Do you tip (or give present to) mail carriers and gardeners around Christmas? (fit in, credit card)

[newnewsmama]

I have read some online tipping etiquittes which pretty much suggest tipping for everyone minus your doctors and your lawyers. What I would like to find out is whether it is a social norm in NOVA to tip people such as mail carriers and gardeners. If so, how much do you normally give? Thanks!

[spleuchan]

Originally Posted by newnewsmama

I have read some online tipping etiquittes which pretty much suggest tipping for everyone minus your doctors and your lawyers. What I would like to find out is whether it is a social norm in NOVA to tip people such as mail carriers and gardeners. If so, how much do you normally give? Thanks!

Don't have a gardener, so can't help you there. We do not tip our mailman, but for us its an easy decision since a lot of our mail comes damaged. We had a package come a few weeks ago and the box looked like someone left the box for a few days in a foot of water. Envelopes with pictures that clearly state do not bend on them are folded in half and stuffed in our mailbox. But to answer your question, even if we had a decent one, I don't think we would anyways.

[tgbwc]

We don't tip the mail carrier. I don't typically see him/her and don't know who it is. I do know the carrier has changed a few times over the past two years, but that's all.

[saganista]

All the mail carrier did was pick it up from the distribution center and bring to your residence located along his or her route. Just as he or she does every day, all year long. That said, it probably just comes down to whatever one is comfortable with.

If you go out to a nice restaurant one night and the check comes to $200, what do you tip? What do you leave for housekeeping at decent hotel you've stayed at for three or four nights? Where do the rest of the service people who are regularly in your life fit in with that?

[HereinVA]

I generally give the mail person a gift card for about $15-$20 to a place like Starbucks or Panera.

We do hire a man to mow our lawn, but I've never given him a Christmas gift as he usually stops mowing in late October/early November and doesn't start again 'till April or so...When we lived in So. Cal and needed lawn service year round, I would usually give a cash gift the equivalent of the charge of 1 mow.

[South Jersey Styx]

When I was growing up my mother tipped the mailperson, newspaper boy, trash pick-up crew, and plumber. That's because we knew them personally.

Here, there are 2-3 mailpersons. I recently found out that one of them always cuts across our lawn which makes me mad. I do want to make a plate of cookies or something tho for the guys who pick-up trash; very friendly crew and oftentimes wait for me when I'm running out there in my pajamas!

[Carlingtonian]

I would never consider tipping a mail carrier--and I used to be one (part time). They're paid a reasonably healthy wage, and they're actually not supposed to accept monetary tips. (And SJ Stix: I always cut across lawns. My thinking was, "I come once a day. I'm not herding goats back and forth. Your grass will recover." To circumnavigate every lawn would add hours to the workday.)

Nor would I tip the gardener. But then, I'm him.

I tip very well in restaurants (assuming good service), but the gradual push to tip everyone bothers me. NYC is this way, and I've read it's so bad there that if you don't tip the UPS guy, your stuff ends up in the gutter. (We lived there a year but got the hell out.)

Contrast this with Japan, where everyone does their job well *because it's their job*--and no one is tipped. Not waiters, not cab drivers--nobody. It brings an emotional honesty to transactions in that any warmth or graciousness is always genuine and never a charade to bring a bigger tip, as it is here with the inane small talk and faux familiarity.

[ersatz]

Seems like everyone has their hands out. Yes, I DO get it, that tipping is encouraged, employees are paid less than legally-mandated minimum wage and 75% of the time the owner pockets any recorded tip as extra profit instead leaving it to the person who actually does the work.

I tip everyone who does a personal service. Since I normally tip 20%, if I pay by credit card I write "cash" on the tip line and leave the server or employee cash to report as they please.

But this has rather grown out of control. I am irritated,but willing to allow that every service counter, to include fast food counters, has grown a tip jar.

I recently visited Key West on vacation. It seemed that everyone demanded a tip for, well, existing and breathing air. I was very irritated by the waiter (with 3 tables occupied out of 15) that visited me once to take an order in a tardy and borderline insolent way, the second time to slam down my entree, a glass of water and the bill in which he had inked in a 36% tip. But the icing that took the cake was the cashier (at some kind of local cash-and-carry fourth-rate immitation of a 7-11) that shoved a tip jar at me for ringing up a $1.99 bottle of water.

[Alltheusernamesaretaken]

(And SJ Stix: I always cut across lawns. My thinking was, "I come once a day. I'm not herding goats back and forth. Your grass will recover." To circumnavigate every lawn would add hours to the workday.)

I was raised never to cut across someone's lawn so I don't, and I make sure my kids don't.
I wish others had the same courtesy.

As mentioned upthread, mail carriers are not supposed to accept tips.
We have the laziest mailman in the world and he doesn't deserve a thing, so we wouldn't give him anything anyway,
but I find it presumptious that he sends us a preprinted card saying how our generosity
at the holidays is appreciated, and signs his name.

Nice try, bud, but no.

this has rather grown out of control. I am irritated,but willing to allow that every service counter, to include fast food counters, has grown a tip jar.

Print something like "Here's a tip: Get a better job if you want more money" on little slips of paper, fold them up,
and donate them to the tip jar.

[ersatz]

Tee Hee.