Darwin's Moving by Taylor Lambert

Author:Taylor Lambert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988732046
Publisher: NeWest Press
Published: 2017-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

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Tipping is, at least by technical definition, a bonus, something above and beyond the standard and expected recompense. In the food and service industry this has now become quite expected as a matter of course; not tipping at all is frowned upon as socially unacceptable. But in the moving business, tips are the exception and not the rule. For some people, tipping a mover who does a competent job is a given. I was never around on the many moving days of my childhood, but my parents tipped the men who loaded my belongings bound for Montreal, and I took that as a cue to tip the movers I hired after. Only when I started working as a mover did I discover the disparate opinions on the subject.

Some customers tip generously; others, not at all. Still others will offer us lunch or pop or occasionally beer, and consider that to be our gratuity. We once moved a Jesuit priest who gave each of his six movers two bottles of wine from his extensive collection. A few times I’ve sat down with a customer’s family for a sumptuous home-cooked meal at the end of a job.

There are those who tip us handsomely for short and simple moves, and those who simply wish us well after an eleven-hour backbreaker. In speaking with many people on the subject (not my customers), I’ve discovered that quite a lot of people didn’t even think to tip their mover. It had never occurred to them. To others, like my parents, one should always tip unless something goes terribly wrong or the movers are obviously lazy.

Some movers work for the tip, cultivating it from seed to fruit-bearing tree over the course of the day. Ricky Roy would declare to me en route to a job that he was going to get us a tip today. He would then be ludicrously personable and helpful, almost to the point of seeming annoying. Sometimes it would work, sometimes not.

Some movers think about the tip a lot. Will we get one today? What do you think? She seems nice, seems like she likes us. Personally, I never think about the tip. It quite honestly doesn’t enter into my mind during the job, and if a fellow worker raises the question, I shut it down. You cannot foretell a tip. Hoping for it could disappoint you. Wondering about it distracts you from doing your job well, which is the best route to a gratuity, after all.

The biggest tip I’ve ever received is one hundred dollars, which I’ve gotten on several occasions. Once we did a multi-day move to a mansion on an acreage near Beiseker. The massive home was a realized retirement dream of an older couple Darwin had known for many years. The husband had made his millions in the energy industry, and his wife had a minor obsession with plastic plants. The job was many days long, but I worked only two. The first day, with only Darwin and me, there was no tip.

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