Whether you’re fumbling with change on your way out of a cab or scrambling to determine how much to add to a dinner bill split four ways, tipping is often a source of great bewilderment. And with tip jars perched on checkout counters across the country, the constant hustle for our coins can inspire what Bruce McAdams, a professor at the University of Guelph’s School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, has dubbed “tipping fatigue.” Here, some crib notes for conscientious consumers looking to fend off the brain fog and do the math.
When should you tip?
These days, restaurant servers and bartenders expect tips-in many provinces, their earnings are below minimum wage to account for gratuities. Plus, these staffers are often required to divide their tips among colleagues. If you feel you’ve received poor service or a lousy meal, Ottawa-based etiquette expert Julie Blais Comeau advises voicing your concerns to a manager before nixing the tip, which can affect everyone from the server to the busboy to the line cook.
Although those tip jars for count-er service are now commonplace, there’s no need to give. “They’re like an urn of shame: the person before you puts something in, so you feel that you should, too,” says Blais Comeau.
As for takeout that you pick up? It’s not necessary-but do tip 10 per cent on delivery.
How much should you tip?
The current expectation in North American restaurants is to tip a minimum of 15 to 20 per cent on the total before taxes. In large cities, the trend is at the higher end of the spectrum and sometimes beyond, says McAdams. “In some places, 25 per cent is the new 15.”
Following a visit to the hair salon or spa, tip between 15 and 20 per cent. If more than one person has helped you, it’s appropriate to ask that the amount be shared. And if you’re taking a cab, it’s customary to tip the driver 15 to 20 per cent.
Carry cash when staying at a hotel, where you should leave $2 to $5 each day for housekeeping staff, instead of a larger amount at the end of your stay, as housekeepers work on rotation. If someone carries your bags or parks your car, tip a dollar or two each time.
When should you tip more than the standard?
Tip more if you required additional service, time or effort. If a cab driver takes you somewhere remote, give more to make up for the income lost while trying to find another customer. And when you’re paying for something with a coupon or gift certificate, leave a gratuity that coincides with the full amount you would have normally paid.
Tipping Abroad
Europe
In restaurants, a one- or two-euro tip is courteous, as is rounding up to the next euro in a cab. It’s otherwise unnecessary.
Asia
Tipping is considered rude in Chinese restaurants, unless you’re in a Western establishment. In Southeast Asia, tip 10 per cent for most services; be prepared to tip small amounts frequently in Western Asia.
South and Central America
It’s appreciated for hotel service, restaurants, cabs and tours (10 to 15 per cent). Give it directly to the person who provided the service. At an all-inclusive resort, tip at the beginning of a stay.
Australia
Servers and cab drivers value a 10 to 15 per cent gratuity.
In your new book, you write about how celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow affect how we think about our bodies.
Celebrity culture has a subtle impact on all of us, how we judge ourselves and compare ourselves to others. Someone who was a nine in prehistoric England is suddenly a five when measured against Gisele Bündchen. There was a time when the only humans you ever saw were right in front of you or in a painting. That was your whole world.
In the pursuit of science, you tried out a new skin regimen that included exfoliation gel, two types of moisturizers and a lotion to control bacteria, plus you went for a pricey spa facial.
I really liked the facial. It was a guilt-free hour and a half to relax, and there’s just enough of a clinical element to it that it doesn’t seem creepy that someone’s rubbing your face. But there’s no evidence that it’s good for your skin-some experts even think it’s bad.
Much of the book debunks health myths that have made their way into everyday life-drinking water to improve your skin, taking supplements. What should Canadians be doing instead?
It’s pretty simple. People should be adopting healthy lifestyles for their well-being, not their looks; I like to think we can change our fixation on physical appearance. Get exercise. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Sleep. Don’t smoke. There are all these forces out there that want to complicate matters and are selling products based on myths. It’s the perfect
marriage of the market and desire.
How have we all been duped? So many over-the-counter products currently available aren’t rigorously tested.
