Tipping in is chipping in

Have you ever paused to think about how much money leaves your wallet in tips, every day? It’s a lot.

I spent three weeks measuring, very unscientifically, the quantum of coins and notes that left my wallet to the pocket of someone else, and it was somewhat sobering.

Not just because it can add up to a substantial amount, but the realisation of the absolute dependence some citizens have on your generosity.

About 20 years ago, we tipped waiters. When the service was good, 10% of the bill was added, and the servers depended on it for much of their wage. If the service was shoddy, well, you didn’t give the full 10% or left nothing at all. And that’s the way it was.

Slowly everything changed. It seemed as if every sector of the service industry woke up to the fact that when you solicit tips from customers, employers can pay less and incomes of the usually minimum-wage staffers can be supplemented successfully.

Tipping even spawned new industries, like car guards and trolley pushers, who are solely reliant on you remembering to carry coins and sharing.

Back to my experiment. In three weeks, you could spend up to R700 in tips, and with 52 weeks in the year that works out to R12 000 or more in a year.

Just digging into your own pocket to, in most cases, supplement the income of others while in other instances, people are solely dependent on you and me for their wage.

As a parting shot, think about this: if a car guard directs 30 cars in and out of their parking bays in a day, and about two thirds of these people tip them R5 each, that’s R100 a day to bake in the heat or shiver in the cold.

It works out to a monthly salary of about R31 00.

You cannot buy much for that, especially considering taxi fare likely chews up most of it.

That’s why we should never stop giving.

It’s small change that might add up for most of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford it, but it is a lifeline to people in a country where more than half the population is unemployed.