Way back in the previous century, it seems there were annually stories in women’s magazines and newspapers about all sorts of ‘mandatory’ presents a household (i.e. generally the woman) was expected to give to service workers, and suggestions on what would be ‘appropriate’ amounts.
Mostly these would be cash-in-envelopes, and amounts like “one usual service” amount to people like dogwalkers, weekly housecleaners or your regular hair dresser, or $50 or $100 or so to the super at your apartment building. Some of these lists were really long – basically, you were ‘expected’ to give annual tips to just about any person you had a regular service type relationship with, from gardener all the way to garbage men and even mail carriers.
Oh, and a few recommendations for other types of presents to people like your children’s school teachers, where apparently cash would be regarded as insulting. (What the heck did they ever do with all those 'World’s Best Teacher" mugs and ceramic apples?)
Anyway, I haven’t seen such stories in decades now. Maybe because I no longer read women’s type magazines? But our way of life seems so different now. Like, the ‘garbage men’ are now an anonymous to me company guy driving a truck that lifts/empties bins. I have no idea if there even is a ‘regular’ driver, let alone what s/he might look like or be names. My mail route seems to be handled by at least three different people on different week days.
Has this sort of ‘tipping your regular service people’ thing gone away as much as it seems to me?
As a teacher, I’ve gotten a few gifts from students (most recently, a gift card each to Panera and Amazon), but seldom enough that it certainly doesn’t seem to be any sort of societal tradition.
You made me stop and realize how much society’s changed since I was a kid. We did know our mailman and at least recognized the garbageman.
And we had a milkman! Who’d open the little 12x12" door (the “milk chute”) and place our order right in our kitchen… and our dog would stick her neck through the door to get skritched. Oh, almost forgot, we had a separate “egg lady” from a farm who’d deliver butter and eggs.
Sounds like Small Town Americana, but this was a fairly big city in the '60s.
And yes, my mom read those women’s magazines (“Quick but Fancy Recipes for When Hubby Brings his Boss Home”), and learned exactly how much to put in each envelope. These were given out a week before Christmas, presumably to add to the servicepeople’s gift-giving funds.
Many years ago (25?) at work, my garbage dumpster was maintained by a one man operation (he had a helper who varied). He just had a pickup truck with wooden sides, and he pulled everything out of the dumpster by hand.
One xmas he was picking up the garbage and I happened to see him. I had a few fifths of various liquor sitting around, so I grabbed a bottle, took it out, and wished him a happy holiday.
He thanked me, opened to bottle, then took a big pull. He handed it to me so I could have a swallow and I took one. Before you know it, the bottle was empty and he tossed it into the truck with the rest of the garbage.
I think holiday tipping, for the most part has completely gone away. For the wealthy where there are people who actually work for them, that’s a different story. Tipping nowadays is pretty much limited to the hospitality industry where employees often make minimum wage.
My father was a mailman in the 1960’s (when I was growing up) and many many of the customers on his route would give him Christmas gifts: cash (always preferred), boxes of candy, bottles of booze, fruitcakes (bleagh.) Always a fun time of year, to see what he came home with (not so much for him as he had to put in a lot of overtime.)
Oddly, I’ve never felt compelled to continue the tradition. We do give our cleaning lady a xmas bonus, though.
Me, too! But my childhood started in the late 50s. My dad stopped being a letter carrier when I was fairly young, but he still got gifts that people brought into the post office. He got a range of things, but if he got cash, I never knew about it. Once, he got a few lps from some guy in the music biz. They were by some new band he was promoting. Nobody who later became famous…because they were terrible. My dad hated “that rock and roll,” so he had no way to discriminate between horrible, o.k. and awesome, and I don’t think he thought we could either. But we could.
When we had a house cleaner, we gave her a bonus. We paid her for months during early CVID, though we didn’t have her clean. We have several not-great mail carriers, so we hand them good chocolate bars. Whe I was a program director, I’d give the admin staff a little plant or cocoa and a nice mug. I took cookies to my PCP’s office this year.
We desperately needed a new roof last year. From a recommendation on Nextdoor, I hired a guy. He did an excellent job, for one-third or less than I expected to pay. He came by a couple of times to check up on his work, too. He came out earlier this week because one of the vents was leaking. (Not his fault; we had a rare ice storm, and there were inches of ice by the vent.) I gave him a Christmas card, and a bottle of Maestro Dobel Diamante tequila (my favourite sippin’ tequila).
I used to listen to a podcast where the host lives in a fancy New York City high rise and he complained annually about how his building has “mandatory tipping”, the management would give everyone in the building an itemized list of every worker in the building and “suggested tips”.
The door man, the laundry crew, the garbage men, the handymen, the front desk crew, the janitors, everybody was tipped and everybody had $40 each as the “minimum suggested tip”.
If an entire high rise building was tipping their janitors $40 per apartment that would make it seem like they would get giant Christmas bonuses.
Amazing, isn’t it? We had the well known mailman (who would take unstamped letters and some coins for us!) and the milkman. And a bread man! Who had all sorts of baked goods, and some other things like cartons of OJ. And the guy who picked up/returned the dry cleaning! And ‘our’ regular service guy at the garage who knew us by our car make and year.
So many individuals who ‘served’ us personally, and it’s not like we were rich or anything, basically lower middle class. Now we are responsible for driving somewhere to get those things ourselves, or they’ve been automated or something.
Yeah that’s how it is in my building. There was a list of all the workers posted in the elevators and common spaces and each apartment gave them a $40 tip. It adds up to quite a lot.
We had the Helms Bakery man and his truck. The truck was all custom lined with wooden cabinetry and drawers. I loved that truck. You put a card in the window with a helmsman’s wheel on it to signal the driver to stop.
My grandmother made padded wooden hangers (Tunisian crochet/afghan stitch strip, sewn around the hanger) and would wrap them up for me to give my teachers, until we were told not to do that any more. This was in the early 1970s.
Nowadays, if one wishes to give, for instance, a gift to a teacher, it should be done privately or even anonymously.
Oh, I remember that little milk door in our kitchen when I was growing up. My grandmother had an ice box until the end of the war and I imagine she tipped the ice man who delivered a large block of ice every week.
