…or seen it happen? I’m talking about bribing people like maitre’d’s or club bouncers. Or anybody else that can get you into a room or out of a jam. What I’ve seen of it has been in TV and movies, and mostly older ones at that. But I live a pretty sheltered life, so I’m curious if anyone here has any stories about it, or any insight into how common it was in the past as compared to today.
Sure. There have been plenty of times I have slipped a folded bill into a maître d’s hand to secure quicker seating or a table by the window.
I once bribed a public official, in a foreign country, in a “this is the way it’s done” moment, to get a copy of a certificate that he was legally obliged to provide, but wouldn’t absent the bribe.
Once. It was at a show in Vegas and I wanted a good table to impress a date. $20 to the maître d did the trick. Folded discreetly, of course, and offered in handshake.
Just once in Manila some 20 years ago. I was over there for work, and we caught a cab from the hotel to the airport to fly home.
We hadn’t gone very far when two jeep loads of military with machine guns and in camos pulled over the taxi. They said the driver had run a red light and we had to go to the station. Of course, if we were to pay his “fine” we could proceed.
It cost about $30. I understand at the time this was not rare- the Phillipines was was going through a painful period. I have no idea if the driver ran a red light- I doubt it- but it was interesting we were pulled over by the military not the police.
Sure, I’ve slipped money into anything from bouncers hands to get to the VIP queue and into coppers hands to avoid a ticket. That’s just the way things work here.
It’s not something people talk about though.
But I’m still allowed to bitch about it 
A year or so ago my husband and I, along with a couple friends, went out to eat, and found the restaurant very crowded when we got there. We inquired about the wait, got an answer, and then one of our friends asked (jokingly, I’m sure) “How long if I give you $20?” One of the tables near the door was being cleaned just then, and the hostess told us to take it.
I’ve bribed cops in Mexico, Malaysia and Thailand, not because I was doing anything wrong but because they would have made my life difficult if I didn’t.
The very overworked IT guy at a former workplace would move me to the front of the line for the price of a candy bar. I did that a few times.
I’ve bribed a few bouncers to get better seats at a music show.
I’ve bribed a couple of cops but haven’t in the last 15 years, got tired of it.
The last time it was almost a shakedown. They stopped me late on a Sunday afternoon in a small town with my girlfriend and mom. There was an outstanding parking ticket and the way to legally solve it was to leave my car (full of stuff) take a cab in the middle of nowhere, pay the ticket, get it manually erased from the list go back adn find the my car was missing several parts.
If you ever come to Peru the best way is to say “give me the ticket, please, I know I’ve done something wrong and it’s your duty to give me the ticket.” 97.24% of the time you get a “don’t do it again”.
Saw, but I was complicit. When I was in college we smuggled 200 cases of Coke bottles from Boston (where the deposit was 2 cents) to NY ( where it was 5 cents) and my colleague bribed the foreman and shop steward of the Coke bottling plant on 34th street to take them.
This was 20 years before Seinfeld did it, and since there were no legally mandated deposits back then, the smuggling was legal. The bribing I’m not sure about.
Nightclub bouncers would be it.
And I have (with respect to the posters above) been vary of the “bribe the police/officials in Third World Countries” stories. My own limited exp is quite the opposite, I had a friend who tried that in El Salvador, got him in even more trouble. I am sure that they are no paragons of virtue though.
I’ve tipped the maitre’d to get a better seat at a Vegas show a few times. Once we managed to get seats right next to the stage at one of the Rat Pack tributes, and “Dean Martin” started flirting with my wife during one of his songs.
When I was living in South America, we bribed people frequently. Money was a useful lubricant for everything - getting your packages more quickly, getting into a restaurant faster, getting people to look the opposite direction for pretty much anything. The only time I’ve bribed someone in the US, though, was on my way back from South America. I was stuck in the Miami airport and needed to get through customs, then into a different terminal to catch my flight and I didn’t want to wait or I’d miss it and I’d already been awake for almost 48 hours. So I slipped someone some cash, was brought to the front of the line at customs and got a ride across the tarmac to the next terminal and was deposited just a few feet from my gate, which was boarding my flight.