Given the size of the market, the billions and billions of dollars at play, I was surprised by the lack of good studies. There isn’t this big counterweight balancing what the beauty industry is saying. People want to believe.
To summarize a few chapters, we overestimate our own talent, we’re wired to crave attention and we believe we’re better than other people. Are there any positive take-aways?
We should be doing things for the inherent joy of doing them, not because of some unrealistic-and, in any statistical sense, unattainable-goal. If you love doing something, do it. I love sprinting. I’m not genetically inclined to be a success at it, but running is a part of my life.
As part of your research, you went to the British office of Gwyneth Paltrow’s health and lifestyle website, GOOP, to convince someone to talk. Any luck reaching the guru herself?
I tried calling her publicist and sent direct emails. Everything was ignored. I did talk to people close to her, however. They’d say, “Oh, she’d be into this for sure.” And I’d never hear back. It doesn’t take much of a Google search to realize I’m a bit of a skeptic, so maybe that’s why.
So, dish. Is Gwyneth Paltrow wrong about everything?
I’ll put it this way: maybe Gwyneth will see the book, and then she and I can have a green tea and talk over what she gets right and wrong.
Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash is available Jan. 13.
The Christmas holidays are when Jenn Wallage likes to sit down with her family to plan out the year. “We’ll pick two things we want to do each month,” says the mother of two from Waterloo, Ont.
Buoyed by the pleasure they got from crafting a summer bucket list together, Wallage decided to make New Year’s resolutions a joint affair. The idea is to set measurable goals
to ensure the months don’t slip by without making time for what matters to each family member, she says.
Creating goals showed Wallage that her nine-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter’s aspirations can be quite modest. “They wanted more time together just doing stuff like going to the park,” she says, “not necessarily trips to Disneyland.”
Simplicity is key when it comes to these objectives, says Dr. Sandra Mendlowitz, a psychologist at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. “Goals have to be attainable, because if they’re not, why set them?” she says. The downfall of the typical individually motivated New Year’s resolutions we make-to lose weight, get in shape or become more organized-is that people set “vast encompassing goals they can’t achieve.”
Part of the problem lies in our desire to cram all our efforts to change into the start of the year, says Mike Vardy, the author of The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want and a father of two from Victoria. “You’re coming off a swath of family time and the rush to get work done before the holidays-you’re at your lowest levels of energy and focus.”
In fact, a poll commissioned last year by researchers at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania showed that just eight per cent of people who had made resolutions were successful. “But if your family is a part of the process,” says Vardy, “it’s more rewarding and more likely that those resolutions will stick.”
And that is great news for kids, says Mendlowitz. “There’s significant evidence that suggests goal-setting has a positive impact on children in terms of their ability to self-regulate, their motivation and achievement.” A good objective, especially in today’s time-pressed society, she says, is to have one weeknight when everyone eats a meal and participates in an activity together.
Vardy advocates for regular tech blackouts. “Consider putting your phone on airplane mode when you’re hanging out,” he says. You can still snap pictures or check the time, but you won’t be distracted by texts, email and social media notifications.
Fitness should be top of mind for families that make goals together, says Christa Costas-Bradstreet, a physical activity specialist with ParticipAction and a mother of two teen girls. “Only five per cent of Canadian children and youth are meeting physical activity guidelines, and only 15 per cent of adults,” she says.
To help with motivation, pick fun activities. Hit the bowling alley or swimming pool, or make snowmen in the backyard, suggests Costas-Bradstreet. “If it’s a wicked cold day, go outside for 10 minutes and run through the snow. You can still do some of the things you could do in the spring-just with more appropriate clothing.”
Camille Bailey of Winnipeg shares this hilarious photo of a bathing-suit-clad snowman perched on their diving board. “We were afraid with the endless winter we were having, this guy was the only one who’d be using the pool,” writes Camille.
Send in your funny one-liners through the comments below or here (please identify it is an entry for Caption Corner)!
