A little holiday green can spread cheer for the rest of the year. Here’s a guide to tipping the right people the right amount.
By Liz Pulliam Weston
If you've made your holiday list and checked it twice, chances are you've still forgotten some folks: the service providers who are expecting holiday tips.
End-of-the-year gratuities can show these folks that you appreciate the work they do for you and thank them for helping your life run more smoothly. This extra cash may help foster loyalty and, in a few instances, prevent future problems (like a building superintendent who might become sulky).
- Talk back: Are you tipping this holiday? How much?
If you want to get to the meat of whom you tip and how much, skip down a bit. The next section is for those of you still balking at the whole idea. I've learned a lot about holiday tipping since first writing a column about it a couple of years ago, including:
Some of you think I invented it. "Wow, what on earth are you doing??" one outraged reader wrote. "Get real and try to relate to the public, not just your own little rich community. I expect at least $20 to $50 please for giving you a much-needed service -- a wake-up call!!"
So I consulted etiquette expert Peter Post, who assured me that holiday tipping has been around a lot longer than I have and isn't an isolated phenomenon. The amounts and even who is tipped can vary from place to place, but holiday tipping is ingrained in American life.
"It's not a regional custom," said Post, author of "Essential Manners for Couples." "It's everywhere."
Many of you don't like it. Like several others, one reader -- who called himself "Scrooge," no less -- opined against the whole idea of tipping, at holidays or otherwise.
"Classic one is a bartender expects a $1 tip on $6 bottle of beer," Scrooge wrote. "Why should he get a tip ... he didn't do anything special? He opened a fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer and opened it. Boy, he really worked hard for that one."
Yes, indeed, why shouldn't that bartender work for the pleasure of Scrooge's company? There's a head-scratcher.
But the anti-tipping crowd has good company. Judith Martin, author of "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated" agrees that tipping in general is a "silly system" that "grew up haphazardly" so that some workers -- like the bartender, the waiter, the taxi driver -- expect tips while others performing similar functions -- psychoanalyst, airline attendant, bus driver -- get their compensation from their paychecks. She finds it puts too much power in the hands of not-always-fair clients.
