– Suresh Subrahmanyan is a Bengaluru-based former advertising professional

When an employee retires after loyally serving his company, the firm provides him/her a monetary gratuity. This is not an arbitrary sum but is generally based on a pre-determined formula and is a reward for services rendered over a long period. At times, a wrist-watch bearing the company’s emblem may also be given as an added gift at a farewell party. Followed, naturally, by a laudatory speech by the boss, at the end of which he mutters: ‘Thank God that pain in the backside has gone.’ That is how things are in the corporate world.

However, the word gratuity, when performed on a micro scale, such as giving your hired taxi driver a little over the meter because he happened to speak well of the political party you voted for, we call that a tip. I should add that a Pakistani driver who ferried me to Heathrow airport from my London hotel, couldn’t stop talking about Tendulkar and Dhoni and how much the Pakistanis loved them and how even President Musharraf advised Dhoni not to cut his flowing locks. I was so overcome I tipped him handsomely.

Returning to my main subject, the quantum of tip can depend entirely on, apart from the driver’s political or cricketing persuasion, a smiling visage and his readiness to step out of the car in a jiffy and take out your luggage and hand it over to a member of the hotel staff waiting eagerly to do his bidding.

The satisfied taxi driver then steps on the gas and speeds away. Meanwhile the expectant bellhop escorts you to reception, deftly takes your room key from you and proceeds to your room while you follow him, opens the door, draws the curtains, switches on the air-conditioning, explains the contents of the minibar, shows you how to operate the smart tv set, and explains the complex hot and cold-water mechanism in the bathroom.

To revert to the hotel waiter’s attentions, he finally asks you if there is anything else you need. He then stands respectfully aside and waits. You pretend not to notice and thank him for the trouble, but he still stands there, looking a bit anxious. Then the penny drops. ‘Oh sorry, silly of me.’ I proffer a Rs.100 note as he closes his fist round it, with an expression that is a blend of mild acknowledgment and strong disappointment.’

Then there is room service. You check into your hotel after a tiring journey and decide to order something from room service. That one apple, a banana and a small dark chocolate kept on a plate with the management’s compliments, is hardly going to satisfy your peckish appetite. The menu clearly rules out 70 percent of the items as ‘unavailable after 10 pm’. So you settle for a club sandwich, cold coffee with ice cream. ‘Right away, Sir. 15 minutes,’ assures the friendly staffer at the other end. Over an hour passes. Meanwhile you have polished off the apple, banana and the dark chocolate. Just then, the room bell rings.

You pause the television set. The bellhop places the fixings on the escritoire, makes me sign the bill and waits. I hand him a hundred rupee note and tell him to let the F&B manager know that there is a world of difference between 15 and 65 minutes, and that I should be getting a hefty discount due to the formation of stomach ulcers. He stares blankly, and leaves.

Welcome to the world of tipping, which comes in many avatars. Take a simple visit to a restaurant for a meal. The bill at the end of the meal may or may not tell you if service charge is included. Even if it does, the waiter stands around forming imaginary patterns on the floor with his left foot after you have punched in the pin number on the credit card machine. Depending on how fulfilling the repast was, you fork out a hundred and discreetly hand it over to the waiter. The matter does not end there. You exit the restaurant and the valet service chap hares off to fetch your car. As he steps out and waits for you to sidle into your driver’s seat, you proffer more currency. This after a valet service charge has already been paid.

Those of you who get your car/two-wheeler tyre pressures checked at a petrol pump would have noticed a sign saying, ‘Please don’t tip the staff’. It is one command I happily ignore, seeing as the poor chap, patiently gets down on his haunches and checks your tyres, and of several others all day long. It is punishing work. Your heart and purse strings go out to him.

Tipping, it’s all discretionary. However, if you refuse to oblige, you can expect the kind of look from the staff that Wodehouse so inimitably describes, ‘He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.’

Moral of the story. If you are a skinflint, don’t make eye contact with the staff.