The Worst Tip Line of All Time

Tip lines are a tricky thing. A tip line, in case you can’t figure it out, is the joke or witty comment you use to let your group know that you graciously accept tips for your work. Most jobs that are tip-based don’t need a tip line because it’s common knowledge that giving the worker a little gratuity, is the proper thing to do (think bartender, server, uber driver), but unfortunately, tour guides don’t fall into that category. Perhaps it’s because there are some tour guides who work at places where tipping isn’t allowed (these are usually prestigious places like Thomas Jefferson’s house and such). Or perhaps it’s because not enough people take tours to know that you should tip the guide at the end. 

Of course, there is another reason for a guide to use a tip line, and that is to kill off intentional ignorance. Oh yes, shockingly enough, there are those out there who will take a tour, know perfectly well that they are supposed to tip, but then walk away at the end without doing so, knowing they can get away with saying later, “Oh, was I supposed to tip the guide? I had no idea! Damn it all! If only I knew! If only tipping tour guides was as ubiquitous as tipping bartenders and servers!” 

Yes, those types of people are out there. Which is why a tour guide must always use a tip line, to fight off ignorance, both pure and fraudulent. 

As a result, a tour guide soon becomes well versed in the art of the tip line. Over the years I have used many of the go-to lines that are universally shared among guides. 

“If you enjoyed my tour tonight, please let me know by throwing a few bucks my way. If you did not enjoy the tour, please let me know by writing ‘you suck’ on a twenty dollar bill and handing it to me.”

“If you’re wondering if a tour guide accepts tips, in the words of Mark Twain… yes.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I happen to be a victim of a liberal arts degree, so any gratitude for tonight, or pity for my poor life choices, would be amazing!” 

“A lot of people assume that because they are on a ghost tour that they are guaranteed to see a ghost. But I promise all of you, if I could conjure spirits up night after night, I’ d be working in Las Vegas instead of being here night after night working for tips.” (this one obviously you would have to do at the start at your tours rather than at the end, so a lot of guides don’t use it, fearing people will forget, or “forget”, by the time the tours finished.)

And finally, the boring but standard: “Tips are very much appreciated.” 

These days I’ve found myself using that standard line, as I’ve found I’ve already been clever and witty enough throughout the tour, and now is the time just to be straight forward and let them know gratuity is appreciated. And besides, to state the obvious, no tip line- no matter how humorous- will help you if your tour sucked, nor will it kill you if your tour is amazing.

But we learn these lessons over time, don’t we?

I tell you all this to take you back to when I was still learning this lesson. Still trying out various lines to see which ones worked best for me, coming up with a good number of new ones on my own. I honestly remember very few of these “personal” tip lines, and I imagine they were all pretty lousy or uncreative. 

There was one line I used though that I still remember to this day, because it still haunts me to this day. Like most painful wounds of my past, this one was due to improv. I literally thought of this right on the spot. Oh man, I remember at the time that it was gonna get a lot of laughs (I don’t know why). But I did not receive laughs though, I received something much worse. 

Here was the line: “Thank you all for being along for this tour and being a great group. You should know that I happily accept tips… or hugs.”

Or hugs. 

That was my big idea. To add those two small words at the end. Why did I think this was a good idea? I don’t really know. Again, I came up with it off the cuff, but I think I felt in that moment that a relatively perfect stranger asking for hugs as a thank you for a tour seemed so preposterous it couldn’t help make the people laugh. They would get a good chuckle out of it and then pull out their wallets while shaking their heads and think to themselves: “Man, what a nutter this tour guide is, where does he come up with this stuff?! Hugs?? Ridiculous!” and then hand me a fiver. 

Buuuuuut… that’s not what happened. What happened was the sober people on my tour (which was about two thirds of the group, so about eighteen people) looked at me confused, as if they were sure they misheard what I had said, because why would their tour guide ask for a hug??? While the intoxicated third of the group (nine people) shouted gleeful in unison:

“Hugs?! Yeah you can get a hug!”

And then things unfolded much like a horror movie, where nine drunks came at me like a bunch of staggering zombies with their arms wide out, and before I could even react, they swarmed me on all sides, wrapping their limbs all the way around my chest, shoulders and head, squeezing me tight, so that I could smell each layer of individual B.O. and each hot stale bad breath while being manhandled. 

I can assure this is when panic set in, as even I, a man of the people in many respects, felt this was far too much physical, and intimate, contact from strangers. 

And as the panic set in, and as the drunk masses repeatedly chirped: “Hug!” I could see through this tiny window above the shoulders and past the heads, the other two thirds of my group tucking their intended tip money back into their pockets and quickly making their way down the street into darkness while I was incapacitated, feeling safe in the knowledge that I had gotten a sufficient amount of “hug gratuity”. 

I tell you, I died a little that day, and it took me a good month or so before I was ready to hug another person. Oh and tips were of course shit. God, why did I ever think that was a good idea… just why?

THE END

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