Doctors Top Worst Tipper List
DECEMBER 18, 2007
SAN DIEGO (TNA) – Doctors may give wellness tips, but they sure don’t tip well. In fact, doctors are the worst tippers of any occupation in the country, according to the results of a survey conducted by Bartender Magazine.
The survey, based on over 3,000 telephone and web participants, ranked the seven worst tippers. Following doctors are lawyers, bankers, 21 – 25 year-olds, teachers, “computer nerds,” and pipe smokers.
According to Ray Foley, publisher of Bartender Magazine, doctors consistently rank near the top of annual list. Foley, who worked for 16 years as a bartender, says that doctors always give the same excuses for lousy tipping: they didn’t make any money when they were interns, and they’re being wiped out by insurance companies.
U.S. Army Doctors search for loose change in the O.R.
“Doctors, they take care of the sick, not the servers,” states Foley. “But if you catch a doctor who used to tend bar, then you might be OK.”
Foley, however, reserves no such qualifier for lawyers, denouncing them en masse. “Lawyers are just cheap bastards,” he says. “I can’t think of any excuse for them. Can you?”
Neither the American Medical Association nor the American Bar Association returned e-mail messages and phone calls seeking comment.
Some doctors, however, are happy to explain the stinginess of their profession. Dr. Maurice Ramirez, a physician in Florida, suspects that doctors tip poorly because of a “perceived” sleight or lapse in service.
Understanding why doctors perceive poor service, however, requires more a degree in psychology than mixology.
“It would require that a bartender or waiter serve four years in medical school, and three years in residency,” Dr. Ramirez commented via e-mail, “to understand the psychopathology created in these individuals and their fragile egos.”
Dr. Ramirez also suggests that doctors are poor at math.
“The trick is to teach doctors to tip 20 percent,” he adds, “because for reasons that are an absolute mystery to those of us who teach doctors, 15 percent is beyond their math capability."
Additionally, he believes that doctors are forgetful. “They don’t intend to stiff you,” he explains, “but assume because the tip has been included on so many tickets, that it is on this one, too.”
As for teachers, Foley says, “They’re very practical … and very cheap.”
He struggles to explain, however, stinginess in pipe smokers. “I don’t get it,” he says. “Maybe they’re elitist.”
Bartenders and beauticians, according to Foley, make the best tippers. “I would love to work in a place that only had them,” he adds.
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