Miss Manners^®

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please help me to clear up my confusion about tipping. Some of the people on the lists I read each December include hairdresser, paper carrier, doorman and day-care provider. One name that I do not notice on these lists is teacher.

Classroom teachers provide regular service to their customers, go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure their customers have everything they need, spend their own money for necessary items for their customers and work on their own time to make sure all of their needs are met. Please explain why a day-care provider, who also does many of the same things as a classroom teacher, should receive a monetary holiday bonus from the parents of her students, but the classroom teacher should not be given one.

Each day I go to my job just as my hairdresser and paper carrier go to their jobs. However, I am expected to pay as well as tip my hairdresser at each visit and then reward her further with a Christmas bonus just because she did her job well. Even though my paper carrier drives a car to deliver his papers and leaves my paper at the street instead of on my front porch, I am also expected to give him a Christmas bonus just for doing his job. If he went out of his way to place my paper on my front porch, then I would gladly give him a bonus.

The parents of my students do not tip me for doing my job, so why should I be expected to tip the hairdresser and paper carrier for doing their jobs? I pay them for their services just as the state pays me for mine. If they received a small hourly wage and worked mainly for tips that would be different. However, both are well paid, and my hairdresser actually makes more money than I do.

It is my opinion that tipping has gotten out of hand. We are expected to tip certain service providers, but not to tip others. Either we should tip everyone who serves us, such as the bank teller, the grocery clerk, the gas station attendant and the attentive store clerk, or we shouldn't tip anyone except the restaurant servers who depend on tips to bring their earnings up to minimum wage. Please help me to clear up my confusion.

GENTLE READER: You get no argument from Miss Manners when you say that tipping is confusing and has gotten out of hand. She has been railing against it for years as a vile system that brings out the worst in both giver and receiver.

But when you try to make sense of it at this point, based on an evaluation of various jobs, you make things worse. The system, such as it is, has grown from habit, not logic. What rationale there originally was for tipping -- that certain professionals are far too dignified to accept these individual handouts -- is baffling to the very people (such as teachers, like yourself) whose dignity is acknowledged even when their worth is not recognized with sufficient pay.

Unless we are able to abolish the entire system, tips are part of the expected compensation for certain jobs and not for others. So Miss Manners is afraid that you simply have to learn the list instead of analyze it.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband greets everyone with a smiling, hearty "Good morning," "Good afternoon" or "Good evening." If the recipient does not repeat the same message in return, he says it again, a bit louder and more emphatically.

This usually gets him the reply he wants, but if not he'll say: "You're not sure?"

The person will say: "What?"

He'll say: "Whether or not it's a good morning!"

At this time of the year, he does the same thing with "Merry Christmas."

If the clerk, for example doesn't say it back, he'll get a little closer to them and say it again. If they come back with: "Happy holidays," he'll say: "No, I said Merry Christmas, not Happy holidays."

One clerk said: "We are not permitted to say 'Merry Christmas.'" My husband then demanded to see the STORE manager. The FLOOR manager appeared and my husband lectured him on the fact that this worldwide Christian celebration is what was making his cash register ring. The least he could do was to acknowledge the cause.

I make sure I'm busy at another counter, but, believe it or not, in this example a few people started applauding him, which only gave him more confidence for the next encounter. What can I do to make him stop doing this?

GENTLE READER: You can't lock him in the bathroom, Miss Manners supposes, as much of a benefit as that would be to society.

People who go around inflicting their tricky little tests on innocent people are a public menace, but as the danger they create is that they will be throttled, it is hard to make them understand the harm while others remain under control. Those egging him on to harass honest working people are little better than he.

About all you can do is to busy yourself elsewhere. This is not so much to relieve you from embarrassment -- each adult is responsible only for her own behavior, even if she is married -- but to lessen the likelihood that the person who will throttle your husband will be you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I would never dream of sending someone a Christmas card that was dirty or so old that it had turned yellow, or so cheap that it wasn't much thicker than a regular piece of paper, but that's what I got. Last year my mother received a Christmas card that was in worse shape than a card that I had saved from the early 1960s!

