If you’re out late at night in a small-town cemetery and are attacked by a vampire, it is expected that you will tip the Vampire Slayer who saves you.
If the same thing happens to you in LA, however, you need not repay the Vampire with a Soul.
Just an aside: Usually, they don’t give me the chance. They grab my bags and run. They won’t get a tip from me.
It’s threads like these that make me damn glad I don’t live in the US. You guys hemorrhage money!
Amen – some rental-car shuttle drivers seem to have adopted a rule that once they touch my luggage, even if I’m holding it, I owe them money.
even sven’s breakdown of the tipping “rules” is pretty on the mark, and yeah, it IS easy. If you don’t want to tip for maid service in a hotel, keep the “do not disturb” sign on the door and there will be no maid and no need to tip.
I agree that tipping a hairdresser or a barber is a little outside the norm of that rule – it’s skilled work that most people probably can’t perform for themselves. It’s traditional for that profession, however, and I’ve always thought it goes back to the days when a maid or valet would attend to your hair and toilette. I’d put the manicurist and masseuse in the same category. And I tip them cheerfully.
FYI, speaking of the maid and valet, if you are a guest in a home that provides you with a maid or valet for your personal use, you should tip them at the end of your stay.
To actually address the question in the OP, my answer for people you DON’T tip is flight attendants. They’re not allowed to accept tips. Like nursing, this is a profession where there’s a deliberate effort on the part of the people doing the job to discourage tips so that people will think of them less as flying waitresses or hospital maids, but as skilled professionals who are in a position to possibly save your life.
Or I could simply just not tip 
It’s not that I’m evil or anything, but it just never crossed my mind to tip the maid. Typically, I never even see them because they are there after I’ve gone. I think coming from a country that has less of a tipping culture changes my behaviour as well. I try to fit in with the US customs, but hairdressers, maids and movers? I would never have thought one would tip them. Simply didn’t cross my mind. I tip hairdressers now that I know I should, but movers? It’s just too weird to me, so I won’t do it. I’ve paid extra to have them pack, hundreds if not thousands of dollars, for what must be mostly labor costs. Tipping on top of that seems as strange to me as a client of the software company I work for slipping me a $20.
I never give crack whores more than the standard $20.
You also aren’t supposed to “tip” or leave any gift (especially money) for your mailman (mail person, whatever). My Step Father was a mailman and they would always get the “We will fire you if we find out that you accept ANYTHING” speech at Christmas. And the supervisors do check. They have their ways, crazy bastards :p.
Ohh. So you’re a cheap bastard. I see.
Do you then believe that in countries without a tipping tradition, people don’t perform services? That in Japan, all restaurants are self-service? Or that the waiters there are all starving?
When there are plenty of countries where things work quite smoothly without tipping, it seems ludicrous to argue that tipping is essential.
I’m just saying who you hand out dollars to is academic. Services cost money. Sometimes you pay a guy. Sometimes you pay a company. Sometimes you pay some combination thereof. If you want people to do stuff for you, you’re going to have to pay them.
This we agree on.
It’s just that, I’d rather pay a hotel, say, $140 per night and forget about it, rather than pay
- $120 per night to the hotel,
- $5 to the maid,
- $3 to the doorman,
- $4 to the bellman,
- $4 to the concierge, and
- $4 to the shuttle driver.
It’s simply waaayyy too complicated, and it doesn’t have to be that way.
Now, if I pay $140 to the hotel, you might ask, what will the maid’s incentive be to do a good job? Well, she gets to keep her job. Hotels will hire only good-quality employees, if they want people visiting there again. And, as has been mentioned already, this all seems to work in other countries, so it isn’t some far fetched idea. It’s simpler and it works.
And honestly, I don’t like the feeling of handing out dollars to people for everything they do for me. It puts me in an awkward position, because I feel I am the same type of person as they are, but giving someone $3 says “You are in a manual job and I’m not, here’s $3 to make your life a little better”. I’d rather they get that from their employer, it’s more dignified.
Well, I would rather pay $120 for a hotel, walk the six blocks to the hotel, shlepp my own bags up to my room (which, in many years of somewhat extensive travel, I’ve always manage to do on my own without anyone wrestling my bags away from me) and deal with a damp towel. I have very simple needs when I travel, and I have no desire to substidize those who prefer to live like princes.
We’re talking about adding a couple bucks here and there. Not long division. I don’t believe you can’t keep that straight.
In America, at least, price always looses out to service. When you ask an American what she values, she will say service. But when choosing where to shop, minimal service warehouse stores and discout retailers nearly always win out. Moving away from tips will only raise prices, lower service, and lower the standards of living for service workers.
Have you actually worked a tipped position? A tip says “I understand you are doing manual labor for me while I sit around. However, I don’t view you as my personal slave. I value your labor and I appriciate the contribution you have personally made to my life.” For example, in grocery stores and the like, it’s pretty common for people to make huge messes and leave them to the help with the attitude “Thats their job.” People don’t pull that stuff with tipped positions, because they recognize the labor people are providing for them. I know it can be uncomfortable to be aware of the labor people provide for you (which is why, for example, many stores refuse to allow ununiformed employees behind the counter or uniformed employees to be visible during breaks…they don’t want to break the illusion and make you actually thing that these nice people probably don’t get enough to eat, don’t have access to health care, and may be some degree of homeless.) but it’s one of those things you either have to get used to or forgo.
Tipping also gives a way to accomodate the variety of levels of service needed in personal servies. A tip provides a socially correct and reasonable way of sayng “Hey, I had diarhea last night and the hotel bathroom is really really disgusting” or " Hey Mr. Taxi driver, I’m sorry my companions were drunken louts that kept insisting you take us to meet some whores and eventually threw up in the backseat" or “Waitress, I need fifteen glasses of ice water with a twist of lemon and an olive in each one.” It keeps the service worker from thinking “What an asshole” and the customer from thinking “Maybe I ought to forgo my lemon-olive water, even though I really like it, because it is kind of unreasonable.”