Generous Tipping Experiment

As our weekend in the Windy City was coming to a close, we dropped our rental car off and climbed on the rental car shuttle to make the 5 minute trip to Ohare Airport.  The mini-bus was full and since Delta was the last stop, I got to examine everyone as they got off the bus.    Our driver was a young lady, probably in her early 20s , who was very helpful….one of the shuttle drivers that actually help you get your bags unloaded.  As we kept stopping, I noticed that not one person tipped her but yet that never stopped her from continuing to help people with their bags.  This made me want to lay a big tip on her.  Here’s the problem:  we were completely out of cash.  I actually looked in my wallet twice during our driving time to see if I had any spare cash.   

And that’s when I noticed the change in my nature when it comes to tipping.  My wife has always naturally been a much more generous tipper than I.   My typically MO before the Generous Tipping Experiment was to tip the minimum amount, thinking that it was prudent money management to do so.  My thought was ”how much should I tip?”  But now I feel myself asking, “how much can I tip?”  And not having a couple of bucks (or $50) to tip the shuttle driver was truly disappointing to me. 

The valet had a big grin on his face as he looked me in the eyes and said, “thank you” in broken English as I slipped him $5 in front of the Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago.  I guess most people don’t tip the valet when they check their car in.  I know I usually do it when I pick it up.  But my wife and I were in the Windy City for a romantic weekend and we had plenty of cash to tip generously. 

It was a great weekend.  Some of our tips while here included:

• $50 for a $100 meal
• Numerous other 30% + tips on various meals (we love to eat in the city)
• Many, many $5 to $10 tips on small taxi fares
• Too many tips for valets and doorman to count

You know that generosity is rare in the city when a taxi drive tells you the tip is too much and tries to give you some of it back!  That happened to my wife when she was taking a cab from her conference back to our hotel. 

 I think generous tipping brings a new level of excitement to a weekend in the city because there are opportunities to do it often and largely. 

At the very beginning of the Generous Tipping Experiment, my friend Jerry and I were traveling together on business and I tried to covertly tip the maid service $20 for our hotel room without him seeing it.  He ended up seeing the tip and I told him about the Generous Tipping Experiment (GTE).  He told me a story about his mother and growing up seeing her work hard for the family yet always faithfully giving to her church despite the fact they didn’t have much.   I think the $20 tip for the hotel maid impacted him in light of his mother’s own hard work. 

Today, Jerry and I ate lunch and he shared a story of how the GTE had impacted him.   He was eating with his 15 year old daughter the other day and at the end of the $18 meal, he asked her how much they should tip the waitress, who was very busy yet working hard to give them good service.  His daughter said $3.  Jerry asked her “Why can’t we be more generous?”  His daughter looked puzzled and asked, “How generous can we be?”  After debating for a while, they decided that $25 would be a generous tip.  So they totaled the Visa slip and then went out to the parking lot.  Jerry’s daughter hung out in the parking lot for a bit, hoping to be able to look through the window and see the waitress’ expression. 

 As Jerry was sharing this story with me, I could see that it moved him to experience this with his daughter.  And I’ve experienced the same type of emotions with my own children with these small acts of spontaneous generosity.  I think all of us desire to see our children grow up givers versus takers.  Perhaps it doesn’t take as much as we think to help them move in that direction. 

This morning I was eating breakfast with a friend and business associate, Brian.  I know Brian to be a generous person and appreciate his heart  for others.   As I went to pay for the check, I told him about my generous tipping project and the $100 tip for the $10 haircut that started it all.  Since we were using my computer during the meeting, I pulled up this blog and let him read a couple of the stories. 

While he was reading, the waitress brought the check for the breakfast, which was around $18.  I told Brian I was adding the tip for $50, totaled the check and gave it back to the waitress who had been serving us.  We both waited to see what would happen.  In a couple of minutes the waitress came to the table, put her hand on my shoulder and smilingly said “thank you”.  It was such a simple gesture but I really appreciated her sincerity and the opportunity to share the experience with my friend.

I think that’s one of the big benefits of simple acts of generosity - it creates relational connections.  For a short few seconds, there was a special connection between myself (the giver) and the waitress (the receiver).  I also think that Brian and I experienced a deeper connection as we experienced the joy that comes when we give.  In such a large and transient city like Atlanta, what would happen if more and more people became more deeply connected by simply being generous with their time, talent and treasure? Could generosity be an antidote to a self-absorbed, face-paced suburban lifestyle? 

My 15 year old daughter Ainslee is our most independent child as well as our best shopper   She’s been to Guatemala with me twice and I always let her do the bargaining with the merchants in the market….she’s a brutal negotiator.   The other day I took her and my son Chris to each lunch at a diner in Buckhead.  When we went to the counter to pay for our $36 meal, I pushed the unsigned Visa receipt over to Ainslee and told her to add the tip to it.  She looked at me for a moment and then asked could she tip $36 - the price of the meal.  I told her absolutely.  When she totaled the receipt, the lady at the counter asked me if the amount was correct.   I smiled and told her we were generous tippers. 

