Tips for Tips

I tip very well when service is great.

I tip 20% when service is good.

I tip very poorly when I have to ask for refills, am not given a menu, find my own silverware, and the $4 in change on a $6 lunch is "assumed the tip."

It must be a different generation that assumes if you do a crummy job then you still get rewarded. After all, you showed up, you should get a sticker... right?

Wrong.

Brené Brown on TED

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt

Expectations

If you've always done if for someone, they will come to expect it and never learn to do it themselves. Letting someone fail or succeed on their own, in order to learn, is not always a bad thing.

I need to remind myself of this periodically by taking a huge step back. And just observe. It's hard for me. I like to control situations - or at least steer them to succeed.