Mary Gavrelets of Amherstburg, Ont., writes, “While cleaning out the collection of stuff in her basement, my sister, Sharon, found this tool. We have no idea what it could be used for and are hoping your readers can help identify it. The scoop part is made of metal with a three-foot-long wooden handle attached.”
Submit your answers in the comments below or here (please identify it is an entry for What Is It).
Saturated fat – it adds creaminess to cheese and greasiness to bacon. Lately it’s also been the key ingredient in a controversial debate. For decades, doctors and medical organizations have viewed saturated fat as the raw material for a heart attack and advised strictly limiting it. But newer research has some experts questioning whether we’ve convicted the wrong criminal.
As books and headlines embrace red meat and dairy – a June Time magazine cover even implored us to “Eat Butter” – Americans are left to wonder whether everything they thought they knew about nutrition was wrong. Should we make more room at the table for saturated fat?
What You’ve Heard
The theory that saturated fat can lead to heart disease picked up steam in the late 1950s, when a multicountry study found that heart trouble was much more common in places where people ate a lot of red meat and dairy. By 1980, the first government dietary guidelines urged Americans to cut back on saturated fat and cholesterol by limiting cream, butter, eggs, deep-fried food, and fatty cuts of red meat.
In some circles, the message hasn’t changed much. “Saturated fat is definitely bad for you,” says Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition sciences at Pennsylvania State University. “It raises LDL cholesterol, and cholesterol raises the risk of heart disease.” The latest American Heart Association guidelines recommend that people consume 5 to 6 percent of calories from saturated fat. If you eat 2,000 calories a day, that’s about 13 grams a day, or just a little more than you’d get from one Big Mac.
But Not So Fast …
More recent evidence suggests that saturated fat may not be as bad as previously thought. In the mid-1990s, a Harvard study of more than 40,000 middle-aged men found that those who ate the most saturated fat were 20 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than those who ate the least, but researchers chalked up much of that extra risk to a lack of fiber in high-fat diets. Earlier this year, a much-publicized paper in Annals of Internal Medicine, which combined the results of 76 previous dietary studies, found no sign that people who reported eating a lot of saturated fat were more likely than anyone else to suffer from heart disease. “Current evidence does not clearly support” cutting back on saturated fat to protect the heart, the authors said.
Saturated fat can boost levels of LDL cholesterol, but those bits of cholesterol tend to be big and floppy, says Peter Attia, MD, president and director of the San Diego-based Nutrition Science Initiative, a nutrition and obesity research center. This is important because it appears that small, hard cholesterol particles – the kind not associated with saturated fat – are more likely to clog arteries. (Genetics plays a big part in the size of cholesterol particles. And ironically, some research indicates that a low-fat, high-carb diet may contribute to this kind of cholesterol pattern in people who are genetically predisposed.)
But it’s still not time to break out the bacon, says David Katz, MD, founder and director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. The Annals study didn’t mean much, he says, because many of the study subjects who cut out saturated fat replaced those calories with sugar and carbs. In other words, the study found that eating a lot of saturated fat is as bad as eating a lot of carbs and sugar – not that saturated fat is good for you.
Fat is too complicated for easy answers, Dr. Katz says. Saturated fat comes in many different varieties, even within the same cut of meat. For example, red meat contains both stearic acid, which is likely harmless, and palmitic acid, which does seem to be dangerous – it promotes inflammation, a major driver of heart disease and many other ailments.
The Bottom Line
Experts aren’t ready to rewrite the saturated fat rules yet. Red meat and butter can be part of a healthy diet, but not if you eat them with abandon. Today’s most relevant nutrition lessons come from the Lyon Diet Heart Study, a landmark investigation from the 1990s that still sets the standard for dietary research, Dr. Katz says.
The randomized trial found that switching from a high-fat northern-European diet to a Mediterranean-style diet for nearly four years cut the risk of heart trouble by up to 70 percent. People were told to eat more vegetables with at least one serving of fruit every day. They replaced most red meat with fish or poultry and did away with butter and cream, instead using a spread similar to olive oil. “Your diet should emphasize vegetables, fruits, and whole grains,” Dr. Katz says. “If you want to add fat, do it with salmon, nuts, and seeds, with or without some lean red meat and dairy. Such a diet would either be low in fat or high in unsaturated fat. Either way, you’d be fine.”
