Jingle bells? Wassailers? The yule log crackling in the inglenook? No, that’s the sound of a thousand hungry thumbs rubbing against a thousand index fingers.
The holidays are a time when guilt tipping, tipping fatigue and tipflation snowball. Who should receive a tip for what services, and how much that tip should be is less clear and more frustrating than ever.
But for the city’s most fortunate, gifting and tipping obligations run as long as Santa’s nice list — and can cost up to $50K, a well-connected Upper West Sider told The Post.
“A solid tip from a wealthy person is $1,000,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “You would tip your trainer a full month’s bonus. You would tip your dog walker a full month’s bonus. And that goes down to the newspaper delivery man, the mailman, your manicurist, your hair stylist, your chauffeur, your bodyguard, your secretaries, your staff … anybody that provides any kind of service to you.”
For Monica Elias, the CEO of her eponymous New York media and branding company, “The list grows every year.”
Elias says this season she’ll be tipping and gifting “well over 100 people” — that includes everyone from clients to the man at her club who makes sure she always has a little something to take away if she has to run to a meeting before dessert. Moreover, she adds the old-school step of hand-writing a personalized card for each person to show her gratitude.
“Some people feel the pain in their pocket,” she says. “I feel the pain in my fingers because I’m writing all these letters and notes.”
Socialite and philanthropist Jean Shafiroff estimates that there are currently at least five dozen people on her always-growing holiday tip list. Beyond the 10-person staff at her Park Avenue building, there’s the housekeepers and cleaners at her homes in South Florida and the Hamptons. Living between those locales, as many wealthy New Yorkers now do, means tipping in triplicate.
“If someone has been helping you all year — like your hairdressers, plural; because I work with different ones in [different] places — it’s a way to give back,” says Shafiroff, who typically gifts cash, champagne or Hermès scarves.
Then there are the stylists, makeup artists and fashion sales assistants who help keep her gloved and begowned for the charity gala circuit.
“For charities and the boutiques where I buy clothing, I send a box of 72 chocolates,” says Shafiroff. “But for the sales people I worked with all year at Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta, I give a money gift.”
While her children are now grown, Shafiroff says that nannies, private school teachers and the army of tutors also expect a gift and/or tip during the holidays. These days, however, the carers for her family’s two pampered pooches fill those roles.
But even Shafiroff admits that if you tipped everyone that gave you service in a year, you’d go broke.
“They reduced [interest] rates, but I think for most people the economy is terrible,” says Shafiroff. “You go into a restaurant and a piece of fish is $70. I’m not even talking about Dover sole. We’re talking about branzino.”
A 60something banker who lives in Chelsea groused about the feeling that you have to keep up with an ever-changing standard of tipping, too.
“When I went to my favorite restaurant I’d slip the maître d’ $100 and say merry Christmas. I thought that was standard fare until I learned one of my colleagues had his office ask for sweater sizes of key maître d’s in the city after Thanksgiving — and during Christmas week, he had his driver drop off cashmere Loro Piana sweaters,” the banker said.
And everyone is feeling the pinch throughout the year, adds New York power attorney Arthur Aidala.
“Not that long ago, I used to carry a bunch of $5 bills, then it went to $10 bills, then it went to $20 bills,” he said. “And in terms of people who you regularly see, like a parking lot attendant or a doorman, I think if you give them less than $50 it’s almost insulting.”
During the holidays, Aidala goes far beyond his everyday tips, handing out generous gifts to the working-class heroes in his life: cleaners, auto mechanics, parking garage attendants, delivery men and sanitation workers.
But saying “thank you” is a two-way street — and dropping G-notes all over Manhattan is the richest guarantee of another seamless year of luxury.
“The more detailed the tipping gets the better service you have for the next year,” the Upper West Sider said. “A thousand dollar tip to the maitre’d at Casa Cipriani, to Sergio at Cipriani on 59th Street, to your person at Bilboquet in Sag Harbor, to the captain of the yacht that takes you to St. Barts, to the VIP service person at the St. Regis in Aspen — these people remember this stuff. That’s why these people get the first reservations and the best tables.”
Ho, ho, ho.
Additional reporting by Lydia Moynihan
