Take a tip from me, give a gratuity to reward good services rendered

IT’S A long time ago, so I don’t think the Revenue will come after me, but I was briefly rich, writes Terry Prone.

I was a hat-check girl in Dublin Airport so long ago that the airport consisted only of one beautiful banana-shaped building with penny-in-the-slot machines through which visitors got to view incoming and outgoing planes. Of which there were at least three per hour, and no, they didn’t all have propellers.

I operated in a corner of the restaurant where I had a tiny table, a tiny chair, a booklet of tickets, a card of straight pins, and a long pole equipped with coat hangers on which to hang the outer clothing of diners. I gave each diner a half of the pink ticket and, having pinned the other half to the coat or jacket, let them off. Over the free lunch that was part of the deal — you could pick anything from the expensive menu — I got to know and adore the waiters, who were full of stories about the worst accidents they’d had.

You might assume the worst of these would involve red wine, but the killer was a waiter who had tipped a hot chicken leg down the back of the mother of a first holy communicant. The hot path of that chicken leg was accompanied by one continuous scream from the woman, which in turn provoked admiring glances from her children and a reproachful look from her husband, who hadn’t witnessed the deposit of the limb and had no idea what was eating her.

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What was eating her was what she should have been eating and the waiter maintained that what saved his life and certainly his job was that the woman was wearing a roll-on, this being the neanderthal version of Spanx. The tightness of this garment meant that when she stood up, the chicken leg departed her person, rather than continuing its inside-the-garment progress up against her skin.

Back then, the airport had a ritual dance they performed over waiters’ accidents, which is not to suggest that they were regular, or even frequent. The maître d’ would appear in his black tie outfit and express corporate regret at an appropriate level, indicating that of course they took responsibility for cleaning the suit/trousers/skirt and that the person poured on or thrown at would get their replacement meal for free. The maître d’ learned to engage the victim in choice, which is a brilliant negotiating tactic in a crisis situation. It always serves as a great distraction from the central misery. He would ask them if they wanted the same dish again or something quite different. Roughly four out of five guests would change their order. You could understand that. Once you’ve had hot risotto deposited in your lap, you might not find the prospect of eating a replacement risotto that appealing.

The chicken leg woman, however, had an issue that needed escalation. That meant me accompanying her to the bathroom to assess the physical damage. The poor guest had a fat scorch line right down the middle of her back. I suggested we apply butter to it. That’s the one thing you’re sure is in good supply in a decent restaurant. Butter. In neat little packeted spoonfuls, all the better for application to assaulted guests. On this occasion, I had no takers. She wasn’t having any.

“I am a doctor,” she said tersely. “Butter should never be applied to a burn.”

She positioned herself in her underwear over the bathroom sink and, obeying her instructions, I used a cup to pour a steady stream of cold water over the red mark until she announced she was no longer in pain and proceeded to get the dress back on. Another guest lent her a crocheted cardigan and the maître d’ welcomed her back to the table with a neatly nuanced mix of grovel and gratitude, the latter occasioned by her post-scream graciousness. In all the years since, I’ve never met someone who behaved so well after an application of hot chicken.

What astonished me was that, when she came to retrieve her coat, she gave me an enormous tip. Serious folding money. I had expected her to snatch it from me, eyes down, which was what non-tippers always did. If they weren’t looking at you, the thinking goes, you were not quite human and therefore not tipping you was legitimate because why would you tip a non-person? To get past that eye-avoidant behaviour was why, the waiters told me, servers always made sure to arrive at a table brandishing their name plate and carolling their name (pointing at the name plate) and that it would be their pleasure to serve the guests on that happy day.

The more the guests registered your humanity, went the theory, the bigger was the later tip. For the most part, the theory played out in practice, but now and again it didn’t work. You’d think you were about to win the tip lottery when you’d deal with a guest who would spend like there was no tomorrow, use your name constantly, and compliment you on the excellence of your performance. And then you would learn that all this affability had been expended while planning to scarper without leaving you even the smallest coin before their exit. We would gather together at the end of the day to collectively hate those people.

Because I was a teenager and this was my first part-time job (Saturdays, Sundays, and bank holidays only) the airport waiters gave me great advice on how to make my task more remunerative. Save the guests time, for starters, was a key part of their guidance.

If a male guest — and it was always a male guest — came to the hat check area carrying all of the coats of the entire party, then the thing to do was quickly count the garments and hand him seven tickets from the ticket book, as opposed to keeping him there while you attached the corresponding tickets to the coats one by one. Just make sure, the waiters warned me, that they know why you’re doing it, so they appreciate you. After they had returned to their table was the time to attach the slips of paper, tuck the scarves into the sleeves, and hang the jackets up.

Another piece of advice they gave me was to take exaggerated care of each garment. Even if it was a ratty hoodie that looked as if it had been slept in by its owner and his dead rat for a week, you made sure to push the adjacent coats away from it to give it space. My mother had warned me never to puncture a leather jacket or a mackintosh with a pin, so those garments had their labels pinned, instead, to the lining or the label. I learned labels, too. Designer label owners are poor tippers. Trust me on this.

If you’re out this weekend for dinner or lunch, make someone’s day. Tip extravagantly. They need it more than you do. Trust me on that, too.

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