Tip Well

# 9 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Be kind to waiters, waitresses, and service personnel. By kind, I mean, tip well. They are human beings doing a tough job. If you’re comfortable with it, ask for a first name, I do.

You can tell a lot about a person by how well he treats those he’s not obligated or necessarily expected to treat with courtesy, respect, and dignity. I cringe and get angry when I see weak, insecure people act demeaning and degrading towards servers and other persons they consider beneath them. People who are compensating for their own powerlessness should just stay home. Others, aren’t so cringeworthy, they’re just cheap. They may treat others decently, but forget that they survive on tips.

And courtesy, respect, and dignity – as valuable as those are – won’t buy groceries, or pay bills.

So, when a tip is called for; in a restaurant, in a hotel, with other service personnel, enlarge your perspective to imagine yourself in their position and treat them the way you’d want to be treated. The pay is well below minimum wage in many of these industries with the expectation that tips will make up the difference. So, if someone does even an average job, pay them for it. They served you directly. Pay them directly. Easy. Think of how different your experience would be if that service worker wasn’t there. In many ways, they make the experience possible. In that light, reward their efforts.

If you feel the need to teach them a lesson about the virtue and character that accrues from doing low-paying hard work, include a lesson about human kindness and generosity…yours.