All good points. The neighborhood is suburban but near a major hospital. Lots of medical buildings each with their own parking lot. If I park in a lot nearby I run the risk of getting towed since I'm not visiting one of their offices.

The landlord may not be the primary a****** here but it's their building and it's ultimately up to them to fix it. They could have forced the tenant out but instead they chose to deal with it by putting a valet stand where there wasn't one before. A better solution would be to offer complimentary valet parking to the telemarketing employees or given them a free shuttle to park somewhere offsite, but instead they solved the issue this way.

And yeah, I'll definitely mention that I find it all very inconvenient the next time I speak to my physician's office. I don't know how many complaints they've received from other patients or if they've ever said anything to building management.

If you just now started seeing that doctor you'd never know the difference. Don't take it out on the valet.

Clearly you should ask the doctor to reimburse your tip, and if he refuses you should find a new doctor until he relocates to a building with free self parking.

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I would tip the valet in this situation but I don't think it is that bad if you don't tip.

I assume the landlord forced the call center to pay for the valets since they deceived him.

They might also be able to solve the issue via signage letting people know that the valet is truly complimentary like I've seen with Uber, grocery stores, and some casual dining places (e.g., "Please do not tip our employees. Your satisfaction is reward enough.").

It's completely inappropiate for these guys to give you this advice. Moreover, 5k is totally out of line with the normal amount most players, including professionals would give. Pressuring someone to tip thousands more than they might under different circumstances, and when they have a relationship with the dealers is completely unethical. Maybe they really didn't know better in which case you can overlook it, otherwise they are probably scumbags.

Totally fine. Its an unwanted service and not a setting you should expect to valet ahead of time. Cars can be stolen from/damaged during valet. Even if they just move your seat it can be a hassle.

This wouldn't happen to be near Baptist Hospital in Miami, would it? Because this is the absolute 100% identical situation to where my elderly father's cardiac surgeon is located.

Absolutely. It's not the valet's fault that you used to be able to self-park for free. Your position is as idiotic as people in LV saying they aren't going to tip anymore because casinos now charge for parking.

Again, the answer is yes. How would you feel if your casino raised the rake by $1/hand so all the players decided that they weren't going to tip dealers any longer. Actually, the players' reasoning would at least have some basis in logic; you are just being completely illogical.

Absolutely not! In fact, the landlord is being extraordinarily compassionate. He is under no obligation to pay a company to provide free valet service for your doctor's patients. He could have set this up where you'd be forced to pay a fee to valet your car if you wanted to be able to park in the lot rather than paying that fee for you. All you are being asked to do is behave like a normal, rational human being and tip the minimum-wage earning valet driver as would normally be expected when you avail yourself of such a service.

Ask me this question via private email/message if you like.



The difference is that it's not like the valets were always there and I used to tip them, but now I'm trying to justify not tipping them.



This analogy would work better if I had a history of always valet parking and tipping these guys and then I decided to stop tipping them because my insurance company increased the amount of my copay.



Actually, I don't know what the doctor's lease looks like but I'll bet that when he moved into the building that there was a written expectation included that his patients would have the ability to park in the lot. I'm not ready to call the landlord "extraordinarily compassionate" just yet. If other tenants start losing business over the parking situation that could be a real problem for the landlord.

No, that's okay; it's not that important. It's just that I thought it would be an incredible coincidence. I can understand you wanting to keep your private life private, which is why I tried to be a bit circumspect in my description of the location rather than giving an exact address. But there's no need to pursue this further.


It doesn't matter whether they were there before or not. They are there now and they're providing a service to you, whether you appreciate it or not. It would be similar to you checking into a hotel that had no self parking and charged you to valet. If you're driving to the hotel you have no choice in the matter (just as you now have no choice when you drive to your doctor's office). Having to mandatorily valet your car does not obviate the societal expectation that you tip the valet driver.

My take on bolt's situation:
Tip them if you can afford to, don't tip if you can't.

Hmm my take on bolt's situation - if the landlord is providing valet to overcome one tenant who takes up all the parking then the landlord should pay a good wage to the valets and put up a sign saying that tipping is not expected. If the landlord provides valet but expects people to tip then the landlord is essentially asking patrons of businesses in the building to subsidize the one tenant who takes all the parking.

Of course if it's in an area where paid parking is the norm that changes things. If in the next building over you'd pay to park then tipping a "free" valet wouldn't bother me.

I feel like you've nailed it, PSU. This is not the sort of neighborhood that has paid parking and/or valet service at any of the other buildings in the area.

I'd park next door or across the street and just walk to my building but then I'd risk getting towed. And there's no reason for a building's parking to suffer because of some tenant across the street anyhow.

Yeah. I don't think you should feel obligated to tip for a service that you are essentially being forced to use.

Like a poker dealer when you'd be happier playing in self-dealt games?

Like a bartender when you'd be happy opening your own beer?

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If you don't want to tip a bartender for opening your beer you can go to a grocery store or gas station. If OP wants to see his doctor he has no way of avoiding the valet.

I don't really like that logic either.

If you're at a casino playing poker, it's not reasonable to say you should have drank beforehand or can drink afterwards if you don't want to tip.