My mother thinks I should give them the benefit of the doubt because they might have cataracts. A friend thinks I am terrible because it's supposed to be the thought that counts.

I really don't want to offend these people by not sending them a card next year, but I don't appreciate how little they apparently think of me! They have soured me on the tradition of sending cards altogether. How would you recommend that I handle things?

GENTLE READER: With a modicum of jolly good will toward all. If Miss Manners is not mistaken, this is what Christmas cards -- the ones you send, as well as the ones you receive -- purport to convey.

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(EDITORS Please be advised: The last line of this column contains language that may be offensive to some readers.)

Here are some clues that you might be overdoing the holidays:

-- The neighbors' children are going to school bleary-eyed, because the lights on your house are keeping them awake.

-- There is so much to be done in connection with your office celebrations that it is one of the most hectic work times of the year, although the service your company ordinarily performs has been all but suspended.

-- Your special wardrobe contains so many Christmas sweaters and items of jewelry with trees, bells and wreaths that you have to keep track of which you have worn where.

-- Not remembering who some of the people on your card list are and how they got there does not discourage you from sending them greetings.

-- Strangers show up at your holiday parties and open conversations with you by asking whether you can point out the host.

-- You are sending presents to a generation of relatives whom you have not seen since babyhood, and from whom you have never received acknowledgment.

-- People to whom you bring little surprise treats don't look thrilled and exclaim in pleasure; they look cornered and exclaim, "Oh, I meant to get something for you."

-- After you offer people good wishes, you find yourself having to urge them to get into the spirit of the season.

-- Your children get cranky when there are no more presents for them to open, partly because it doesn't occur to them to go on to the next stage of playing with what they received, but mostly because they are just plain exhausted from the task.

-- You press food on people after they claim to be sated by telling them how much work you put into making it.

-- You quiz people about their ancestry for the purpose of celebrating their particular holidays, even ones they don't celebrate themselves.

-- You end up being annoyed at everyone you were trying to please.

Normally, Miss Manners is an enthusiastic supporter of the cheerful and the festive, with little patience for those who claim that they find merriment depressing. She believes that traditions bind people together and that it is divisive, if not cruel, to scorn family observances. Her admiration for those who plan their holidays for others' pleasure, and not just their own, is boundless.

But she worries about people who, bless their hearts, get so into the holiday spirit that they go around spreading fatigue and obligation and, ultimately, their own disappointment that others fail to keep up with them.

They would do well to remember that there can be too much of a good thing:

-- An hour of generalized fellowship in an office is a delightful break, but the additional workload or assessment to support serious celebrations is a burden that should not be imposed.

-- There is no pleasure in receiving cards or presents from people one can't place, and no point in sending presents into a void from which there is no response.

-- Unexpected treats and presents should be on so modest a scale as not to leave the recipient with a surprise social debt.

-- Giving is blessed, but force-feeding people presents or food beyond what they can handle is not.

-- Assuming that everyone celebrates Christmas may be insensitive, but so is assuming that everyone has a Christmas-equivalent and wants help sharing it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A couple of years ago, my wife and I attended the wedding of two people who had been friends of ours for years. One year ago, the woman left the man for another man. We heard all about it from the man but heard nothing from the woman as we live in separate towns.

We received a little Christmas package from the woman who, in her note, made no reference to her infidelity -- an act that considerably affected all who were friends of the pair.

I felt instinctively the need to thank her for the gift and card, but I didn't feel as if I should ignore the issue of her leaving her husband. In the end, I wrote a thank-you note and told her what I thought of the situation -- not in excoriating terms but in bluntly honest ones. In your opinion, was this boorish?

GENTLE READER: Yes. Had you wished to register your disapproval you could have written her a dry letter of thanks; had you wished to register extreme disapproval, you could have returned the present. Miss Manners is afraid that "Thanks, slut," is not a proper communication.

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