Tips on Tipping

Since the blog has focused on the topic of etiquette the following article about tipping caught my eye. First of all, I think a wait person should be at least a 15% tip if the service has been good or a smaller percentage to none if they were rude or neglectful. It irritates me when I dine with someone who doesn't like to tip even when the service was good.

One thing that bothers me the most about tipping is when people expect it. Tipping is not obligatory - it is a voluntary custom ,so when a waiter starts chasing behind you because you forgot to leave a tip on the table I find it a little excessive. Get over it, bub. It was only $2.00!

Another tip that gets me is the driver's tip. I will tip a yellow cab driver but not a dollar cab because I feel the dollar cab drivers already overcharge. It probably doesn't make any sense but that is one of my tipping quirks.

The bathroom tip is a weird one. I don't frequent places with bathroon attendants often but when I do it always catches me off guard. Just imagine, someone whose job it is to stay in the bathroom for 8 hours and hand you a towel and a mint when you finish washing your hands? Now that woman deserves a tip!

The tip that I really don't get is the coat check tip. Okay, you hang up my coat and hand me a ticket and I am supposed to pay you for that? Isn't that supposed to be a service of the establishment I just paid to get in? Typically the only time I use a coat check is for a club or a museum but that is the stupidest tip policy there is to me. And the worst is when they charge you for coat check and want a tip on top of that! Get outta' here! Second in line behind the coat check tip is the doorman/porter/bell boy tip. Why am I paying you something extra for doing your job which is by the way in the "hospitality" industry? They typically get paid decent salaries yet their hands are always stuck out for holding a door open. Dude, that's your job!

The following article appeared in the NY Times Blog. Apparently I am not the only one who has pondered the coat check tipping policy.

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Check Your Wallet at the Door
Categories: General, Service/Tips

That's the realm of tipping that addles me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the $1-per-item suggestion of many etiquette guides, which was echoed in a 2004 Times story that discussed various kinds of tipping.

The dollar standard seems to have been established many years ago, and it doesn't take regional differences into account. In cities where the cost of living and meal prices are higher than the norm, should a coat check tip perhaps be bigger?

That's only the start of my questions. And of my confusion, reflected in the fact that while my tipping on meals is pretty predictable (I'm a believer in at least 20 percent of the pre-tax, post-wine amount for excellent service), my tipping for a checked coat is all over the map.

I've given $5. I've given nothing. And I've almost never walked out the door feeling sure that I did precisely the right thing.

Of course most restaurants these days don't have an actual coat check room or an actual attendant with whom you deposit your coat and other excess baggage. Instead a host, hostess or someone else takes and returns those belongings.

If the restaurant is tiny and that someone else is clearly the manager, or even one of the owners, is a tip appropriate?

What if the smallest bill you have on you is $20, and you've just left a tip of 23 percent on the bill, and it's a tiny restaurant in which it's clear that your server doesn't have to "tip out" many supporting players, and you suspect that the person handing you your coat will indeed be given a share of your server's tips, and the coat is hanging on an exposed rack right there by the front door, meaning that no one had to carry it anywhere or stow it artfully?

Does it make sense in that situation to ask the person handing you your coat for change for a $20 so that you can give him or her $1 or $2?

More triggers for indecision, more memories of stress:

* I'm with two friends. We have three coats and two shoulder bags between us. A hostess returns all these items to us at the door. One of the friends reaches into his pocket and says, "I've got this." But as I'm walking out the door, I glance back and see him give the woman just $2.

* I'm with three friends. I let them know as we rise from the table that I'll cover the tip for our coats. The restaurant is overstaffed and we are suddenly swarmed: four different people return our four coats and various bags, and some of these people are standing many feet away or looking in another direction by the time I've got money in my hand. Rather than ask for change and clog the lanes for foot traffic in the restaurant by walking to each person who helped, I hand a $10 bill to the nearest person. And I worry.

* I'm at a restaurant with a proper coat check room and a sign stating a charge of $1 per checked item. I pay $2 for my coat and bag and hand over another $1 as a tip on the charge, which may really be a tip on the tip. Chump or champion?

Keens Steakhouse in Manhattan has such a room and such a sign. I called its manager, Bonnie Jenkins, who told me that she indeed considers the $1 charge to be a substitute for a tip, which then becomes unnecessary. She noted that Keens, like many restaurants with such signs, doesn't actually enforce the posted charge.

I also called Gotham Bar & Grill, which has a coat check room without any sign specifying any charge. Katherine LeRoy, who often works in that room, told me that the usual tip, which she considers sufficient, is $1 per item.

She also told me that an umbrella should be counted as an item, meaning that if you check a coat, an umbrella and a bag, the suggested tip is $3. But, she observed, if she puts two diners' coats on one hanger, they often give just $1.

Catalina Burlacu, who works in the coat check room at BLT Fish, told me that most diners give $2 per ticket, whether that ticket covers one coat or two coats plus a bag.

Source: Diner's Journal, 3/14/06

Related: The history of tipping

tags: tips :: restaurant :: etiquette ::