The usual way to approach this is to ask “Isn’t there some sort of fee that can be paid to solve this problem?”
If your friend were not so discreet, it may well have made matters worse.
During a nightmare release cycle when on an incredibly competitive development team, I gave the QA lead for the project a case of beer to make sure my parts really got hammered on. No one wanted to be the guy with the last bug keeping the project from shipping, and by making sure my stuff was tested first and extensively, I wasn’t the one with last minute bugs. It was probably the strangest bribe I’ve ever made.
Actually, that and slipping the valet some money to find us a parking spot in a “full” lot at the beverly hills hotel, that was my only bribe.
I’ve been in quite a few situations in developing countries where I’ve paid a “filing fee” or whatever for basic stuff like getting the police to investigate who broke into my house. Generally this kind of bribe is asked for as a fee, and it’s not worth your time to argue about it.
I’ve also done plenty of bribing on transportation- twenty cents in Cameroon will get you the best seat on the bus. And in many countries you can hop on a “full” train without a ticket. Just find the conductor, and he will magically find you a seat at a slightly inflated price. Or you can buy your ticket directly from the station master at a markup and not worry about lines or lack of seats. That only failed me once, in India, when the conductor threatened to throw me off the moving train for not having a ticket.
There are times when I’ll resist bribes. Police at roadblocks used to harass me a lot, and you can wait those ones out or flirt your way out of it. My mom was pretty shocked when she came to Cameroon and saw me talking sassy to every police offer who came our way with some made-up visa violation. You tend to learn what you can get away with.
I’ve also been offered bribes. Usually by students looking for better grades, but now and then by people with some other agenda. The only ones I accepted was the sketchy “motivation” money that every Cameroonian school gives their teachers each semester (and I put that money towards school supplies.)
After a canoeing trip in Zimbabwe, we had to bribe the customs official to get back into Zambia. Those crossings were notoriously corrupt, and he pulled out some crazy letter from some ministry that showed there was an extra fee for tourists or some such. The problem was that we really didn’t have the right stamp on our passport – when you come into Zambia, you can buy either a one time entry or multi-entry stamp and I think we bought the one-time one by mistake (it was a long flight, we were tired), so I was a little worried that they might just turn us away. Our driver got us to give him some cash ($20 each) which he slipped to the guy. After some intense negotiation between them, we were on our way with a fresh new stamp in our passports as a souvenir.
I’ve payed bribes any number of times here in Panama to get out of speeding or traffic tickets, usually for going a kilometer or two over the limit or some minor violation. It’s pretty standard to ask if there is a way the “problem can be resolved right now.”
Now I have a diplomatic license, though, which means they can’t give me a ticket. The transitos stop me, thinking they’ve landed a lucrative gringo, and then their faces fall when they see the license. I usually get a scolding though.
When I was in Lagos, Nigeria, once I had to get to a conference in a town in the boondocks by myself, my appointed “minder” not having shown up at my hotel. I went to the local airport, and ended up having to pay more in bribes and “tips” to get on the flight than I did for the ticket itself.
I’ve also been shaken down by Congolese border guards. I was trying to fly from a town in eastern Congo (Zaire) to Uganda. The guards told me my visa wasn’t good at that town, but instead I had to leave from a larger town that had recently been almost entirely burned down in rioting. The equivalent of a few million zaires (about $10) resolved the problem.
The “worst” bribes though, are those who are needed for LEGAL and LAWFUL stuff to happen, but the guy with the rubber-stamp is god and a fickle one at that.
I paid a motorcycle cop 60 bucks in Tijijuana. My wife and I refer to it as the “pasty white tourists in the rental car that were going to be late for their plane” fee. He called it an illegal lane change. I will leave it up to the reader to decide which descriptive title was closer to fact.
1970 in VietNam. I was a young soldier trying to get a shoeshine boy (Duoc), who really wanted to learn, into school. I was told I needed to pay a $40 dollar bribe. I paid it. Then I was told I needed to pay more. Luckily, we medics lived right next to the MPs. We finally got the Vietnamese MPs (QCs) to escort the kid to school. Duoc’s younger brother took over his shoeshine job. I still don’t know if it was the school or Duoc’s mother who was wanting the bribes.