Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Do you tip like this?

Yesterday, I took my wife's car over to the local car wash to get it all cleaned up. If you are not familiar with the procedure of getting your car washed, well, it is much like ordering from the Soup Nazi.

You drive up and get in line. You wait till you're at the front of the line, and pull up to a designated spot, where you roll up your windows, leave the car running and step out. You then, walk up to the guy working the little register and tell him the service you would like. After this, you watch through some large windows in utter amazement, like an idiotic animal, who is entertained by a passing fly, as your car goes through the car wash - it's awesome! You pay the person at the next register, contemplate buying an air-freshener, and make your way outside as a handful of workers dry off your car. This is where my question arises.


As, you wait for them to dry your car, you have the opportunity to give the workers a tip in a box that is set up. Now, my question is not whether you tip, because I always do, but rather the way you do it. What I realized I do in any situation like this, is the following: I stand by the tip-box, take out my wallet and get my tip ready. However, I will pretend to be flipping through the money in my wallet until I am 100% sure one of the workers looks my way, and then I drop in my tip. I always, always make sure they see me tip them.


Am I the only one who does this? Does a tiny little part of you, want that recognition of doing a good deed. I always respect it when a school gets a large anonymous donation, because I know I could not do that. Am I alone in thinking this way?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I do not think you are alone in thinking that way, however, I am usually the one making the large anonymous donation. There is some sort of thrill in knowing you did something good and leaving people wondering who.

Toni Ryan said...

OMG! I am SO glad you posted this! I think about this EVERY TIME! I have actually RETRACTED my hand from the box slightly when I realized no one is looking! Hahahah....!! I also would love to know what other people think.

Anonymous said...

I actually just fold my tip with my receipt since you need to give that to the last guy standing (or drying, if you will)....that way they KNOW I gave them something..

chris said...

I go to the SAME car wash because I happen to work just down the road from your studio. Happy to hear others do the same silly thing I do and make sure those legion of car driers know how much I care. Surprised at the number of people that don't tip there. You'd have to be blind not to see the big red tip box...

Rosemary fland said...

That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard. If you're going to leave a tip, just leave a tip. Even if they don't see that it was you, who cares? You'll know that you were generous and gave additional money. Of course, I wash my car myself at those car washes with individual bays so it's a nonissue for me. But if it makes you happy why not?

Debbie said...

I have to admit that I don't really go to places that have tip jars (although I do tip pretty well in restaurants), but I did go to an ice cream place recently and took some change out for a tip and waited until the woman could see me before I put it in the jar. I've never been to a car wash, but I would imagine that I would do the same thing! Lol. I think it's the fact that we don't want them to think that we didn't tip, as opposed to making a big show of tipping them. At least, that's how it is in my case-I don't want them to think poorly of me.

At the same time, I think people are a little tip crazy. There are tip jars almost everywhere you go, and I never know where to draw the line between "that required a good amount of work" or "they did a good job" (and deserve a tip) and "that's their job, why should I tip them for doing that?".

My fiance and I went to PF Chang's over the weekend, with our 10 month old daughter, and I realized that the server went really above and beyond what other servers usually do, so I wanted to leave him a little more than 20%. Then I realized-maybe I'm actually overtipping the people who are just doing the minimum effort.

It's very confusing! Lol.