Monthly Archives: February 2015

The Great Big Tipping Etiquette Post

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You may have noticed that this site has existed for quite some time now and yet we have not gotten around to writing a guide to tipping. This is because we are great big cowards and it is a hugely contentious topic. But the time has come to go forth and do our best. As a caveat to international readers, this is a 100% American post, we know people in your countries get paid fair wages and tipping is a token and yadda yadda yadda.

Dining In Restaurants

This is probably where most people do their tipping and is the most fraught with peril. Know before you begin that in many states (but not all! For instance, California servers must be paid minimum wage.) servers are allowed to be paid below minimum wage, something like $2 per hour with the assumption that tips will bring them up to a fair wage. So by entering a restaurant, you are entering into a social contract that you will pay for both food AND service. If you receive subpar service, it is NOT acceptable to lower your tip from the standard. You really need to speak with a manager and alert them to the problem and ask that it will be rectified. If you leave a poor tip, your server will just think you are stingy.

So what is standard? 15% is the absolute bare minimum. In many places this is a perfectly fine tip and you don’t need to go higher. In bigger cities (I know NYC for certain), 20% is the general standard (and I find it a lot easier to calculate!) Knock yourself out going higher if you wish. I do think if you have tons of demands, substitutions, maybe your kid spills stuff all over the table, you should raise your tip accordingly.

There is some debate about whether you tip before or after tax. I generally think before makes sense, since taxes are also a percentage of the total, but its not going to make a huge difference either way, so go with what feels right to you. Or servers can chime in in the comments?

Counter Service

We wrote about this before, but you aren’t obligated to tip for coffee or ice cream or simple sandwich places. However, it is very nice to tip if it’s a big or complicated order or if they go out of their way for you.

Delivery

Someone is literally bringing food to you so you don’t have to step outside your door. Tip 15-20% and definitely raise that up significantly if the weather is horrible.

Bars

You probably already know this but maybe there are some bitty baby college freshmen out there (as I once was) who are very nervous about being caught out as underage because they don’t know what to order and don’t know what to tip. $1-2 per drink is standard or 15-20% on the tab.

Taxis

I used to always think that you only tipped if you had bags, but then I moved to NYC and find that people tip 15-20% per ride regardless of bags. We are pretty anti-Uber at Uncommon Courtesy, but I am a kind hearted soul and checked, and it turns out that Uber includes a 20% tip in the fare, so you don’t need to worry about tipping separately.

Salons

At salons (hair, nails, spa, etc) you tip 15-20% (more for big cities or more personalized services). Technically if your service is provided by the owner, you don’t need to tip, but I would want to be REALLY sure they were the owner before I did that. Also, if a separate person than your stylist shampoos your hair (and gives you a head massage if you are lucky!), you should give them a couple of dollars separately.

Valet

$2-5 when you get your car back, fancy-wheels.

Restroom Attendant

Restroom attendants are the most ridiculous thing. I fly into the Charlotte airport when I go to visit my parents, and they have them in ALL the restrooms. Like, I get it at a fancy nightclub or something where I am choosing to be, but an airport is a glorified bus station and it’s ridiculous. I don’t tip when they are foisted upon me and I don’t need their services, but if you do take their little mints and towels and stuff, tip between 50 cents and $2 depending on what you need.

Bellhops/Skycaps

What is this, the 1920s? Okay, if you are fancy enough to stay at a hotel with a bellhop (especially if they have a cool hat) you should be also be able to afford to make it rain for them. Otherwise, $2 for the first bag, $1 for all the following bags. Do airports even have skycaps anymore? (actually I used to use them in college all the time for some reason?) But anyway, if you can’t haul your bags the extra 50 feet to the desk, they also get $2 for the first bag, $1 for the second bag.

Hotel Housekeeping

$3-5 per day. Do it daily as the person doing the cleaning might change from day to day. Always leave a note saying “for housekeeping” or something so they know it’s for them.

More Title Ruminations

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So we received a lot of responses from Friday’s post about CUNY doing away with gendered salutations. Some people rightly pointed out that in certain professions, such as the law, are more formal and people use formal titles frequently. It was also mentioned that in some cultures, using titles as a form of respect is more expected for everyone. We ended up talking about it even further:

Jaya: Titles are something you do because you think it connotes respect, but if lots of people aren’t feeling respected, don’t do it!

Victoria: When we speak about it in the business world, I think company culture comes into play a lot. To purposefully go against what everyone else is doing out of some feeling of old fashionedness and having been raised to call someone Mr. or Ms., then it’s weird. And I think you risk not being taken seriously, especially as a young woman in the business world.

Jaya: I mean, I think it depends on what business you’re going into. As some lawyers pointed out, they’d probably be considered very unprofessional if they didn’t use them.

Victoria: Oh I just meant going against the norms of the work culture you are in. If you work in a law office where everyone is called Mr. and Ms., it’s fine. If you work at a tech startup and wear 3 piece suits and call everyone Mr. and Ms. when everyone else is in jeans and using first names, it’s an affectation that will probably stand out unfavorably. Until you earn the respect to be eccentric if being eccentric is what you want. But if you call someone Mr. Smith because as a child you were taught that children call grownups by their titles, then you are likely to be treated as a child.

Jaya: Yesss. Yeah I looked it up and Mr. was totally used for like, people of higher station than you.

Victoria: Um yeah. In Mad Men the secretaries always call Don “Mr. Draper” and he calls them Susan or whatever. Among the people who are equals, even then, they used first names. I believe Joan even switched to calling Peggy “Miss Olsen,” once she was promoted to a station above Joan’s. So I do find it pretty disturbing for professional women to continue to follow that type of outdated convention, especially if they are the only one’s doing it.

Jaya: Yesssssss. You’re so smart.

Victoria: Lol, well, my mom has some horror stories about working in finance in the aerospace industry in the 1970s/80s. I asked her why she didn’t watch Mad Men when it’s so good- “Darling, I lived it, I don’t want to watch it.”

Jaya: This is also a generational thing too, right?

Victoria: Yeah, probably. I have found that my parents preferred that my friends call them Mr. and Mrs. Pratt when I was in HS (but not now that my friends are adults!! Now they introduce themselves to my friends with their first names.) But my parents are slightly older than the parents of my friends and a lot of them preferred to be called by their first names even when we were kids. I would have a harder time making the switch from calling someone by their first name if I called them by their title as a kid than I would calling an adult by their first name if I met them now.

Jaya: But I think there’s value in being like “okay, this is what you grew up with, and this is how others may perceive it.”

Victoria: Definitely, especially if what you grew up with is becoming something that is not the norm in our overall American culture. Like I said, when I started working I felt a very strong need to call people Mr. and Ms. because I was used to calling teachers that, but I got over it suuuper quickly because it would have stood out SO MUCH and highlighted how young I was at the time.

Jaya: And if lots of people are saying using these types of titles are offensive or oppressive, then that takes precedent over tradition.

Victoria: Right, that’s the thing, etiquette is always evolving and as we learn more about the great variety of people we have around us and the less people fit into very rigid boxes, the more etiquette will have to change to take that into account. And I think we’ve seen from the feedback that we’ve gotten and the comments on the Jezebel article, that people have wildly different opinions about titles- some love them and feel respected and some hate them and feel oppressed, so there’s not really a solution that will make everyone happy.