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Tipping Tips
The Occidental Tourist · September 13, 2000

The Tourist gets a ton of e-mail from devoted, endearing readers who pose this inquiry ever so benignly: Gees, Tourist, you must be a service employee's worst @#$%#% nightmare. Should a server be a minute late with your martini, you probably only leave a nickel for a tip. If the hotel fails to provide warm, fluffy bathrobes upon arrival, you probably stiff the housekeeping staff. How do you expect these people to feed their families, you piece of sleazy #$@%&# ...

... which, at this point, the Tourist begs the writer to simmer down. Stop drinking so much coffee - or at least splash some bourbon in it. The Tourist would never dream of taking out his travel frustrations on service staff. Unless they screw up. Which is usually an exception to the standard. Most of the time, the Tourist is very pleased with the service he gets on the road, and is a generous tipper. (After all, it's seldom his money.)

That said, Cornell University's esteemed hotel school has recently come out with an interesting study that sheds light on who tips - and who doesn't. Apparently, tipping is more common in countries where citizens score high on the personality traits of extroversion (Greece, Mexico and the U.S.) and neuroticism (Egypt, Spain and Italy). (What, not New York City? To the Tourist, it's pretty much another nation.)

It makes sense that extroverts are good tippers, making a big splash with a 25 percent reward. That neurotic types are as well is surprising, but the explanation is logical: The study concludes that these folks relieve their anxiety about being served by strangers. ("If I tip them big time, maybe they won't poison my food ...")

Predictably, places where people can often be aggressively, anti-social - Australia, Hong Kong and India - weren't hot spots for tipping. (Now, readers from these parts: Don't vent at the Tourist for perceived slights about your homeland. He's just the messenger here. Scream at the Cornell eggheads who wrote the study.)

All of this begs the question: Tipping dos and don'ts. Here's the Tourist's take on frequently asked questions on the subject:

• Do I tip less for a bad meal? Not at all. The server didn't cook it. But once you indicate that the food fell far short of reasonable expectations, it's the server who should respond by either offering another selection or taking the tab off your hands either in whole or in part. If that's the case, recognize the good deed with a decent tip. (No less than 17 percent and probably 20 percent or more.)
  
  
• Do you tip housekeeping? Generally, yes. Especially if your company allows you to comp it. Face it. These people make very little. The Tourist has had virtually no experiences where the housekeeping staff didn't do their jobs well, and quietly. At a mid-level hotel, a buck or two can help them make ends meet. At a high-end hotel, leave at least a fiver for two-nights stay, three for one.
  
  
• Do you tip a cab driver if the ride was a mess? Depends. You may have arrived late, but are you going to blame him for lousy traffic? (It's your responsibility - not the cab driver - to plan for jammed thoroughfares.) On the other hand, did the driver smoke and curse without getting a sense of whether that's OK? If not, then you can afford to send a message by giving a minimal tip. Otherwise, the 15 percent or better rule applies here too.
  

The Occidental Tourist is a magazine writer in Washington, DC. He writes for Maxim, Capital Style and ABCNews.com. His column appears on Tuesdays. E-mail him at tourist@ticked.com.