Generous Tipping Experiment

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.