Ireland has still a pretty much tip free culture - I think. You tip wait people - and taxi drivers for some reason. And delivery people. And hairdressers, though I resent that - I can't afford the fifty quid as it is, and lots of people are paying three times that. Why exactly should your tip go up the more you pay, when all it means for most of us is that we can afford it less?
But it's confusing - I think the old Celtic Tiger saw people tipping more. I bought a big pot for the garden last week, and got a small Dunnes Stores' minion to carry it to the car for me. It would have been an appropriate time to give him something, given that it wasn't part of his job spec, but I find it really hard to get it together gracefully. I don't feel grown up enough to tip anyone convincingly. God, I've just had a horrible flashback to the time my mum sent me out to tip the pizza guy and it turned out to be someone I'd had a drunken and misguided teenage dalliance with some years before. Ughhh.
I wonder is it that awkwardness that stops people, or the sense that people don't deserve it? My husband, when he started working in his current sales job, delivered a tv to someone in order to ensure a sale. On his day off. And your man was very grateful, but didn't offer him anything more than his thanks.
I think there should be some guidelines now, when to do it, when not to, and how much, like with restaurants.
