Business finance tip

LIKE ANYONE I'VE EVER KNOWN who's worked in oil derivatives, my friend Justin Wilson is retiring young. For a fellow who's lived half his life with a phone in each ear, however, his recent trips to breathtaking golf destinations have been less than pacific.

"I hate having to walk around a fancy resort with a pocketful of bills," says Wilson, a transplanted Brit who can sell you 15,000 barrels 20 years from now at Thursday's price per barrel but can't decipher American tipping practices. "It's like paying $250 for your green fee and having to pay for range balls, for heaven's sake. Inevitably, I've got only a $100 bill. What do you say, 'Would you happen to have 95 singles?' Can't they just charge me upfront and let me be?!"

A former professional cricketer, Wilson brings a de Tocquevillian perspective to our golf culture. The disclaimer here is that his position in cricket was Silly Mid On, which is akin to playing third base while standing about 10 feet from the batter. Thus, his judgment is not airtight. But he can put his finger on it, if you know what I mean.

"At my club in Connecticut you give a caddie $45 a bag and he's happy," he says. "At my friend's club in New York, 20 miles away, you give the kid $45 and he looks as though you've peed on his shoes. [A British expression, apparently.] Can't somebody just tell me what to pay?"

Now, Wilson is a very generous fellow. But like a lot of people who have enough money, it annoys him to have to worry about it all the time. To him and many golfers we talked to, American golf is a series of people with their hands out, punctuated by the occasional gap wedge. The parking valet. The kid who puts your bag on a cart. The starter. The caddiemaster. The caddie, forecaddie or cart-caddie. The cart girl or geezer. The club cleaner. The locker-room attendant. The kid who takes your clubs to the bag drop. The kid who puts your clubs in your trunk. The guy who directs you to the nearest ATM. And so on.

By the time you've weathered this gantlet, you've handed a couple of dozen bills to a half-dozen strangers and feel that you almost certainly did it wrong. You gave one of them a five when you wanted to give him a buck (it was all you had) and promised another, "I'll get you on the way out." His expression was somewhere south of "Gee, thanks."

Tipping is golf's equivalent of a public radio fund drive; at a certain point, you'd pay anything to make it go away. Its pervasiveness "leads to people being offended," says Guy Shutt, a financial adviser from South Africa, now living in the States. "They feel taken advantage of." Like a lot of folks we talked to, Shutt would gladly pay a flat fee for service--$30 a day, say--upfront and not have to try to understand our tipping customs, outstretched hand by outstretched hand. No surprise, then, that places such as Augusta National and Pine Valley ban tipping altogether. Violating that rule, by the way, not only messes up the system but can get an employee who accepts a tip fired. So don't do it.

"Questions of tipping bedevil people, particularly because the custom seems to spread like a liquid spill," says Letitia Baldrige, author of Letitia Baldrige's New Manners for New Times. "The proper amount changes constantly." Baldrige is the expert. Reassuring, eh?

"Tipping is not like table manners," says Lydia Ramsey (Manners That Sell), who writes a weekly column on business etiquette for The Savannah Morning News and once took up golf but--out of courtesy to her instructor, she says--gave it up. "No one sits you down and says, 'This is how you do it.' "

Ramsey empathizes with the panicked traveler who confronts one shuttle driver, valet, bellhop, bag-stand boy or locker-room attendant after another. "People begin to think, 'This is getting into some real money now. What's this costing me?' But the fact is, everyone who provides a service has the expectation that they'll be compensated, and they should be. People should be rewarded."

In short, they all get something. The accompanying box recommends tips for practically everything, based on advice from Ramsey, Baldrige, caddies, limo drivers, skycaps and golfers. Some of you (read: New Yorkers) may be surprised at how low the amounts are. But our interviews indicate that if you tip consistently, not extravagantly, you'll be way ahead of the crowd. And don't feel guilty about asking for $15 change on a $20 bill. From their point of view, it sure beats stiffing them.

Ask Garry Lang, a retired plastics salesman who now cleans and racks clubs at the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Fla., for $2.20 an hour, golf privileges and tips. "I'd say 60 percent of the people give us a buck," says Lang. "About 15 percent are generous; maybe they give $2 to $5. The rest give nothing." Shockingly, Lang reports that he and his crew would be thrilled if they averaged $1 a cart. In a five-hour shift, his team services 240 carts and shares $150 in tips "on a good day." Many service personnel pool tips this way. If you miss one of them in the morning, you can double up in the afternoon and not worry that you've stiffed someone.

It was a surprise to me that skycaps are also getting only a dollar a bag, but that's what we heard from Ed, a Delta skycap at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport: "Most people give a buck, I'd say. I'd be very happy with two bucks a bag, for doing this, for sure." His counterpart at the airport in Jacksonville, Richard Holbrook, concurs. "They say a buck a bag, but we've been doing that for years," he says. "Isn't it about time to take it to $2?"

Ed and Richard say that golfers tend to be good tippers because they're happy about going somewhere they like. There's another reason, Ed. If Rule No. 1 in tipping is, Everyone gets something, Rule No. 2 is, Anyone who touches my golf clubs gets five bucks. Tipping, after all, is only part reward. The other part is bribery.

Punishment is not part of tipping, according to most experts. "Sending a message" by stiffing a rude waiter or bellhop does not work. If you're unhappy with your service, the experts agree, leave a smaller-than-normal tip and tell the employee or his manager why you're doing it. Not only will you be sending a message to the employee, you may be helping ensure better service for the rest of us down the road.

Caddies:

A little something for the effort

NO CONFUSION IS LIKE the confusion surrounding caddie tips. The customary rate for a good caddie varies wildly, even at clubs in the same neighborhood. Then there's the variance within a club when one member pays $45 for a fair job and another wouldn't pay $45 if Fluff Cowan toted his bag. And of course there's the whole concept of a "base" price, which is supposed to be pre-tip, but not everyone knows it.

This lack of standards, the complication of state laws covering "independent contractors" and the subsequent unwillingness of clubs to suggest how much the contractors ought to be paid, is one reason caddies are disappearing: No one knows what the heck to pay them.

Our informal survey of about 35 clubs suggests that caddie fees range from about $25 to $100 a bag for a good caddie. The tip varies from $5 to $60.

"It's all over the map," says Dave Griffus, an Evans Scholar who caddied for five years at the Country Club of Jackson (Mich.) and earned $35 to $45 as an experienced caddie (as well as a four-year-ride to the University of Michigan). "I mean, I once got $13! The base was $11, and at that point I admit I was a horrible caddie. But c'mon, man. Thirteen dollars? A $2 tip? I didn't confront the guy because that would have been inappropriate. But c'mon!" As Griffus' classmate Jeff Atkinson says, "People don't seem to realize you could have a regular job." Atkinson now does have a regular job during the summer: He ushers at a movie theater and makes more ($6.50 an hour) than he did caddieing at Kent Country Club in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It's a better deal," he says sadly, while pointing out that the entertainment is not as good.