When an employee retires after loyally serving his company, the firm provides him or her a monetary gratuity. This is not an arbitrary sum but is generally based on a pre-determined formula and is a reward for services rendered over a long period. At times a wrist watch bearing the company’s emblem may also be given as an added attraction at a farewell party. Followed, naturally, by a laudatory, ‘he-will-be-sorely-missed’ speech by the boss, at the end of which he mutters to himself, ‘Thank God that pain in the backside has gone. Good riddance. We should have sacked him 10 years ago.’ That is how things are done with finesse in the corporate world.
However, the word gratuity, when performed on a micro scale, such as giving your hired taxi driver a little over the meter or even if digitally prepaid, because he happened to speak well of the political party you happened to vote for, or if he speaks ill of the political party you did not vote for, we call that a tip. Forgive me for stating the obvious. I should add, in parenthesis, that a Pakistani driver who ferried me to Heathrow airport from my hotel in London, could not stop talking about Tendulkar and Dhoni and how much the Pakistanis loved them and how even President Musharraf advised Dhoni not to cut his flowing locks; that all the bitterness between the two perpetually warring nations is caused by the cussed, good-for-nothing politicians. He used some pretty strong language against the leaders of both nations, though he was well up to speed on his cricketing onions. I was so overcome I tipped him handsomely. Above and beyond.
Getting back to my main subject, the quantum of tip can depend entirely on, apart from the driver’s political or cricketing persuasion, a smiling visage and his readiness to step out of the car in a jiffy and take out your luggage and hand it over to a member of the hotel staff who is waiting eagerly to do his bidding.
The satisfied taxi driver then steps on the gas and speeds away. Meanwhile the expectant, if a tad obsequious, bellhop does his bit. He escorts you to the reception, awaits your room key, deftly takes it from you and proceeds to your room while you follow him like a faithful pet, opens the door, draws the curtains, switches on the air-conditioning, explains the contents of the minibar, shows you how to operate the state-of-the-art, smart television set, explains the complex hot and cold water mechanism in the bathroom (why is this never standardised across the globe?) Speaking of bathrooms, during one of my early visits abroad, I came across a normal, western style commode or WC and next to it, a smaller, open version with a built-in nozzle attached to it; a sort of mother toilet and baby toilet in still life. I was puzzled but too ashamed to ask after the baby. I was to learn later that this was something called a bidet (bi-day), intended to clean ‘those parts of the anatomy that cannot normally be reached!’ Really! I think the French had something to do with this cutting-edge development. Anyhow, I still fail to see the point behind this dual toilet facility. Most of us are doing just fine with the one, single throne.
Apologies for that diversion into matters ordurous. To revert to the hotel waiter’s attentions, he finally asks you if there is anything else you need. He then stands respectfully aside and waits expectantly. You pretend not to notice and thank him for the trouble, but he still stands there, now looking a wee bit anxious. Then the penny drops. ‘Oh sorry, silly of me. What did you say your name was? You didn’t? Ah, it’s embroidered on your lapel. Thank you, Rajesh. Sorry, Rakesh. I hope you have a nice day.’ I proffer a Rs.100/- note as he closes his fist round it, with an expression that was an uncertain blend of mild acknowledgment and strong disappointment. What did he expect? One grand? He left without comment, though I thought I heard the word cheapskate emanating from his receding back, but that might just have been my mind and ears playing tricks.
Then there is room service. You check into your hotel after a tiring journey and decide to order something from room service. That one apple (not to forget the knife), a banana and a small dark chocolate kept on a plate with the management’s compliments, is hardly going to satisfy your ravenous appetite. The menu clearly rules out 70% of the items as ‘unavailable after 10 pm.’ So, you settle for a club sandwich and a cold coffee with ice cream. ‘Right away, Sir. 15 minutes,’ assures the friendly staffer at the other end. An hour and a bit pass by. Meanwhile you have polished off the apple, banana and the dark chocolate, which barely whets your appetite. Just then, the room bell rings.
