THE TIPPING FACTOR BY RICCARDO TARABELSI
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his month I’m going to depart my usual musings about wine since March has always been more of a beer month...drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, previewing new seasonal beers for the summer, and indulging in beer with friends for March Madness basketball. This month I’d like to address a relevant topic since we are all affected by it; whether we depend on it for income or if we decide it for service. Tipping. Call it a gratuity, a service fee, or just a way to reward the person that is serving you; tips affect everybody. I remember working at my dad’s gas station as a kid. It was the perfect summer job. I would wait for someone to pull up to the pumps, run around to the driver’s window and ask with a smile, “Fill up?” Now, I’m probably dating myself by writing this, but this is when unleaded gas was about $0.89 a gallon, and we even offered leaded gasoline! Anyway, most people would have me fill up their tanks, hand me a $10 bill (for a fill up!) and then something magical happened… they would say, “This is for you,”
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and hand me a quarter or a fifty-cent coin or even a whole dollar! They actually tipped me for a service that I provided. They didn’t have to get out of their car, or get their hands dirty, or even figure out how to open their gas tank door. I did that FOR them, and they rewarded me for it. Now, almost four decades later, I work in an industry where good service is rewarded, and exceptional service is the goal. In restaurants, tipping is more of a carrot-and-stick arrangement: “Serve us well and we’ll leave you a nice tip—maybe.” But it’s also a cart-before-the-horse arrangement. Far more practical in terms of getting results was the British habit of the mid-eighteenth century: patrons of pubs and coffee houses would hand waiters coins wrapped in a note reading “To Insure Promptitude.” Giving tips in anticipation of service, rather than after the fact, gave waiters the motivation to move it. Tipping reflects our desire for our servers to like us even though we’ll be leaving in five minutes and may never see them again.
