People and Tips

So during my 1.9 years of working at the car wash, I have had my share of tips. Good tips, bad tips, normal tips, no tips. All different kinds of tips. I've gotten pretty good at tell who will give a good tip or a bad tip just by looking at someones car or the person themselves. Most elderly people tend to be bad tippers. They normally give about $2 or $3 for most kinds of washes. Young people, ie high school/college aged, also tend to give $2 tips for most washes. Middle aged people vary. Middle aged people are the people that will either stiff (not tip) you or will tip you a good amount($10) for a Executive Wash(24.95). They keep you guessing but if they come in often enough you know who gives what kind of tip for what service. For example, there is this one costumer that comes to the car wash on a regular basis because he has a vip package. It doesn't matter what you do to his vehicle, you will only get tipped $1. Whenever I get stuck doing his car, I don't work as hard on it because I know I'm only going to get that $1 so why do I need to break my back drying his car off. The Best tips come from people that actually work for tips because they understand what it is like to do a lot of hard/dirty work and get a poor tip. So these are the people that tend to tip around 20% and up! Myself, I tend to tip at minimum 20% for that very reason previously stated. Now, the worst tips come from, believe it or not, christians and people with children. These are the people that you can always expect to get either $1 or $2 for any wash. The people that are supposed to be helping other people in need with resources that we have and teaching the next generation to live good lives, are making it difficult for the people who work for tips and depend on tips to make a living to actually make a living. What tends to make it worse with these people is that most of them drive mini vans. Mini vans are the one car that all car wash employees hate washing! they are big and difficult to move around in because most people will have lots of stuff in their vans and we have to climb around all these things and it gets cramped. Even when they are empty it still gets cramped to move around and clean all the interior windows. My point for all this rambling is that one good tip(more than 15%) or one bad tip (less than 15%) can make our day or ruin our day, especially if we get consecutive bad tips, and remember, that we are working for less than minimum wage. We rely on tips to pay our bills and to pay for school.