Got a bag of used socks from one of my older cleaning clients as a Xmas bonus. Tossed them in the bin on my way out of their condo complex and didn’t work for them much longer.
When I delivered for a Major Pizza Franchise during college, we’d get these all the time. There were two guys who worked on the pizza line who would buy them up from all the drivers (at the time, this was the busiest store in the company and had 35+ drivers on each night).
There was a particular address in a college apartment complex that the drivers would fight over when it came up. The resident/customer was a rather attractive young lady who would answer the door in a skimpy outfit (or frequently in nothing at all) in lieu of a tip. I didn’t even know about it until one Super Bowl Sunday when all the other drivers were out at one time and it was randomly assigned to me. ![]()
Then there’s the one about the mohel who had a wallet made out of all the tips he had received over the years.
It was a special wallet. When you rubbed it, it turned into a suitcase.![]()
I will leave it for you to decide.
The same thing happens to me about twice a year. I have never, after selling the scrap & used items, often tools, made less than $300.00
As I said, your call as to whether this counts as a tip or not.
Many years ago, I was working as a graphic artist in NYC, and I designed a program for a Broadway show. At the time I was a stamp collector, and the guy gave me a small collection of very old Japanese stamps. They were beautiful, but it turned out, every one of them was counterfeit.
I was working the night shift in a hotel. A woman called the front desk.
“Would you please bring me a Dr Pepper?”
“There is a vending machine just around the corner from your room.” (We were an economy hotel. We had neither a restaurant nor room service.)
“If you’ll bring me one, I’ll give you five dollars.”
“Uh . . . okay.”
I took the beverage to her room. She answered the door wearing nothing but a strategically-placed pillow. (Sadly, she also had a boyfriend somewhere in the back of the room, laughing his head off.)
If she had dropped the pillow, I would not have had the nerve to take the money. But, she kept her modesty, and I returned to the office five dollars richer.
Back when I worked in shoe repair and I did leatherwork and repairs on hunter’s equipment and gun cases I would occasionally get a tip of a pound or two of game meat. Which was totally OK - I have a great venison stew recipe and I’m willing to try new things.
Delivering papers by car in the Hollywood hills, I got quite a few nice tips, including a bottle of very nice booze from Dr Leary, who came out in his bathrobe.
And, a BJ from a bored housewife in Malibu.
I got a half-case of hand sanitizer when I was working at a hotel/conference centre.
I hope it wasn’t a comment on my personal hygiene, but I was helping some of the vendors at a trade show pack up and got some of the leftover stock they didn’t want to haul back. I’m not a heavy user of the stuff and it took me almost 5 years to use of the last of it.