To tip or not to tip?

“I tip everyone who moves to please me.” The wise words of our Peggy brought us to the ‘when to tip?-discussion’. Waitresses? Yes. Taxi drivers? Always. Why actually? Some say nothing at all and don’t even hold the door open for me. Yet I do it. The delivery person from Albert.nl always gets something slipped in as well and also for the chambermaids I always leave a note. A cash note that is. They don’t attach much value to a handwritten card, I assume.

But that’s where my tipping activity stops. Look, in New York it’s like having a knife to your throat if you don’t tip everyone who just gives you a gentle breeze, but why would you give an extra tenner to a hairdresser who charges 90 euros with a straight face for just a dry cut (I repeat: dry cut)?

I think we should put the brakes on the tipping that happens too often and too randomly.

Firstly, because I often find it a bit awkward to give a tip as it places you hierarchically above the other. Like: I’m rich and you poor soul will be very happy with those extra few coins. Here, take it, you still have to grow from it. Something like that.

I see my hairdresser more as a friend, so I’d rather bring her a gift than slip her some change.

Moreover, we often don’t have cash on us which makes us feel very uncomfortable when the sushi delivery person slash pizza guy stands drenched and shivering at the door. Not to mention the newspaper deliverers who come to wish you a happy new year. Also the lady who throws that advertising junk inside every week and whom I’m never happy to see. Now you might ask: why don’t you have a sticker on your door? and then I say: I find it too ugly for my house. And besides, I don’t have a mailbox but a wooden box, so that stupid sticker doesn’t even fit. Anyway, where was I?.

The most important argument is that we are just people with jobs too. No one throws us a few euros when they’ve laughed at our pieces. Not the masseur, not the hairdresser, and certainly not the lady from the door-to-door advertising.

So shall we do it from now on with closed wallets? That we bow to each other and cheer for each other? Raise your price a bit for my part so that you are always satisfied. But let’s stop that game of give and take and both always be a bit dissatisfied.

Amen.