The idea is we're paying for the "service", in addition to purchase of the product (the beer). But what if we just want to buy the product without the service? If you want to drink at a casino you have no way of avoiding the bartender, there's no self-service option -- so the situation is still being "monopolized".

Same with poker dealers. If you want to play legal poker in most places, you have to be in a licensed casino, where they don't offer self-dealt games.

Indeed.

So if you're going to use the logic that we used to arrive of "its ok to not tip the valet", then you must accept that it's ok to not tip the bartender or the dealer

Alright, let's take this logical absolute as far as we can.

What if my employer puts valet parking in at the employee parking lot and no longer lets me park my own car? Am I to tip that valet for this service? Or are my only options to either give up an extra $10/week in tipping a valet, to find a new place of employment, or to start riding my bicycle to work?

What would you do YGOchamp, if this happened at your place of work?

Or if your employer put a washroom attendant in the men's room at your office who was diligent about giving you a clean paper towel and offering you a mint every time you washed your hands? Would you start tipping that guy 2-3 times/day?

Maybe you live in a high rise apartment. What would you do if the landlord put an elevator attendant in place who would press hold the elevator door open for you and press your floor for you? Are you going to give that guy a buck 2-3 times a day? Or start taking the stairs? Or move to a new building?

Are you submitting that because we accept tipping in certain circumstances (e.g. bartenders, waiters, and poker dealers) that wherever a tip could possibly be called for, we're obligated to fall in line or else label ourselves hypocrites?

I mean, I tip bartenders and waitresses, and also food delivery drivers and the guy who cuts my hair, but those are all for services that I'm voluntarily requesting or at least implicitly agreeing to. Isn't that distinction worth something?

Let's ignore this being a philosophical question and ask a more practical one. How ****ing often are you going to the doctor? Just fork up a couple bucks or don't.

I think you're misunderstanding my position....

I actually think the tipping economy is ludicrous, and there's a reason many other industrialized countries don't adhere to it. However, because it exists, I'm not going to be "that guy" who stiffs the dealer, so I cough up 5-10k in tips per year. While I do tip when I go to restaurants, I try to minimize it (I'm rather low maintenance, I'm there to pay for the food, not the service of waiters -- if I were a needy customer who required more service then I might be more inclined to tip a higher %, but I am not)

My point was that everybody seemed to agree that in your situation you shouldn't be obligated to tip, well using the same logic people need to understand we're actually not obligated to tip in most instances where it's "expected".

Waiters, bartenders, food delivery drivers -- sure, I'll throw them a few bucks because I understand they make $3/hour and this is their sole hourly wage, even though I don't agree with the fact that the burden of paying them is on us, I do it anyway. Again, I do tip because I can afford to, however I don't agree with the tipping economy and if I was doing poorly financially I would not feel bad cutting tips out of my expenses.

I don't agree that the distinction should be "services that we're requesting". I'm told that my haircut costs $30, why is it wrong if I /ONLY/ pay the $30? I suppose it's different in the context of working for a salon as opposed to going to an independent stylist who keeps the entire $30. My point is, the tip shouldn't act as an incentive to do a good job, the cost of the service should be incentive enough. And if you do a poor job, I'm simply not coming back. The same could be said for massages -- I'm already paying $60/hour, it's pretty silly that I should be expected to pay an additional $10-20 for "doing a good job". I expect quality service when I pay premium prices to begin with. I don't think that's unreasonable of me.

I don't know if you appreciate just how funny your post is, but you cheered me up. Let's ignore the philosophical question? This is the 2+2 Tipping Containment Thread! 99% of the posts are philosophical gas-bags. Maybe 1% are "other".

If someone said, "Funny thing happened at the poker table last night... I meant to tip the dealer a $1 chip but I had a few too many drinks and I accidentally threw him a $25 chip.... Ha!" Then that might be the 1 in 100 posts that aren't philosophical.

Practically, I could afford to go to the doctor Monday through Friday, year-round, and pay $2 to have my car valeted without grossly affecting my lifestyle.

Even more practically, I go to the doctor 2 or 3 times a year. I'm good about making it for my annual physical, so that's at least 1x per year, and when I feel myself getting sick I'd rather get a prescription for antibiotics than tough it out, so that's probably another 1x per year.

After reading your post, I probably did misunderstand your position. But you're probably misunderstanding mine. It's not "services we're requesting" that irks me. It's the randomness and out-of-place-ness that irks me. Why this particular building in a neighborhood with no other valet parking?

Here's a poker analogy that actually does work (I hope).

You like to play poker and you live in a remote part of the country where there's only one large casino. And there's no home games or internet service in this part of the country, so your only option for playing poker is to go to this casino. And it's a 90 minute drive just to get there.

The games are self-dealt, and you like it that way. You're old school. You get to shuffle the cards and everyone figures out the side pots and string bets together.

There is a brush stand, however, and when you first walk in, they tell you which table you can go play at that day. And on one particular day, they send you to table #11, and there's a professional dealer there. He's dealing all of the hands and he has a tip box and a lot of the other players at your table are tipping him when they win a pot.

But you don't even want to be at this table. You like it when the players pass the deal on every hand. None of the other tables in the room have a full time dealer. What's so special about table 11?

You go to the brush stand and ask for a transfer. "Nope, you have to play at table 11 today. No transfers."

Do you just suck it up and tip the dealer in that situation?