James Dalen, MD, dean emeritus of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, doesn’t believe in strict guidelines that call for people to get a certain percentage of calories from fat or saturated fat. “We don’t need to make things so complicated,” he says. “Shop around the edges of the grocery store: the produce aisle, the meat and fish counter, the bakery for its whole grains. The center of the grocery store is where our diet has really changed over the years.”
We parents work so hard to relay the historical and spiritual import of religious holidays. No, we explain, Hanukkah is not primarily about gift giving; it’s about a long-ago freedom struggle. The eight-day winter holiday celebrates the successful resistance of the Jews against King Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria and the restoration of the Second Temple 21 centuries ago. All our traditions – from lighting the menorah to frying the potato pancakes called latkes to spinning a top in the game of dreidel – contribute to the commemoration of these events.
Unfortunately, the Hanukkah observance that has stayed with my children as the most significant of their childhoods has nothing to do with religious freedom. One night in the 1990s, we tidied up wrapping paper and toys in the den while the lit menorah stood on the kitchen table. In our absence, as the many-colored candles snapped and dripped, our long-haired black-and-white cat, Ladybug, hopped onto the kitchen table and brushed past them.
“Do you smell something?” asked my husband, Donny.
“Is something burning?” asked Molly, our oldest, age ten.
It was Ladybug! The fur on her left flank had been singed down to the skin. She wasn’t hurt, but she wore a peeved expression all evening, and for the rest of the week she hid whenever we began chanting the Hebrew blessings over the candles. Though her fur grew out as thick as ever, Ladybug took a dim view of Hanukkah after that, clearly preferring less flammable holidays, like Labor Day.
The following year, for a fifth-grade assignment about family traditions, Molly wrote about Ladybug’s encounter with the Hanukkah candles. The teacher, Lynn Fink, a sporty and funny woman, enjoyed Molly’s story and gave it an A.
Three years later, Seth got Ms. Fink for fifth grade. He also worked the scorching of cat fur into a writing assignment, and he, too, got an A.
Ditto our son Lee, three years later: same teacher, same story, same A. We had no idea these retellings were piling up.
The year Lily got Ms. Fink for fifth grade, she also felt inspired to pen an account of the night of a feline afire. By now, we were very fond of Ms. Fink. We invited her to join us for a night of Hanukkah. It was her first time to experience the Jewish holiday. Happily, she ate her latkes with sour cream and applesauce. Gamely, she spun the dreidel. Delightedly, she opened the small gift of homemade cookies the children had prepared for her. As the evening seemed to be winding down, she clapped her hands, rubbed them together as if before a banquet, and exclaimed, “So! When do we torch the cat?”
Melissa Fay Greene’s new book, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, is about her family of nine children: four by birth and five adopted at older ages from orphanages abroad. She is a two-time National Book Award finalist.
Twenty-eight years ago, when I was a young man in New York City, I had no Christmas spirit. I wasn’t a humbug or a bad person. I didn’t hate Christmas. But I was like many people: too busy to really celebrate it. Too determined. I wanted so badly to be a Broadway actor that I didn’t have time for anything else. Every morning, I woke up at 5 a.m., bought a loaf of day-old bread at Penn Station, and lined up at the actor’s union near Times Square with a thousand other people in hopes of landing an audition for three or four available parts. That was my job, every day, for three years-even at Christmas.
And then I was chosen for a part. A great part. I was chosen for one of the greatest parts in the history of Christmas: Ebenezer Scrooge. And it was in a big, wonderful show called the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
I also had to play one scene as Santa Claus-the worst possible part, I thought, because Santa was so … good. So boring. But that was OK. I was so happy, I ran all the way back to my apartment and yelled to no one in particular, because I was living in a tiny room and sleeping on a single mattress with all my possessions in a milk crate: “I made it! I’m somebody! I’m Ebenezer Scrooge!”