The next day, when my wife Jennifer got home from taking Ainslee shopping, she told me that Ainslee had unsolicited given money to the Salvation Army bell ringer in front of one of the stores.  This doesn’t seem like much I know but I think it could be a big step in Ainslee’s own generosity.  Like any 15 year old in our affluent culture, sometimes I’m concerned that she’s too self-focused on her own wants - the right clothes, the right cell phone, the right haircut, etc.  And I share this concern for my own soul - the right clothes, the right I-phone, the right haircut.  That’s why I like for us to go to Guatemala to experience cultures vastly poorer than our own.  Perhaps this tipping project will help both her and I understand how blessed we are to have so much. 

I really enjoy tipping the ladies who clean my room when I stay in hotels while traveling.  This morning, I left an appreciation note with a $20 bill for the cleaning lady.  I saw her a couple of times in the hall and she always had a pleasant smile on her face.  I wonder how many hours of cleaning strangers’ crap equates to $2o….2 hours, 3 hours?  And I can waste $20 on Diet Cokes over a couple of days.   

I was eating dinner with a group last night and mentioned my experiment in generous tipping.  One of my dinner companions said that as a Christian it embarrassed him to see people in a restaurant leave a .50 cent tip and a evangelistic tract on a table after dinner.  I wonder if Christians really do this?  If so, how delusional to think that you can be stingy with your giving and expect people to be drawn to your God.  I wonder if these folks realize how generous their God is?    Look at Jesus.  I heard today that in his first miracle, turning water into wine, Jesus produced enough wine to serve 3,600 16 oz glasses of wine for the dinner guests….a generous wine miracle by a generous Savior!  I often thought a great way for the Christian to share his faith is to leave an extravangent tip in a restaurant with a note for the server saying, “This is a small act of generosity compared to the extravagent love of God who made you and gave Himself for you.”  Now that to me would be a powerful witness to God’s grace  for all people.  Or it could be just a good way to buy people’s attention to hear the truth of God’s love.  Would it be worth it? 

I was at a restaurant in the Dallas airport the other day and left a $50 tip on a $20 meal.  Because I was traveling for business, I used my corporate credit card to pay for the meal. My assistant called me a few weeks later and asked me how she should treat the $50 tip.  She didn’t know about this project and I hadn’t really thought about how to expense that large of a tip.   So I ended up paying for the tip myself but I had a great opportunity to share the joy of generosity with my assistant. 

I was eating dinner the other night with 4 pastors.  In past conversations with them, I told them about the $100 tip for the $10 haircut and the lessons I had learned through that experience.  At the end of our dinner together, I paid for the meal (have to use my expense account for something).  However, to my surprise, each of them took out around $20 in cash and left it for the waitress who had been serving us.  So the total tip came out to about $80 on a $125 meal.  It was great to experience the joy of generosity with these men.  And I also marvel at how  small acts of generosity can spur others on to other small (and not so small) acts of generosity.  I also wished I could have told the waitress that these men were pastors……both to debunk her possible thinking that Christians are stingy + to counter the view of many in our society that all preachers want is money from people.  Maybe the preachers on TV want something from you but most of the pastors I hang out with seem to jump at the chance to give to others when presented with the opporunity. 

I was relating the story of my $50 tip for the $8 salad to my wife as we were driving the other day. As I talked about it excitedly, I noticed that she didn’t share my joy and asked her what was wrong. Her answer hit me hard. “You will give a stranger $50 but you make me feel guility when I buy the kids a new pair of shoes.”

Is this true? Am I generous to strangers while lacking generosity with my own family? I think I probably am. Why is this? As I thought about it, there are a couple of issues that drive this lack of personal family generosity.

1. I believe that the typical American family spends way too much on themselves with no regard for others. Statistics prove this and I don’t want to be the same way. We were blessed to be a blessing which means we should live simply so that others can simply live. I desire to be frugal on what we spend on ourselves so that we can be generous with others. Perhaps in my desire to live frugally I use guilt to manipulate my wife, who does most of the spending in our family. I feel awful about this.

2. I struggle with internal feelings of guilt about spending money on myself or my family in light of point #1. I know that from a global perspective, my family’s income is in the top 1% of all wage earners. Bono tells us that 50% of the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day. The $39 per month I spend for cable can support one full-time teacher to gypsy children in Pakistan. These truths produce a twisted sense of guilt when I believe I spend too much on my already rich family at the expense of the poor world.

Speaking to rich Christians in I Timothy 6: 17 - 19, Paul says that God provides us with everything for our enjoyment. He also instructs us in this same passage to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share. I think this passage really sums up my struggle - to enjoy the blessings God has provided me by being generous with my family while being rich in good deeds to those in the world who need it. It seems like this balance is elusive.