You pause the television set just as Michael Corleone is struggling to retrieve the hidden gun from the high wall-mounted tank of the toilet, the old-fashioned model with a flush chain, to shoot the baddies in the restaurant to smithereens. The bellhop places the fixings on the escritoire, makes me sign the bill and, you guessed it, waits. I hand him a hundred rupee note and tell him to let the F&B manager know that there is a world of difference between 15 minutes and 65 minutes, and that I should be getting a hefty discount due to the incipient formation of ulcers in my stomach. He just stares blankly and leaves. Not to be left out, just as you are about to hit the sack, the concierge calls you to inquire if the room and everything else is to your satisfaction. You reply in the affirmative, but not before lodging a complaint about the tardy room service. The concierge is most contrite signalling that I should keep him in mind for some loose change as I am checking out.
Welcome to the world of tipping. It comes in many avatars. Take a simple matter like visiting a restaurant for lunch or dinner. The bill, couched in a faux leather folder at the end of the meal may or may not tell you explicitly if service charge (shorthand for tips) is included or not. Even if it states that a service charge of 10% is included, the waiter stands around forming imaginary patterns on the floor with his left foot after you have tapped or punched in the pin number on the credit card machine. Depending on how filling or fulfilling the repast was, the Merlot making you even more mellow, you fork out a hundred of the best and brightest and discreetly hand it over to the waiter who pouches it expertly. There has been some brouhaha recently about hotels mulcting the customer for service, but that is a subject for another day.
The matter does not end there. You come out of the restaurant and the valet service chap hares off to fetch your car. As he steps out and waits for you to sidle into your driver’s seat, you proffer more currency. This after a valet service charge has already been paid. What is more, unbeknownst to you, another chap opens the other front door for your wife to get in and gently closes the door and stands there, giving her that ‘I-am-staying-put-till-I-see-some-action’ look. Depending on the wife’s mood, which is always generous, another 100 chips is denuded from the family fortune. In case you hadn’t noticed, a hundred rupees is now the standard bare minimum tipping rate. And even that is scraping the bottom of the barrel. If you offered that to the liveried major domo standing outside the Taj or Oberoi, he will politely return the note and impolitely spit out of the side of his mouth. Mercifully, the days of my dining out at such sinfully exotic destinations is a thing of the past.
Those of you who get your car or two-wheeler tyre pressures checked at a petrol pump would have noticed a prominent sign saying, ‘Please do not tip the staff,’ or words to that effect. It is one command I happily ignore, seeing as the poor chap, come rain or shine, patiently gets down on his haunches and checks your tyres, and of several others all the livelong day. It is punishing work. Your heart and purse strings go out to him.
The mention of Michael Corleone earlier puts me in mind of the many Mafia-type gangster movies I have seen, the Godfather franchise being in a class of its own. There will be at least half a dozen scenes where a fat cat Mafia don will walk into a restaurant accompanied by his platinum blonde, mink-coated escort, a fat cheroot dangling from his fat lips, while he presses a thick wad of dollar bills into the doorman’s greasy palm. ‘Buy something nice for Sophie and the kids, Jimmy,’ says the don, blowing friendly smoke rings at Jimmy. ‘Sure thing, Polly,’ responds the grateful Jimmy. They are all on first name terms, boss and underling alike, and they are all called Jimmy, Tommy, Polly. Or Michael. They give big tips and they receive useful tips, if you get my drift. I can visualise Shah Rukh Khan doing that at the Taj or Oberoi entrance.
Tipping, it’s all discretionary. However, if you refuse to oblige, you can expect the kind of look from the staff that Wodehouse so inimitably describes, ‘He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.’
Moral of the story. If you are a skinflint, do not make eye contact with the staff.
Published with permission from Suresh Subrahmanyan – A long time advertising professional, now retired, and taken up writing as a hobby. Deeply interested in music of various genres, notably Carnatic and 60’s and 70’s pop/rock. An avid tennis and cricket fan. Voracious reader of British humour and satire. P.G. Wodehouse a perennial favourite. He blogs at – https://sureshsubrahmanyan.blog/
There’s recently been something of a struggle in the press over whether or not a service charge should be included in a restaurant’s bill. There have been so many views expressed (and reported by our perennially mystified journalists) that I have no idea who said what and who is in favour or not of whatever the hell.
I have always suspected that the Service Charge in the bill is pinched by the management and isn’t distributed among the waiters, chefs, and dishwashers. So, I give the waiter a tip. Whether he distributes it to all and sundry, I will never know, but he served me, so I give him the handout. And the devil takes the hindmost, as the old “I don’t care” saying goes.