Do you tip tradesmen? Ordinarily I rarely tip anyone but recently I have wondered if I should change my approach. Am I a scrooge, a tight git, or sensible and careful? I would be interested in your views on this.
Normally I would never dream of giving a tip; things are expensive these days and we need to be careful with money. We agree a price for something and we should stick to it – cafes, restaurants etc. When did you last give a tip when you saw your dentist or mechanic? Tradesmen (sorry, tradespeople) seem to charge quite a daily rate (£250-300 + materials) for their work these days. That is quite enough in my book.
That said, we are normally quite generous with teas, coffees (even Doug Blend on offer). Our brilliant plumbers got drinks, cakes and ice creams. Our kitchen fitters got shop bought sandwiches and cakes but still managed to do a disappointing job for us.
Uber drivers get paid the set fare but once or twice they’ve had a little bonus for using their brains and altering the route to get us to the airport on time.
Despite all of this, I normally wouldn’t tip anyone.
But then a friend of ours….
A good friend of mine uses a handyman for his household maintenance and they seem to get on quite well. His handyman does a variety of jobs such as plumbing, electrical, decorating and so on. He has proved very reliable and works to a good standard, so he gets quite a generous tip each time.
By tipping he maintains a good relationship and in an unspoken way will guarantee a quick response if there’s an emergency.
Now we have a good roofer
Yes, at last, we seem to have found a good roofer. He is a one-man band, nothing flash or pretentious, just a down to earth tradesman. This is brilliant, especially after a few false starts with the cash-in-hand guys, or the people that go out of business, those who do dodgy work and so on.
We have used him once. He turned up on time. He took down an old analogue TV aerial, fitted a cowl to stop dopey pigeons falling down a chimney and checked the roof over, all for the agreed price. He had a cup of Doug Blend coffee.
When we came to settle his invoice, we decided to add a little bonus. We need not have done this but he seemed to appreciate it. Hopefully we have gained a little goodwill as well as helping him along the way as his job isn’t an easy one, certainly a risky job.
Looking to the future, should we tip?
Hard to know who, when, what for and how much?
At a village group we are in, they often go for meals as a group of retired folk. Tips are often debated and a less-than-generous tip is frowned upon, almost to the point of excluding someone who doesn’t tip with everyone else. I am out-of-step here but I don’t think the starting point is about wealth, it must be something else. Generosity? A generation thing? Cultural? Traditional? I don’t know.
And you, how much would you tip someone?
Just leave a comment below – I’ll be very interested to know.
I generally use friends to do my ‘tradesmen’ stuff – electrician, plumber, carpenter, painter and decorator.
I’ll tip them in cash if I consider the ‘mates rates’ invoice is to low especially if they’ve come out in a hurry
That makes sense Alan. Our electrician is a mate but that’s as far as it goes for us. You’re very fortunate to have friends able to do those things for you!
I never tip either, around my way they charge quite enough. They probably look at the customer and see what they can get away with, then find an unforeseen (ahem) problem along the way and end up charging even more. So many rip off merchants out there.