Remember When There Were No “TIPS” Jars?

I don’t remember exactly where I was the first time I saw one – a plastic container placed next to a cash register, with “TIPS” enscrawled in black magic marker.  A Dunkin’ Donuts or Subway or the dreaded Starbucks perhaps.  “The gall of these people!” I said to myself.  These cashiers…I mean, these baristas…trying to expand the tip zone like the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War.  Well, I never signed on to that treaty!  See if I care!  And proudly I accepted and kept my three pennies of change.

At the time, I did not think the trend would catch on.  But soon after that I saw a tip jar at the supermarket.  I was picking up Yodels for the week and noticed the plastic container in front of a young man bagging groceries.  So not only had they stopped making new episodes of Sex in the City, but they had spun off the bagging function of the supermarket cashier, so that the cashier could focus more on making small talk with customers and co-workers, and the bagger, or bagging-agent, or comestible transport administrator, could focus more on piling five-gallon containers of laundry detergent atop cartons of eggs.

“Perhaps I’ve been wrong about this tip jar phenomenon,” I said to myself.  “Perhaps the tip jar is this person’s sole source of income.”  And for a moment my mind was changed about the tip jar.  I still didn’t leave a tip, but I at least thought about it.

Unless you’ve been in a coma and without an Internet connection for the last ten years, you know that these tip jars are everywhere now.  Convenience stores, delicatessins…even the guy who sold me fireworks out of the trunk of his car had a little plastic container with “TIPS” written in several different languages.  And I would had left money in the tip jar at the library had the funds not already been earmarked for late fees on Ivanhoe, which I was supposed to read in 11th grade.

I thought back to when I had first started going to the diner with my friends, during high school, and had first confronted that labyrinthine branch of etiquette known as tipping.  I remembered the arguments over my friend’s “no change” rule, which meant that he never left change on the table, even if we only got coffee, which cost $1.50.

“But that’s a tip of, like…” I said, punching my calculator watch, “…like, 66 point 6, repeating, or point 7 if you round-up.”

“So?  Just give ‘em a dollar.  You can’t leave change,” he said.

“Says who?  What’s wrong with change?” I said.  “I love change.  I like the way it sounds when it jingles in my pocket.”  And to demonstrate, I took a few steps towards the cigarette machine, jingling the change that was in my pocket.  My friend rolled his eyes and shamed me into replacing my nickels and dimes on the table with a crisp dollar bill.

As the “TIPS” jars proliferated in the early 21st century, I suffered from more than a little insecurity.  Was I to simply accept this unilateral imposition of custom as I’d forced to accept the “bless you” custom after someone sneezes?  Were these cashiers and baggers doing me a favor by providing a receptacle for the change that must surely burden me and leaving me with more room in my pocket for receipts?  I tried to discuss these issues with someone, but my therapist fell asleep during my diner story.

The only way to solve this dilemma would be to contact the only person I knew who could help me—the same friend who had shamed me into leaving a dollar instead of change.  I arranged to meet him at a bagel shop we both enjoyed, and on my way over I was having second thoughts.  My friend probably left wads of cash in the plastic container.  What if he told me to do the same?  As I got out of the car and pressed the button on the door-locking remote repeatedly until I heard the confirmation honk, I reminded myself that I was not bound by anything he said.

The line was long and I saw that my friend the tipping expert was at the front of it.  He was passed a tray with a bagel, a large chocolate chip cookie, and a Yoo-Hoo.  He handed the cashier a bill and was handed change in return.  And then I saw it—a plastic “TIPS” jar next to his hand, which closed over the change and went in his pocket as he walked away in search of an open table.  I blinked but I had seen correctly: my friend had ignored the “TIPS” jar.

As I approached the cashier, I thought I knew what I was going to do.  I thought I would leave no change, convinced that my rule had won out in the end.  But when the cashier handed me the change, and looked me in the eye, and smiled, and said, “Thank you for your business,” my heart melted, and I saw myself capitulating, and dropping my change as if my hand had been possessed.

“Thank you—‘preciate that,” the cashier said.

Heart pounding, mind reeling, and stomach growling, I took my tray and turned towards my friend, who had not yet seen me.  And I stood there, wavering, not sure if I could bring myself to eat with such a miser.

Remember When You Weren’t Offered A Rewards Card at Every Store?

Remember when you weren’t offered a rewards card at every store you went to?

I do.

In the beginning supermarkets offered discounts through coupons, which required clipping and a fair amount of chutzpah at the check out line.  Then one day, a supermarket executive says, “Hey, if we’re going to offer discounts, we may as well track our customers’ purchases so we know exactly how many Tombstone pizzas or Cottonelle moist wipes they consume in a week.”

And an intern asks, “But how will you accomplish that?”

And the executive replies, “Don’t they teach you anything at that fancy Ivy League school?  We will track their purchases with plastic.  Plastic is the answer to all our problems.”

And the intern, stinging, asks, “But what will you call this piece of plastic?”