I worked on my Scrooge. I scoffed. I raged. I felt fear when the ghosts came, and anger, and relief, and sadness, and regret. Near the end of the show, when Scrooge begs the Ghost of Christmas Future for another chance, I got down on my knees, and I cried real tears. When I was growing up, my father was an alcoholic, and my mother cried herself to sleep every night. Until that moment, I had never admitted to myself how hurt and angry and powerless that made me feel. I guess I wanted that second chance too.
But nobody cared. Don’t get me wrong. Critics loved the show, and the audience cheered, but nobody ever wanted to come backstage to meet Ebenezer Scrooge. No, they wanted to talk to Santa Claus.
Ebenezer Scrooge was just a character. As soon as I walked off the stage, he was gone. But Santa: He was real. It didn’t matter if he was in the play for only a few minutes or a few scenes, like he was the following year. People knew Santa Claus. He was part of their lives. And they loved him.
I’m not talking about just children. Parents would gasp when they saw me in my costume. Strangers would smile. One time, a news reporter broke down in tears when I walked into the studio. “I can’t believe I’m talking to Santa Claus,” she said.
Another time, a friend asked if her son-in-law could meet me. He’d been wounded in Iraq. (This was later, after I’d been playing Santa for 20 years.) When the young man arrived, he had a huge scar on the side of his head. His wife had to hold him steady as he struggled through the door. But when he saw me, the soldier took three huge steps and, without a word, hugged me so tight, and for so long, that I almost couldn’t breathe. That time, I was the one who cried.
I thought, He knows I’m not the real Santa, right? It dawned on me only later that maybe, in those moments, I really was Santa after all.
I know, I know. That sounds crazy, right? But it’s true. Scrooge was written out of the Christmas Spectacular after only four years, but I’ve been Santa Claus for almost three decades and more than 4,000 performances, and spending that much time as someone changes you. When you love a person, you can become that person and see the world the way he or she sees it. It happened to me during a show, when the stage curtain malfunctioned, and I had to improvise for an audience of 6,000 people. Suddenly, I found myself sitting with one little girl and talking with her about her life and asking her not just what was on her list but what she truly wanted for Christmas.
It also happened one cold winter day when I was out on the street in my normal clothes, just Charlie Hall, and saw an older woman slip and fall on some ice. Before I knew what was happening, I’d helped her up and offered to take her wherever she wanted to go. I noticed only afterward that she was probably homeless and that she needed my help more than I had realized. She took me to a church.
As I was taking off my beard one night, I said to my stage manager, “I wish I could wear this Santa suit all the time. If I did, I could never be angry or mean. I’d be a better person every day.”
It was only a passing thought, but it has stuck with me ever since. Santa Claus is the best part of me. He’s not just the role I play; he’s my role model. Scrooge may have unlocked the pain of my childhood, but Santa opened my heart to something better: a childlike wonder. He showed me goodness and joy. He said, “Look at the world, Charlie. Really look at it. And smile. Because there’s magic all around you. All you have to do is believe.”
Twenty-eight years ago, I wanted so badly to be successful. I wanted to win Tony Awards and play important parts. I wanted to be rich and famous, sure, but more than that, I wanted to be admired for my work. I wanted to be good-but not good in the moral sense. I wanted to be good at my job.
I wanted to be Scrooge because Scrooge was interesting. Ebenezer Scrooge, I thought, would make me a better actor.
Instead, Santa Claus made me a better man.
Charles Edward Hall has been Santa Claus in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular since 1987. His first book, Santa Claus Is for Real: A True Christmas Fable About the Magic of Believing, a family-friendly fictional version of a year at the show (featuring the real Santa!), is on sale now.
Photographer Carli Davidson
Here is Davidson, busy at a typical hard day’s work. She found her models through owners, pet rescue organizations, and responsible breeders. All together, she photographed roughly 100 mini-hounds and published the pix of around 70.
