The Tipping Point

A group of us actually LEFT the office yesterday for quite a civilized lunch at Maison, an adorable French bistro on the corner of our block. (We’ve all slipped into the undesirable habit of quickly nipping out to pick up a sandwich or bowl of soup and then just as quickly coming back to our desks to respond to emails etc while we eat). At lunch, our conversation floated from decidedly NON-work topics such as “Wasn’t Morgan Fairchild on Knot’s Landing?” to Larry David’s knack for political incorrectness and inappropriateness to how an umbrella could have possibly been broken in half while in the safe confines of a restaurant’s coat check room.

Then Matt said, “So what about tipping?” and we were off on a thoughtful discussion of comparing tipping strategies for various situations. Here’s what we came up with:

Taxis: Generally agreed that we round up and add a dollar. (So, for example, if the fare is $6.50, we give the driver $8.00.) While this simple approach works for relatively short trips, other situations require the processing of quite a complex algorithm involving such variables as length of trip, weather conditions, rudeness/pleasantness of the driver, ability of driver to follow instructions about what route you want to take, how much of a hurry you’re in and how much cash you have in your wallet.

Car Service: Opinion was divided as to whether a tip was already factored in when we book our corporate car service. However, we did all agree that regardless of the actual policy, no driver is ever going to turn down a cash tip. (Understatement is my specialty.)

Hotel turn-down and maid service: Again, our approaches were varied (or non-existent), but everyone seemed to think that it was a good idea to leave one cash tip at the end of your stay as opposed to each day. On an average business trip, $5.00 would probably do it. (Adjust for length of stay.)

Restaurant food delivery: Basic agreement was to use typical restaurant tipping strategies (so 10 – 20% of total bill). But again, a number of items become factors: severity of the weather, how quickly your food shows up (especially compared with how hungry you happen to be), amount of food ordered, amount of total bill and (again) how much cash you happen to have in your wallet at the time.

Satisfied with our guidelines, we checked our watches, tipped our waitress and headed back to the emails that had been quietly multiplying in our inboxes since we left an hour earlier.