CUT IN HOTEL TIPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

CUT IN HOTEL TIPS.

RESULT OF HARD TIMES. SCOWLS INSTEAD OF SMILES. A movement in Birmingham to rationalise tipping is meeting with expected opposition from the tipped. It is not an official movement; it is furtive rather —a movement, in short, necessitated by force of circumstances. Tippers are falling back on the 10 per cent, cult, which is, generally speaking, less than they have been accustomed to give. And glum faces are the result. Departing guests are getting scowls instead of smiles.

" More and more the Continental 10 per cent, is being observed." an hotel manager said lately. " The system works out all right on large bills, but on the smaller sums the pourboire seems trifling to the staff. Yet some definite system of tipping is better than none at all. I know some staffs have been spoiled by indiscriminate tipping. "In this regard women are more methodical than men, and are disposed to calculate precisely how much their tip should be. Men, on the other hand, tip badly one day and perhaps over generously the next." Perhaps, however, women are only saving on hotel bills what they have to expend in hairdressing gratuities. "We are oxpected to give a tip of at least a shilling if we spend five on trim, shampoo and set," one of them said in discussing the matter. " Men get off with much less." she almost wailed.