🏆🏆🏆 Ask Tip! — Winning Submission

A reader from “South Philly” responds to Nurse "I'll Break Her Nose" struggling with a rhinoplasty colleague that cheats on tips on girls night out and may be overdosing patients on Brevital.

A lucky reader responds to our challenge about equitable tipping among a group of nurses who meet for Friday night drinks. Our reader wins a $1.32 prize through Venmo, although he has yet to supply his Venmo address, and our CFO is pestering me.

Full disclosure, family members are not qualified to win except when there are exactly zero other submissions. I can neither confirm nor deny at this time.

I include a link to our winner's Substack page which has exactly zero posts. A giant goose egg. In fact, that should be the name of his newsletter. “Goose Egg Posts.” I include this link to shame him into writing something because he is a really, really good writer comment provider on other people’s posts. My sources inform me he is waiting for the “perfect post” to get started. Yawn. Let’s get off the dime, brother pal.

I was very tempted to change “Break Her Nose” to “Beak Her Nose” (sic) for 281 reasons both political and professional, but I could not get “footnote” to work within “Style Heading #5.”

— Adam Nathan, Editor-at-Large, Ask Tip!

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The Letter to Tip…

Dear Tippi,

There is a group of five gals that have drinks on alternate Fridays after work - we are nurses in a rhinoplasty clinic. I can speak for everyone in our group to say that by Friday evening we’re all sick of looking at broken noses…

… One member of our group said she had the ability to do math in her head, and so we started letting her do the calculations when we pay the bill. She makes a Broadway performance of the check, muttering and tallying everyone’s amounts, calculating long division in the air, asking for silence, and divvying up the amounts like a schoolteacher…

At first, I thought her math was stunning, but now I’m sure she’s not making up the numbers out of a hat, because I seem to be on the losing end more and more frequently.

But all of that is fine. Let her show off with her public math, although I suspect she embellishes her skills because I’m quite sure she can’t do body weight to milligrams conversions properly. Far too often the Brevital amounts she puts in IVs keep us late in Recovery, and her patients have excessive hiccups which is a side effect of, I don’t know how else to put it, an overdose. <GOOGLE IN ADVANCE IF COLUMN LETTERS ARE ANONYMOUS !!!!!!!!!>

But, as they say, “that’s neither here nor there” - unless you’re the patient or their family dealing with the outcome! Nurses like her are why you have to initial everywhere.

But this is “neither here nor there.” My issue is that after she signs her credit card, she always places the tip amount face down. Everyone else in the group places their receipts face up to demonstrate they aren’t hiding anything.

This bothered me, and several months ago, I went back on an excuse (a personal reason) and turned her credit card slip over. She had only tipped 5%! Now it has gotten so that I can’t help but go back every time to “use the ladies” to see how much she’s cheated on her tip.

I know that I shouldn’t speak to her directly, but what should you do to make sure another member of your party is tipping properly?

Should I make up for her stinginess on my own? I’m a registered nurse, not a saint! Honestly, I’d like to punch her in the nose and give her a taste of her own Brevital, but that’s neither “here nor there.” 😤

Sincerely,

I’ll Break Her Nose

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💸 Ask Tip! — "Furious on the 4th Floor"

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🏆🏆🏆 And Our Winner…

Well, Tippy, I’m from South Philly. Where I come from we take a more direct approach to the nose job girls problems, if you get my drift. I don’t know German so I don’t understand you half the time, but basically I’d tell your gal in normal english to get one of her cousins to have a little heart to heart with Miss five percent. Maybe buy her a drink to help the “negotiation.” That sets the mood. Tell the cousin he don’t need to explain nothing. He just needs to say something like “Some friends of mine have made me aware that you seem to have a bad habit that I am familiar with. They say you’re a little light on the tip and a bit heavy on the Brevital. I don’t care about the Brevital but it might be congenial to office relations if you pick up the tab for a few weeks. And also bought a calculator. It’d be a shame to end up as a patient at that fancy clinic of yours.” The key is to be real friendly - super polite - and don’t answer any questions like “Who are you?” or “How do you know where I work?” or “I’m not the one who calculates the bill, that’s Laura!” I’ve done this kind of thing and you’d be amazed how good it works. The nose nurse might end up covering drinks and tips for months, or at least until she moves or gets another job.

— Chris “South Philly” Nathan

Disclaimer: Professional advice on the etiquette of tipping is in a state of rapid and unpredictable change. Our answers may change over time to address evolving circumstances and point-of-sale technology.

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