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The question of how much to tip for service came up the other night. A young guy told me that he never really dated while in college, he just “hung out.”
Now that he has begun dating (a quaint concept near and dear to my generation), he asked his dad for advice on the practice of tipping. Dad gave him sound advice — round off and tip 20 percent. All it takes is moving a decimal place and multiplying by two. To do otherwise would mean whipping out a calculator when the bill arrives. The practice of using a calculator to arrive at the tip is not very cool. Being cool is very important when one is youthful and impressing a date.
I agree. In fact, reaching for a calculator to figure out the tip isn’t cool no matter what one’s age. However, the concept of being cool seems to take a real hit when you get your first Social Security check. Take my wife’s sorority, please someone take them (only kidding, my dears). Let me explain.
My wife’s sorority began meeting in high school, and has met once a month ever since. Somewhere along the way, two important changes were implemented: Monthly meetings were moved from members’ homes to restaurants, and husbands were invited (I diplomatically refrain from using the word “commanded”) to attend. Men usually sit at one end of the table discussing the really important events in our lives, such as whether Mark Sanchez will ever complete a pass more than 20 yards down the field. The women discuss frivolous stuff like life, death and family. I trust that explains why, on a recent NFL Sunday, two males (one of them being me) were attending sorority at a lovely Center City restaurant. As far as I am concerned, it is but a small price to pay for my wife donating a kidney to me (besides, the women are all wonderful dinner companions, if you can get by the question of the tip when the bill arrives).
Permit me, if you will, a digression before we continue. Over the years, some members of the sorority have “abandoned” South Philly for suburban pastures. Moving away from the “homeland” as one of the members puts it, doesn’t make them bad people. It may mean they have traded good bread (a staple in the lives of Italian-Americans) for a guaranteed parking place.
Each sorority member gets an opportunity to select the meeting place. The distance each of us has to travel to a sorority meeting has become somewhat of a problem. As sorority has gotten older, the few drivers among us can understandably no longer drive at night. Note — I have a driver’s license that I never use (my driver’s license is about as useful as mammaries on a bull). The interim between meetings has become punctuated by phone calls going back and forth trying to calculate the distance in miles between meeting places and the number of hours of sunlight on that given meeting day. Sorority hates nothing as much as Eastern Standard Time. NASA scientists have put aside their work on improving the Hubble Space Telescope to advise sorority on where the next meeting should be held. At this moment, the crisis has not been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, but suffice it to say that fault lines have developed between suburbanites and urban members. Negotiations on acceptable future restaurants are taking longer than the Vietnam peace talks where the argument settled around the shape of the negotiations table. Other side issues have developed. For instance, whether it is appropriate for sorority to meet in a diner. No doubt the definition of a diner will warrant discussion.
Once we finally do meet, as we did on a recent Sunday, all of us enjoy each others’ companionship. The only fly in the ointment (I’ve never purchased a tube of ointment with a fly in it, have you?) centers around dividing the bill evenly among the number of attendees.
Let me make this perfectly clear (as a former disgraced president said on numerous occasions when clarity was not his purpose) the following comment is not written to suggest that sorority is cheap. It is just there seems to be a cultural difference between men and women on the practice of tipping. Men tend to overtip as if somehow their self-worth is at stake. Women tend to be, shall we say, a bit less generous and more precise when they tip. I may be guilty of stereotyping, but at least some of the sorority women put a great deal of emphasis on being precise. They don’t believe in rounding to the nearest even amount. If you must insist on tipping 20 percent rather than 18, that is OK by them, but if $28 is owed, don’t make it $30. Rounding up to the nearest even dollar amount is a sin that falls somewhere between thou shalt not kill and thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s ass. Exactness requires a calculator, and at least one member of the sorority always has one handy. Dollar bills are tossed back and forth. PricewaterhouseCoopers is sometimes called upon to settle disputes.
The bill paid. The meeting ended. We go on our way in the dwindling light. Someone says, “Whose turn is it next time?” I notice it is an hour to kickoff.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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