Tipping Over

I have a problem with this country’s cherished custom of tipping. The idea is that you are receiving some type of service that varies in degree of quality, and you are to base your tip upon the level of service you have received. But in practice, I always leave at least a 15 percent tip, even if the waiter set my hair on fire instead of the banana flambé. I’m just too much of a wimp to leave a bad tip, or, the horror, no tip. I’m a pathological tipper. Call me Jack the Tipper.

Case in point: Upon a recent return from Logan, I got in a cab and asked to be taken to Brookline. The cabbie asked, “Which tunnel do you want to use?” This was such a stupid question that I didn’t understand what he meant. Why would you take any tunnel other than the Sumner? “Just take Storrow Drive,” I told him, which he interpreted as, “Please take the most illogical, circuitous route you can think of at the moment. Get on the Pike and drive back and forth through the toll booths a couple times while you’re at it. I am a moron and won’t know the difference.”

He took the Ted Williams Tunnel. Apparently, since the new extension opened in January, this has become a favorite tactic among cabbies to roll up a few extra bucks on the meter. He took the Southie exit while I sat in back cursing him under my breath. Logan to Brookline via Southie? By the time we climbed onto Route 93 and, roughly $10 into our trip, passed the Sumner Tunnel, I was in a fine fettle. “Why didn’t we take the Sumner Tunnel?” I demanded. “Because there’s too much traffic that way,” he said. “We’d be stuck at the tolls.” It was 11 o’clock Sunday night, although I suppose it may have been rush hour in whichever country he was from.

Well, you can bet that when we got to Brookline, this seedy character got a tip commensurate with his tunnel-switching shenanigans. I said “Here’s your tip: Don’t rip people off, pud-face,” and I gave him three cents more than the fare... OK, that’s what I should have done. I actually wussed out and gave him a 20 percent tip because I started wondering if maybe he thought he really had taken the best route. It was theoretically possible. And then I’d be some kind of scumbag if I took food out of his children’s mouths by not tipping.

The last time I failed to pay up an expected tip was when I went to Florida last winter, and that was due to sheer tip burnout. When you’re on vacation there were the obvious tips, like the servers for every meal and the bartenders for every drink, but there were also tips for the cleaning lady at the hotel, assorted cab drivers and the crew of a sailboat we took on a snuba-diving reef cruise. (Snuba is like diving except that your tank stays on the surface in a little raft. Breathing underwater is utterly terrifying, but that’s a story for another time.) By the last day, I had tip overload. There was a tip jar in an ice-cream shop and I made a conscious decision to ignore it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ice-Cream Scooper,” I thought, “I’m just not feeling like tipping anyone right now. You did a fine job; this is just an issue I’m having and I’m sorry you’re the victim.” A little while later we took a tour of Hemingway’s house, where we didn’t tip the tour guide. Again, he did a fine job tour-guiding, but in a few hours I was going to be on a plane for Boston, where it was roughly 15 degrees, and he would still be in a lush subtropical paradise, wandering around Hemingway’s mansion in his Hawaiian shirt, feeding six-toed cats. That I should give him extra money to endure this hardship seemed laughable.

Maybe my underlying problem is that I’m jealous. Hey, I provide a service. It would make me feel really well-appreciated if everyone who reads the Improper tipped me, say, four cents per column (or, to put it another way, $1 per year). With 313,000 readers at last count, that would really provide me with incentive to take care of you and not spit in your paragraphs. On second thought, maybe that’s a bad idea, because $313,000 might be enough for me to go live in Mexico for a few years, eating burritos and taking an afternoon siesta every day like I know I’m meant to do. You’d like to read about that, right?