Shake Puppies is the follow-up to Carli Davidson’s popular 2013 book Shake, which focused more on grown-up dogs. She is in the thick of planning the third book of her Shake trilogy, although she’s not disclosing what the take will be this time. Shake Kittens? Shake Bunnies? Shake Puppies, Kittens, and Bunnies? We can’t wait.
Nine years ago, Harvard University psychologist Richard Weissbourd noticed a disconnect. Conversations he’d had with parents across a range of cultures indicated that they prioritized caring and compassion in their kids above other virtues such as achievement. But Weissbourd was hearing otherwise from many of the kids themselves. “A lot of kids weren’t really focused on the common good or caring for other people,” he says.
Nearly a decade of exhaustive data gathering later, Weissbourd and his colleagues discovered that whatever parents may say their priorities are, most kids aren’t getting the message. In the Harvard group’s survey of more than 10,000 middle- and high-school-aged American youth, published this year, approximately 80 per cent said their parents were more concerned with achievement or happiness than caring for others. Luckily, experts say it’s easy to cultivate caring in yourself and others. Here’s how to do it.
Shift the Conversation
Pushing kids to get good grades is practically encoded into parental DNA, and it’s hard to believe urging children to pursue their own happiness could be bad. “We’re all for achievement and happiness,” says Weissbourd. “I’m just concerned we’re out of balance.” Try telling your kids it makes you happy to see a stellar report card but even happier to know when they have done something kind.
Consider the Small Cues
Caring and kindness should be baked into family life-kids should be expected to set the table and do the dishes. “You don’t need to praise those things,” Weissbourd says. Yet the right kind of feedback-praising the uncommon good deed-can have lasting influence. Instead of thanking your teenager for watching her little brother, try telling her you’re proud of her efforts to befriend a lonely student at school or going out of her way to help your neighbours shovel out their car after a storm.
“The research shows that when you give kids statements about their character-that you’re doing this because you’re a caring person and that’s how I see you-then that’s more likely to become part of their identity,” says Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, an applied developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia.
And the Big Cues, Too
It might seem obvious, but studies have shown that parents who model pro-social behaviour-that is, the opposite of anti-social behaviour-are much more likely to raise kids with the same positive values. “Families that help poor people, cook Christmas dinner for the homeless or undertake any of these ‘pitching in and doing it’ activities will help kids learn to be concerned for others,” says Joan Grusec, professor emerita of psychology at the University of Toronto. Make time for empathetic pursuits, and your kids will, too.
Follow Up
Find out whether your methods are working by asking for a second opinion. “Parents go to parent-teacher conferences, and the whole conversation is about academic achievement. Often, the teacher doesn’t say anything about whether the kid is a good citizen, a good person, fair, has high integrity,” says Weissbourd. Parents should ask; teachers should tell, prompted or not.
Getting Results
And just in case the nagging voice in your head is concerned that your child’s achievement levels or personal happiness will slip if they prioritize others, emphasizing caring often improves both. Schonert-Reichl’s research shows that children who were instructed to perform three acts of kindness a week reported increases in peer acceptance, which is strongly linked to both happiness and academic performance. Research shows that positive interaction with peers is an important predictor of career success, in part because social networking and collaborative work play a huge role in career advancement.
Most surprisingly, research from the United States and Canada shows that volunteering is correlated with a host of health benefits-including decreased depression, hypertension and cardiovascular risk-and that elderly adults who volunteer have 63 per cent lower mortality than non-volunteers.
Some groups, such as girls with underdeveloped self-esteem or children from immigrant families who are deeply involved in caring for relatives, warrant special attention and also need to learn to assert themselves. But for most kids, it’s never too early or too late to start encouraging these behaviours. Research from Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center indicates that infants can differentiate right from wrong, and even toddlers have the capacity for altruism. Teenagers, who often seem self-absorbed, have a highly developed sense of injustice that can be leveraged for good, Weissbourd says. “We’re saying you can achieve, be happy and be caring all at the same time.”
