Dave Barry's Money Secrets (16 page)
Read Dave Barry's Money Secrets Online
Authors: Dave Barry
A woman named Joy Behar has repeatedly attacked Donald Trump’s hair, and he doesn’t like her one bit. He states that she has “no talent and a terrible accent.”
• Donald Trump is very rich, but he also has a terrific family and a lot of terrific friends, most of whom are also very rich.
• His wife, Melania Knauss, is a total babe, but also “a very calm and soothing person.”
• Tom Brady is a terrific quarterback.
• Donald Trump is extremely busy. To illustrate this, from page 166 to page 209 he lists his schedule for an entire week, meeting by meeting and phone call by phone call. Here are a few excerpts: “I look over some kitchen and bathroom fixtures, and we decide to go with the top of the line. . . . Norma comes in to tell me that Oscar de la Renta is on the line. . . . I return Regis Philbin’s call. . . . I take a call from Hugh Grant. . . . I return a few calls, including one to Larry King, one of the sharpest interviewers of all time. . . . This morning I have an interview with the legendary Barbara Walters.*
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. . . Sandra Bullock is here to visit. . . . Reggie Jackson stops by for a quick visit. . . . I go golfing with Carl Jung.*
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. . .”
•
The Apprentice,
which is the hit reality TV show that Donald Trump stars in, is a terrific show, with a lot of terrific people.
• Donald Trump owns a lot of big properties, which are listed on pages 231 to 244.
• On pages 245 to 248 are pictures of people in the Trump organization. They look like good people.
• The book was set in Galliard, a typeface designed by Matthew Carter for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in 1978. It’s based on the sixteenth-century typefaces of Robert Granjon.
So there you have it, in summary form: The Donald Trump system for getting rich. It’s a terrific system, with a lot of practical applications in everyday life. Like, if somebody says to you, “Do you think we should go with the good idea? Or the bad idea?” You’d think to yourself: “What would Donald Trump do?” And immediately the answer would come to you:
He would take a call from Regis Philbin.
Of course, it’s not fair that you should get the benefits of Donald Trump’s valuable thinking without paying for it. So you’ll want to be sure to get his book. It retails for $21.95, and it’s in bookstores everywhere. Go buy it right now!*
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A GUIDE TO TIPPING
Just Do It
W
HY DO WE TIP?
The main reason, of course, is that we have a simple, generous desire to express, in tangible form, our hope that our server did not spit in our entrée.
But we also tip for other special services. Let me illustrate with a true story:
Some years ago I was on a book tour, which is when you go all around the country promoting a book, kind of like a prostitute, only with less dignity. You will never see a prostitute drum up business by going on a radio show and making armpit farts into a microphone. I have done this to promote a book.
Anyway, I was in Los Angeles, and the publisher put me up at a very swank hotel, the kind of hotel where everybody who works there, including rodents, is wearing a tuxedo. When I arrived, a bellperson instantly materialized and grabbed my luggage, which consisted of a small carry-on bag about the weight of a standard bagel. The bellperson carried this for me to the reception desk, a distance of, I would estimate, nineteen feet. It goes without saying that I had to tip him for rendering this service, so I pulled out a dollar and handed it to him, at which point he dematerialized.
I then checked in, and when I was finished, the reception-desk person made a gesture, and a second bellperson picked up my bagel and led me to my room, where he briefed me on the various hotel room features, such as, if I wanted the room to be warmer or cooler, I should adjust the thermostat accordingly; and that if I wanted to watch the television, I should turn it on. That kind of information does not come cheap, so I tipped him five dollars.
Now I was in the room, and I thought I was safe from having any more services rendered on me. But moments later there was a knock at the door; it was a tuxedo-wearing person, bringing me ice. I don’t know why; I had not asked for ice. Perhaps the hotel staff had heard me on the radio and thought I would need to cool down my armpit. But, for whatever reason, there was the ice, in a very nice silver bucket, and I felt compelled to show my appreciation by giving the employee my only remaining smallish bill, which was a five.
