YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary.
Q. I was recently involved in a dilemma over tipping and would like your advice on how I should have dealt with it. I was driv- ing along Chelsea Embankment on a freez- ing cold rainy evening just before Christ- mas when I realised I was developing a puncture. I pulled into a filling station to change the wheel, but as I was wearing a tight formal skirt and silly shoes I couldn't stop or crouch properly, and couldn't get the leverage to wrench the wheel-nuts off. At that moment a chap of about 20 drove into the filling station in a smart party caterers' van. I asked him to help me just get the nuts off and he ended up doing the whole job. This took him about 20 minutes altogether in the teeth of a horrible whistling, icy wind. All the time he was working I was trying to suss him out, won- dering whether or not to tip him. I couldn't tell whether his accent was 'Eton cockney' or 'Estuary English' but it seemed wrong not to offer him something. So I thrust a ten-pound note at him and said, in as unpa- tronising a manner as I could, 'I'm so grate- ful. Please take this and buy yourself a Christmas present.' He looked really miffed and said, 'No, thank-you-very-much' before walking away, obviously offended. What should I have done?
M.A.S., London El A. Whether gallant or not, both toffs and cockneys would have been thrilled by the ten-pound tip, so I think you can safely assume your chap was middle-class. There is a method by which you could have accu- rately gleaned how he would respond to the offer of the tip. As he finished the job you could have said chattily, 'I can't believe this has happened again. It happened only last week and I had to ask another kind stranger for help. He was some sort of psy- chologist. I said, "I insist on paying you ten pounds for doing this awful job," and he said, "I insist on taking it." He said it would be bad for him not to. So I jolly well hope you'll accept a tenner too!' By this method (chuckling throughout) you would have enabled the youth either to retain the status of a gallant by saying, 'Well, I wouldn't dream of accepting it' or to accept it with- out feeling patronised, but as though going along with you in a jocular conspiracy.
Q. I don't think anyone has asked what can be done about a slow eater at a dinner- party. Is it all right to clear away the plates and leave him lagging along? If not, how can he, or even she, be hurried?
MB., Longstowe, Near Cambridge A. Why not keep a starving cat on your premises and release it into the dining- room at the necessary moment? Such cats are brazen about snatching food from wherever they can find it, and can even be introduced earlier to hurry along the type of guest who keeps pieces of food dangling on his fork for minutes at a time as he fin- ishes off what he was saying. These tardy eaters will soon learn their lessons as the cat flies into action.
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