the beneficiaries of the custom, with a munificent tribute to nerve activity, are upon a highly efficient basis of operation. Even with a law at his back to stiffen his moral resolution, the average citizen feels more afraid of violating the custom than of violating the law. It is because of the intangible nature of the custom from his viewpoint. A waiter can do so many things to annoy a non-tipping patron that the patron cannot present in the form of a concrete complaint, yet which are quite real and irritating. ”

“ So long as employers assume that the public will pay part or all of the wages of employees, so long will the employees be under the necessity of resorting to outrageous tactics—coddling the patron who does tip, insulting and neglecting [96] the one who does not tip—in order to obtain pay for their services.
Employers must come to the viewpoint that tipping is morally wrong, and therefore of necessity, economically unsound. The money they make out of tipping is tainted money. Employees should be engaged on wages that are adequate without regard to any gratuities that may be given. ”

“ It would be as reasonable for baggagemen to dump a trunk outside a station and demand a gratuity from the railroad for bringing it inside, as to demand a gratuity from the patron for taking the trunk up or down stairs. Tipping to baggagemen is unnecessary. If the company pays inadequate wages the remedy lies not from the patron through tips but from the employer through the payment of increased wages. ”

“ The employer had hired them on the understanding that any compensation they receive must come from the gratuities of patrons. In certain hotels the management carries the exploitation to the point of charging the servitors for the privilege of working the patrons. The tipping privilege in one hotel has been sold as high as $10,000 a year!
The economic pressure of tipping upon the patron causes one authority on etiquette, "Good Form For All Occasions," to exclaim:
"Women of frugal mind endeavor to call on these functionaries as little as they can because the cents readily mount into dollars. ”