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Tipping is not a city in China
Apr. 10th, 2003 04:56 pmI keep thinking about tips. You know, the amount you add to your bill to pay for decent service. "Tips" began as an acronym, presumably TIPS, abbreviating "To Insure Proper Service." I actually have several thoughts about tips, but I'll jsut get to one of them today, and I'll try to come back soon to address some more.
One of the service people we regularly tip is our hairdresser, no? I tip mine. There's a little line on the credit card receipt for "tip" and everything. Sometimes I calculate the tip wrong, get home and feel embarassed, then mail a check to her in care of the salon. This happens especially when the price changes, or when I get an additional service (color or makeup in addition to cut.)
Four years ago, when I started seeing my hairdresser, she charged $40 for a cut. Figuring that the standard tip is between 15 and 20 percent (a change from two or three decades ago, when a standard tip was between 10 and 15 percent, I'm still trying to figure out when and how that happened), I usually added $7.00 to the bill.
She has changed shops twice since then, and each time her price went up $5.00. Now I pay $50 for a cut. Today, I tipped $7.00 again, and now I realize that was only 14$ of the bill. I started to feel guilty, then I thought, why, darn it? Why feel guilty? I've been tipping her $7.00 for a while, it's still a generous amount of money, why is it not enough?
It's kind of hard to take a double-whammy increase. I'm not really expected to pay $5 more for my haircut, I'm expected to pay $6 more, or at least $5.75 more (75 cents being 15% of $5.00.)
So, that's all I have to say about that at the moment.
One of the service people we regularly tip is our hairdresser, no? I tip mine. There's a little line on the credit card receipt for "tip" and everything. Sometimes I calculate the tip wrong, get home and feel embarassed, then mail a check to her in care of the salon. This happens especially when the price changes, or when I get an additional service (color or makeup in addition to cut.)
Four years ago, when I started seeing my hairdresser, she charged $40 for a cut. Figuring that the standard tip is between 15 and 20 percent (a change from two or three decades ago, when a standard tip was between 10 and 15 percent, I'm still trying to figure out when and how that happened), I usually added $7.00 to the bill.
She has changed shops twice since then, and each time her price went up $5.00. Now I pay $50 for a cut. Today, I tipped $7.00 again, and now I realize that was only 14$ of the bill. I started to feel guilty, then I thought, why, darn it? Why feel guilty? I've been tipping her $7.00 for a while, it's still a generous amount of money, why is it not enough?
It's kind of hard to take a double-whammy increase. I'm not really expected to pay $5 more for my haircut, I'm expected to pay $6 more, or at least $5.75 more (75 cents being 15% of $5.00.)
So, that's all I have to say about that at the moment.
