The other day I went up to a guest's room for a luggage down call. For those of you who are not familiar with industry speak, "luggage down" means a guest needs a bellman to go up to their room with a cart and collect their bags and bring them to the lobby to either store the bags for the day or load them up in a town car/taxi for them. It's very common and is a great way to earn a good tip.
I arrived at the door and gave my patented, syncopated knock followed by my "bellman at the door!" greeting. The door swung open and I found myself gazing into the hallway of one of our double rooms with a family of four frantically trying to get ready. They were very nice people and even helped me load the luggage onto my cart. "Will you be needing to store these bags for the day or shall I go downstairs and hail you a taxi?" I asked.
"We will need to store them, our flight isn't until later tonight." The mother responded.
"No problem at all." I said with a bright smile on my face as I pulled my stash of luggage tags out of my back pocket. I counted up the number of bags on the and wrote the figure on the luggage ticket, tore off the ticket along the perforated edge and looked up to hand the ticket to the mother. It was then that I realized the younger of their two boys was standing in the hallway with tip money in his hand.
"Well here you are young man, just hand this ticket back to one of the bellman upon your return to the hotel and we will be happy to take your luggage back out for you." I said and as I handed him the ticket he handed me five $1 bills. "Thank you very much young man, it is much appreciated." He smiled as he realized he had performed the American custom perfectly. "Have a wonderful day exploring our city, we will see you when you get back."
I exited the room and headed towards the elevators to return to the lobby. While waiting for the elevator to arrive, a thought occurred to me. This was not the first time that I had received a tip from a child. Often times cheap parents will have their kids give people in the service industries bad tips because they know their children are less likely to receive bad looks for shitty tips (or shitty looks for bad tips.) However, in this instance the tip was decent and I realized that young boy just got his first lesson in tipping.
I think half the time that Europeans don't tip it's because they have no idea how to. They don't know the proper etiquette because their parents never showed them how to. They don't know how much to tip because their parents never taught them that you tip $1-$2 per bag or 20% of a restaurant bill. When I left that room that young boy may have asked his parents "Why did I give that man money?"
"Well honey," I'm sure his parents would respond, "that man performed a service for us and in America it is customary to tip for services provided."
"Well why did I tip him $5?" the boy might have asked.
"We had him store 5 of our bags so I gave him $1 per bag. When we come back later, I will have you tip the gentleman that retrieves our bags another $5. This is what we call tipping etiquette son."
So to any parents out there that may read this, teach your children how to tip properly. It is a life long lesson that they will use on a daily basis (so long as they live in America.)