And the executive leans back in his chair, and laces his hands behind his head, and looks out the large window of his corner office at a brilliant Manhattan sunset, and exhales through his nose.  “We will call it a ‘rewards card,’” he says, “so that the customers think they are being rewarded.”

I remember that supermarkets were the first to offer rewards cards.  Then electronic stores climbed aboard.  Then liquor stores.  Then Panera.  Funeral homes will probably be next, offering a rewards card that can be affixed to a toe.

My wallet is thick enough to give me back problems solely because of rewards cards.  And most of my rewards cards are in my sock drawer.  I keep them there so that no one will steal them and get discounts under my name.  Unfortunately, this arrangement carries the risk that I will go to a store without its rewards card.

There is nothing more devastating than shopping at a store and waiting on the check out line and getting to the cashier and getting excited because the next time you walk through the doors of your home will be with a 36-pack of Coors Light and two boxes of Yodels, and then realizing you left your rewards card next to the argyles.  I was involved in one such incident.

“Sir, do you have a rewards card?” asks the cashier, who looks like the guitarist from Phish.

“Oh, uh, yes,” I say, making a show of looking for the card.  “Yes, I think it’s here somewhere.  I know I’ve got one…” I’m expecting him to say, “Oh that’s all right,” and just swipe the “cashier’s” rewards card that should be attached to the scanner by a piece of twine.  But it’s not there, and he’s not saying anything.  And the people behind me are getting impatient.

A woman offers her card.  “Oh, no,” I say, wondering how much protest is appropriate before I save three dollars under the name of this kind stranger.  I even put up one hand while using the other hand to fish around in a pocket I know is empty.

“No, really,” she says, “It’s all – “

“Well, okay,” I say.  The woman offers her card to the cashier.

“Um,” says the cashier, “I’m really not supposed to do this.”

I’m an adult buying Puffins and getting red tape from someone who probably takes cigarette breaks to watch Lord of the Rings on his cell phone. He repeats that he’s “not supposed to do this” and, after some pleading from everyone on the line and my sworn affidavit that I’ll never do it again, he lets me use the kind woman’s rewards card.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I cared about the discount that much.  Had coupons still been the dominant discount vehicle I would have paid top dollar for my Puffins without batting an eye.  Perhaps I’ve been wrong about these rewards cards.  Perhaps their purpose is not just to track the consuming practices of an unsuspecting public.

Perhaps rewards cards are meant to bring impatient strangers closer together.

Thanks to Jennifer Albright for the topic.

Remember When Airplane Meals Were Included With the Price of the Ticket?

Remember when meals on an airplane were included with the price of the ticket?

I do.

I don’t recall the airplane meals being anything like what I would normally consider food. But still I liked them and looked forward to them. Airline food had a special taste and consistency that I could enjoy back in the days when my digestive system could still hit a curve ball.

If the flight was long enough to be considered meal-worthy, the “steward” or “stewardess” (the ancient names for flight attendants) would serve each passenger breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending on the time of day. My favorite meal was dinner, followed by a distant lunch and an even more distant breakfast. Lunch was just some turkey with a squeezable packet of Hellman’s, and breakfast was allegedly “eggs” and “sausage” but no laboratory could confirm this. But dinner was always great, and the main reason was because of the dessert.

Dessert was the crown jewel of the plastic divider plates, and carrot cake was the dominant dessert. I was on a flight to Florida to see my grandparents and eat ice cream every day when I had my first taste of airplane carrot cake. I went down the aisle of the plane, asking people if they were going to eat their carrot cake, or if they were going to finish their carrot cake if they had already started on it but looked like they might be full.

The most memorable airplane experience was when I flew to Vancouver Island the summer before my senior year of high school to spend two weeks studying killer whales and whether they preferred cable or satellite. The in-flight desert was a Table Talk apple pie. I wolfed mine down and then asked my classmates if they were going to eat theirs. Word spread quickly throughout the Boeing 747 that I was willing to eat unwanted Table Talk apple pie, free of charge, and the white and red boxes were piling up on my fold down tray. I was only halfway done when they announced that we were landing and had to put the tray tables back in their upright positions and that our Captain had turned on the “no-gluttony” sign.

Those days are over. Today, the flight attendants go down the aisle asking if anyone wants to purchase food. I don’t know if they sell dessert because I am too cheap to find out. I’m sure that some economics professor could prove to me on the back of a napkin that tickets would just be more expensive if the meals were included, and that this pricing model is really more efficient because people who don’t want meals can elect to forgo them and thereby reduce their flying costs. Of course, the professor would have to bring the napkin because I won’t pay for that, either.

Soon you’ll have to pay extra for a seat. The passengers will be standing on the plane as it taxis towards the runway, and the flight attendants will go down the aisle, asking three passengers at a time whether they would like to purchase a seat for the flight. Most people will decline the offer, because they will refuse to pay for something that used to be included. I know this because I will be one of them.