Moments later, the doorbell rang
again.
I was hoping it was the ice guy, realizing he made a mistake, coming back to retrieve the ice and give me back my five. But no, it was
another
tuxedoed hotel employee, and she was bringing what she called an “amenity,” which turned out to be: strawberries. As it happens, I hate strawberries. I would rather chew on a rat testicle than eat a strawberry. But this person had brought me a whole tastefully arranged tray of strawberries, enough strawberries to feed five people who actually liked them, and I had to give her
something,
and unfortunately the smallest bill I had left was a twenty. She didn’t seem surprised to get such a generous tip; I imagine it’s well known in the swank-hotel-employee world that the strawberry-bringer has a better chance of getting the higher-denomination bills, since the lower ones have already been collected by the ice-bringer and the two bagel-toters.
So at this point, having been at the hotel for maybe fifteen minutes, I was out $31 in tips. Granted, I had plenty of both ice and strawberries, but I was running low on cash. So for the rest of the evening I huddled in my room and refused to open the door, because there was no telling—once the word got around that I was out of small bills—what they would bring to me next. (“Mr. Barry, I brought you a croquet set. And Raoul is here with your pony.”)
The point is that you need to carry plenty of cash if you expect to find yourself in certain tip-intensive situations, such as a nice hotel, a good restaurant, anywhere within a 200-mile radius of New York City, or an IRS audit. Also you must learn to give the tip in a suave manner. Do not wave the bill around like a battle flag and say: “Here! I am giving you some money as a tip!” You should slip the tip to the person via a subtle move, disguising the act as a simple handshake. Note how the sophisticated individuals shown in the following photographs are doing it. You can barely tell that money is changing hands:
Tipping in Restaurants
The most common tipping situation is restaurants, where servers often make a very low guaranteed wage and depend on tips for much, sometimes most, of their income. The basic formula in the United States is that, if the service is decent, you tip a minimum of 15 percent of the total bill. This is a simple concept, although some people seem to be unable to grasp it. These people are called “Canadians.”
No, I am just poking a little good-natured fun at our friendly neighbors to the north. It is wrong to brand ALL Canadians as bad tippers, just because 99.9997 percent of them are.
But seriously, the sad truth is that there are many people, even non-Canadians, who seem to be simply unable to grasp the concept of tipping the server. We have all known such people. We have all gone to meals with them. They’re the ones who, when the bill comes, figure out
exactly
how much they owe, to the penny, and put this amount into the communal pot, as if they expect the Tip Fairy to come flitting down out of the sky and add something for the server.
Sometimes these people don’t put in enough even to cover their share of the bill. In my early days in the newspaper business, I used to go to lunch with a group of young reporters that included a guy named Art, who never came
close
to putting in enough money. Art had some specific amount in his head, like $2.35, that he believed all his meals were supposed to cost. No matter where we ate, and no matter what we ordered, when the bill came, Art would put in his $2.35. Sometimes somebody would call him on this, pointing out, “Art, there are six of us, and the bill is $87.50, and you had two cheeseburgers, an order of onion rings, and six beers.” And so Art, very reluctantly, like a man parting with his lone remaining kidney, would grudgingly toss in another quarter.
You don’t want to be like that, because it’s unfair to the server and to your friends, and years later one of them could write a book and ridicule you using your real name. No, you always want to pay your fair share of the bill, and you want to add at least a 15 percent tip for decent service.
