Welcome back! Did last week’s nudge help you read the road as a collaborative artwork made of lights, arrows and educated guesses? Perhaps you invented a new signal for “My bad” “I’m lost” or “No, you go first." If you're like me, I'm a little self-conscious about the signals I'm putting out there. Seems like a good moment to leave the open road and enter the awkward intersection of money, gratitude and social custom.
This week, we’re considering another small public signal of intention: the tip.
Tipping happens in all kinds of settings: restaurants, barbershops, hotels of course but digital dollars make tipping easier than ever. Under the right circumstances, just about anyone deserves a tip.
Sometimes I tip before anything has happened, like when I order food online. Sometimes I'm nudged towards a certain tip tier. If the restaurant has nice pens, I'll add another dollar to the tip and swipe the pen. It's subversive and practical at the same time.
A turn signal announces what we intend to do before we do it. The tip ritual asks us to monetize our opinion. Both involve quick decisions and other people trying to interpret our behavior. That's one functional definition of art.
With few exceptions, I believe the people helping me earn less than their time, patience and labor are worth. Even mediocre service deserves unconditional grace. I have had mediocre days too, and I’m glad no one reduced my paycheck because I forgot the extra ranch.
Deciding to tip produces a peculiar social flop sweat. Make eye contact? Sign quickly to demonstrate confidence? Did I hit the wrong button again? What does my tablemate think of the tip I left?
Tipping is a social custom, and social customs are collaborative performances we don't get to rehearse. We learn by watching others, asking obvious questions, and realizing on the drive home that we misunderstood the entire scene.
That angst makes tipping promising creative material. We already have suspense and movement and symbolic language...and an audience. All we need is several minutes and permission to handle the moment less gracefully than we imagine everyone else does.
Consider one or more of these tips for tipping your imagination by 20% or more:
- Tipping Point: Balance a spoon, credit card, coin or other harmless object at the edge of a table or your finger. Move it until it reaches the moment just before falling. Study that precarious arrangement, then photograph or describe it with adverbs.
- Tip Jar Anthropology: Without interrupting anyone’s work, notice the tip jars you encounter. What containers are used? What jokes, drawings or competing choices have been added? Invent a tip jar for a profession that does not normally have one: crossing guard or librarian or your primary care physician.
- Awkward Silence: Recreate the soundtrack of tipping: a finger tapping, a pen scratching paper, coins on a countertop. Those long seconds a receipt takes to print or the motor of a grocery store conveyer belt. Arrange the sounds into a ten-second musical composition or absurdist setlist.
- One Useful Tip: Write five pieces of advice nobody requested. Make them highly specific: “Never trust a folding chair on grass,” or “Always carry cash." Draw or pantomime your favorite as though it were extremely valuable knowledge. Write it on a big sign and stand outside with it.
- Beyond Currency: Imagine that tipping money is banned after a well-produced Tik Tok video goes viral. Gratitude must now be expressed through a brief creative act. Would you leave a drawing, tap dance, fold the receipt into origami?
The word “tip” is already creatively overemployed. We tip our hats, tip the scales, reach tipping points and keep information on the tips of our tongues. The act of tipping acknowledges that another person’s work helped us. There is a chance it can all go wrong in every human transaction.
Creativity helps us to survive moments of uncertainty. We make a choice without knowing exactly how it will be received. Sometimes we do it with confidence. Sometimes we do it certain that failure is the only option.
This column was written with help from ChatGPT, a tool that accurately predicts how much you will tip with spooky (and unvarnished) accuracy. But you have to ask.
