Tipping etiquette

Had the day off today a day working jolly hard at home, as our new fridge freezer was being delivered. I shouldn't joke about it, the working from home I mean, but it's a running routine between Clare and myself, she works at home once a week usually and I love trying to trip her up and make her call it a day off. Look before I go any further, I did some really cool stuff today, inline editing (like you have on the titles and descriptions of your Flickr pictures), but when you make a change it does a call to our API and checks to see if the new changes still make a valid booking with available results. Without you having to go back in your browser or anything. Well I think it's interesting.

Where was I?

Ah yeah, at home, fridge freezer arrived, delivery guy says "you're joking, can't promise we'll get it in without dents". I am on the second floor, but can it really be that much of a surprise to someone who does deliveries for a living? Especially in Folkestone, like much of London it's once sizeable houses have been converted into flats. Half the town must live on the second floor. There were two big delivery guys so a) I didn't offer to help, and b) I didn't speak up too loudly either. I said they have to try, and that we got the old fridge in fine and it's the same size, and can you take it away too please. They huffed and they puffed and they swore as they got the fridge in, but I can't help feeling that they were putting on a bit of a panto for me.

Are you meant to tip delivery people?

If I order a curry I always do, and that's only a carrier bag sized delivery, and I run down the stairs to collect it from the front door, but for this monster I did not. Did I do wrong? I did have to pay an extra thirty quid for delivery anyway, so I don't think I've done anything wrong.

When we got the pool table, the two guys who brought that in the flat puffed and sweated, but they didn't act hard done by at all and they were really nice and cheerful, and they'd driven from Wales or somewhere ridiculous and I did bung them some cash.

I have to be careful, as usually I have a couple of friends who help me getting stuff up the stairs, and if they hear about the tipping it will have set a dangerous precedent.

Had another parcel arrived too, more exciting stuff, more later. Back to work now.

pauly :: 2008 :: Comment / reply