A tip for celebrities: supersize that gratuity
Are you a celebrity in search of great publicity?
Your options are as follows: 1. Do charity work. 2. Have a long-lasting relationship. 3. Adopt a child and/or rescue animal. 4. Leave a tip that is so generous it gets a shout-out in the gossip pages.
Since Option 4 is the only one that requires neither time nor commitment, a hefty gratuity is now the easiest path to PR glory. It creates a transactional halo effect, one that can outshine bad behaviour: “Hey, did you hear Joe Rockstar destroyed his hotel room last night? He set fire to the bed and chucked the flatscreen out the window. Then he tipped the maid $500. What a great guy.”
Jim Carrey recently rumbled across the echo chamber of celebrity news after leaving a $225 tip for a New York City waitress on a $151 bill. To be sure, $225 is chump change for anyone with $150 million. Assuming Carrey’s fortune is shrewdly invested, he earned the total back in compound interest before leaving the restaurant, which means he ate that quinoa and lemon chicken for free. Do I know what compound interest means? No idea. But what I do know is tipping isn’t about absolute numbers. It’s a percentage game. It’s not that Carrey left $225. It’s that he kicked the traditional 20 up to 149 per cent, triggering an avalanche of headlines such as “A+ Customer Jim Carrey Left Waitress Massive Tip.”
You see? No one is dissecting his film career, his views on vaccinations or even his fondness for hobo beards. Instead, it’s all about his “massive” tip. It’s like last month, when Amy Schumer went to Broadway’s Hamilton and left a $1,000 tip on a $77 bar bill. Her stunned server quickly posted the signed receipt on Instagram.
The rich and famous should realize all public drinking and eating is destined to end with such mathematical scrutiny. This is not a concern for the rest of us. When we hit up the Keg, staffers are not huddling in the back as a busboy googles our net worth to make predictions for that night’s haul.
But if a big gratuity now equals good publicity in Hollywood, a shoddy one amounts to a lifetime stigma as a wretched cheapskate. There are no confidentiality agreements here. Servers are happy to spill the beans, especially when a boldface diner is stingy with those beans.
Why was Jeremy Piven reportedly once banned from all Nobu restaurants? It seems he arrived at the busy Aspen venue with a party of 12, had no reservation but was accommodated. His tip after all of this? The Season 1 DVD of Entourage.
Usher is many things in the world of music. But in the world of service, his reputation is off-key: a tightwad who prefers to leave his autograph instead of cash. (Hey, Dummy, you can leave your autograph and leave your server a monetary tip by paying with a credit card.)
A number of restaurants are now banning tipping. But I believe we need more tipping in life, not less. We should start tipping all over the place. Did your accountant find new tax deductions? Boom, press a $20 bill into her palm. I think I do an amazing job taking out the recy- cling. It would be nice if my wife left five bucks on my To Do List the next morning.
Tipping is giving. It’s a reflection of our humanity. In fact, I have a theory: celebrities who are notoriously bad tippers are more likely to find themselves in unrelated scandals. Before he was exposed as a sexual predator, Bill Cosby was known as a terrible tipper who once left 50 cents for a bellhop. Before his life imploded, Tiger Woods was so pathologically thrifty, his mistresses picked up the tabs.
Other rotten tippers allegedly include Madonna, Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, Mick Jagger, Sean Penn, Katherine Heigl, Kirsten Dunst and Dwayne Johnson. The wildly generous ones, meanwhile, include Johnny Depp, David Beckham, Dr. Dre, Charlize Theron, Taylor Swift, David Beckham, Jay Z, Drew Barrymore, Russell Crowe and Charles Barkley, who once coughed up $25,000 after winning $700,000 in a blackjack game.
You know what surprises me most about this good-bad ledger? That it’s not surprising at all. It dovetails with our impressions of each personality. In the grand scheme of the celebrity cosmos, it makes sense, even as it makes no sense.
A celebrity’s life is already brimming with free: swag, comped meals, all expenses paid trips. The least they can do is pay it forward when served by those who get none of the same. vmenon@thestar.ca