Over the past years tipping has become a daily practice everywhere we turn. Tip jars, suggesting a gratuity for service now have a predominant position next to cash registers across the country, enticing a coin or two.
According to Merriam-Webster, a gratuity is something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for service received. Remember those words, services received.
Tipping has played a major role in my life. When I moved to Manhattan as an unemployed writer in 1980, I landed a job as a bartender and for seven months, before taking a pay cut and securing a job as a writer, those tips kept me very comfortable.
One night Jack Long left a $220 tip after a lengthy night of Dewar’s consumption. By evening’s end, I called a cab for Long and sent him home. I counted my tips in thankful awe.
As a New Yorker, you learn a tipping criteria. If you want the doorman to open the door, take in your dry cleaning and groceries, ring your phone when the cab has arrived and inform you when your former girlfriend stopped by, you know to leave an envelope at Christmas and an occasional crisp one for being there at 2 a.m. to assist in opening the cab door.
If you want the fourth drink on the house at your favorite society saloon, you learn to tip the bartender. Heavily.
I believe tipping reached the stratosphere when restaurants posted suggested tip percentages on guest checks. The practice enabled credit card companies to increase revenue through service charges on higher tips.
While many consumers are insulted by the practice, tip percentage suggestion may soon find a place on government contracts eventually being posted at the bottom of published RFP.
Last Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision in Snyder v. United States, overturning the jury conviction of an Indiana mayor under Title 18, Section 666, of the U.S. Code for accepting gratuities.
In overturning the conviction, the Supreme Court found the statute intended to criminalize bribes (i.e., a payment in return for being influenced) and not gratuities. (i.e., a payment given without the intention of influence and after an act occurred).
Under the ruling it is now acceptable under Supreme Court law for a government employee or elected official to cast a vote for any decision — and then accept cash, a trip, a car or a lavish cabana as a gratuity. As long as the gift is accepted after a vote or other service, it is legal under the high court’s decision.
According to reports, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have accepted gifts from donors. In Thomas’s case more than $4 million in perks were accepted throughout his term.
If the court didn’t overturn the bribery conviction, would that mean the two justices could be prosecuted for accepting gifts?
Or worse, could the President of the United States accept huge gifts from foreign countries for services received? He could, but which one would do that?
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