Keep the Change

September 13, 2010
The concept of gratuity is the subject of this second book from the unmasked author of Waiter Rant and, like his first, has its own lad-lit charms and contrivances. Opening with a broad and light cultural history of tipping, the book then delves briefly into the tip's primary restaurant industry role before moving on to its impact in lesser known and often neglected businesses by examining their gratuity-related transactions. There's enough raw, self-deprecating autobiography to keep the anthropological enterprise comic; in addition, the author steps in the shoes of those in various industries and discloses the hidden codes of parking valets, Starbucks "tip jars," and the beauty industry. Dublanica breaks down a dizzying variety of service-related exchanges along with the inner worlds of casino dealers and sex-trade workers (in fact, there's an awful lot about Vegas) and even provides a couple of tip-helpful appendixes.

October 15, 2010

The author of the popular WaiterRant.net blog (and companion book) offers a freewheeling exploration of the hows and whys of tipping in America. Starting with waitstaff and working outward, Dublanica interviews individuals in various tip-dependent occupations, from doormen to deliverymen to phone sex operators. Frequently he works alongside or patronizes (and tips!) them. Jetting gleefully to Portland, OR, (baristas), Los Angeles (bartenders), and Las Vegas (strippers and cab drivers), and enjoying plentiful cigars and dirty vodka martinis along the way, Dublanica builds up to an overblown but insightful epiphany about exactly why people tip. An otherwise helpful appendix about tipping at the holidays contains an unfortunate piece of bad advice: Dublanica recommends giving liquor to service providers who can't accept cash tips (a risky practice unless the individual is known not to be an active or recovering alcoholic). VERDICT This idiosyncratic, somewhat self-indulgent book is by turns crude and thoughtful, encompassing both an overlong, sophomoric fantasia about a waiter's nightmare shift and meditations on Bible verses (Dublanica was once a seminary student). Funny and illuminating, it's recommended to anyone seeking enlightenment about gratuities and willing to indulge the author's feisty style.--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2010

The author of Waiter Rant (2007) follows up with this similarly energetic insider's look at tipping.

During his nine years as a waiter, Dublanica started an anonymous blog, waiterrant.net, which led to the publication of his eponymous bestseller. After revealing his identity--and crusading, in the style of an angry stand-up comic, against bad customers--he now turns his attention (and heckling) to bad tippers. By traveling around the country talking to workers in various service industries, from strippers to chauffeurs, he simultaneously educates himself and readers. Tipping, he qualifies upfront, is "an informal economy within a formal one," a charge that often feels superfluous. But the numbers speak for themselves. It's estimated, writes Dublanica, "that all the tipped workers in the United States pull down somewhere between $53.1 and 66.6 billion a year in gratuities." More than half of this goes to waiters, which is fitting considering that the word "tip" translates into "drink money" or something similar in at least ten languages. After discussing what you should leave for servers, Dublanica moves on to, among others, hotel doormen ("just about everything calls for a simple single or two"), coffee baristas ("a dollar a drink," an interview notes, "just like a bartender") and hair dressers and aestheticians ("everyone at a salon should get tipped 15-20 percent for the service they provide"). That same percentage, he's told by a Papa John's employee, should be tipped to delivery people: "Fifteen to twenty percent of the bill or the cost of a gallon of gas--whatever's higher." Workers in all sectors concur that the worst kind of people are "exact-changers"--i.e., those who proffer barely enough to cover the cost of what they're buying and say, "Keep the change." As in Waiter Rant, Dublanica makes a point of detailing the ways in which poorly tipped employees may seek revenge.

A hilariously uncensored etiquette diatribe.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)