Of course you should knock the tip down if the server is rude, or inattentive, or overwhelmingly French. On the other hand, you should
increase
the tip if the service is good. You should also increase it if you are an annoying diner. The problem is that, if you are a truly annoying diner, you probably don’t
know
you’re annoying. So to help you out, I have prepared the following table, which will help you determine how annoying you are, and how much you need to add to the tip to compensate for this:
Tip Calculation Table for Annoying Diners
| Annoying Behavior on Your Part | How Much You Should Increase Your Tip |
| You summon the server by snapping your fingers. | Add 2 percent per snap. |
| After poring over the menu for twenty minutes, you summon the server and announce that you are ready to place your order. Then, while the server is standing there, order pad in hand, you proceed to slooowly go through the entire menu, discussing the pros and cons of each item with your fellow diners and ignoring the server. You ultimately take longer to order your food than Franklin D. Roosevelt took to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. | Add 3 percent for each minute that it takes you to order. Double this amount if you later change your order. |
| You never want your entrée prepared the way the restaurant usually prepares it. You say things like, “I’ll have the baked filet of sole with spinach-cheese stuffing and lobster sauce, but instead of sole I want perch, and I want it pan-fried instead of baked, and instead of spinach and cheese I want a rutabaga chutney, and instead of lobster I want free-range mussels, and instead of a circular plate I want . . .” | Add 5 percent. Also consider just staying home and cooking your own meal. |
| You ask the server to bring everything “on the side.” You want the salad dressing separate from the salad, the lemon separate from the iced tea, the spaghetti sauce separate from the spaghetti, and the ice separate from the ice water, in which you want the hydrogen molecules separate from the oxygen molecules. | Add 2 percent for each thing on the side. Add another 5 percent if, when you get a thing on the side, you dump all of it into the thing it was on the side of, thereby nullifying whatever purpose was served by getting it on the side in the first place. |
| You call the server, who is a grown man or woman, “Hon.” | Add a flat five dollars per “Hon.” |
| You never allow the server to come within fifteen feet of your table without summoning him or her and sending him or her off on an errand to bring you something. You need many, many things, but you always ask for them one thing at a time. You never say, “I need Tabasco sauce and another spoon.” Instead, you send the server for Tabasco sauce, and, when he or she returns, then you ask for the spoon. It apparently does not occur to you that the server may have other people to wait on. As far as you’re concerned, the server is there solely to participate in your little Scavenger Hunt from Hell. | Add 10 percent. |
| No matter what you ordered, you always find something wrong with your entrée, and you always send it back to be cooked more, or cooked less, or be blessed by a priest, or something. You can never just eat your freaking food. | Add 10 percent. |
| In the end, no matter what kind of restaurant it is, and no matter how much everybody else enjoyed the meal, you are always dissatisfied. You often say, “I’m never going to eat there again!” One by one, you are ruling out every restaurant on the planet for being beneath your standards. | Never mind the tip. Please just eat somewhere else. Thank you. |
Note that if you do
all
of the annoying things listed in this table, you could wind up being obligated to leave a tip that is close to 100 percent of your bill. But trust me: If you do all of these things, you’re worth it.
TIPPING AT RESTAURANTS AND CAFÉS IN EUROPE
For Americans, tipping at a restaurant or café in Europe is scary. For one thing, the unit of currency used in most of Europe now is the “euro,” and there is no way to know, without being Stephen Hawking, how much a euro is. The exchange rate is always some number that looks vaguely like pi, such as 1.85732. On top of that, the European tipping system is extremely confusing for Americans.
First off, the Europeans themselves do not tip. They don’t have to tip, because they
never actually leave the restaurant or café.
They will sit there for days, weeks,
months,
drinking a single cup of coffee. They can do this because they have much more humanistic employment rules over there, where you only have to work thirty-five hours per year, and you get forty-seven weeks paid vacation, plus if you have a baby, or your domestic partner has a baby, or you were at one time yourself a baby, you get like sixteen years of paid leave. So there is really no compelling reason for a European person ever to leave a restaurant or café, which renders the tip issue pretty much moot.
For Americans it is different. Americans are over there on their two-week annual vacation, so their time is limited. They need to eat and leave, so they can resume the job of trudging around looking at cathedrals and trying to figure out what the hell a “flying buttress” is, and why anybody cares. This means that at some point, American tourists will need to pay the bill. They will wave to the waiter and pretend to scribble on their hands, which is the international hand gesture for “I am pretending to scribble on my hand.” The waiter will then write something on a piece of paper and hand it to them. It will look like this:
