If you think a woman might be pregnant, give her your seat. If you’ve made a mistake, it won’t matter. After all, she’ll never know why you gave up your seat, and if she’s got any sense she’ll be glad to get one even if slightly insulted.
If you badly need a seat and nobody is offering, ask. Of course it would be nicer to be offered, but at least, if the results of that experiment are anything to go by, you’re quite certain of success.
On the whole we should give up our seats more often.
Are children never to give up their seats on public transport? They should not be pitched out, old-style, just because they are children. But if an entire family is seated and an elderly person is standing, does it not make sense for one of the children to relinquish its seat? Being smaller and younger, are they not better suited to standing? Can’t very small children share? Isn’t this often what they are doing anyway? Or running around not even occupying ‘their’ seats?
Not satisfied
Mrs Gibbs went once with her nephew to Sorrento. ‘I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t like his room in the hotel so he asked for another. I’d never have dared.’ This is the traditional British ‘don’t make a fuss’ approach taken to extremes. But Matt, almost half Mrs Gibbs’s age, isn’t much better. ‘I don’t like complaining,’ he says. He tells a story of getting one of those bargain first class deals on Eurostar and a ‘ludicrous woman’ who made a terrible fuss because the attendant allowed someone to sit in her seat while she was in the bar. ‘She was away for hours and everyone thought she’d got off. When she came back the person gave her her seat back immediately but still she had to complain. She kept on saying over and over again, “It’s not what you expect in first class.” The whole point was to tell everyone that she was in first class but we all knew that because we were there too. My wife Lucy thought it was very funny but I wished the woman would belt up.’
Zoe, on the other hand, is an unhesitant complainer and really rather good at it.
If you have reason to be dissatisfied, you should complain. You are paying after all.
If you complain in a public place, such as a hotel lobby, a railway carriage or a restaurant, you will almost certainly have an audience although you might not know it. People nearby will be listening in.
For this reason a lot of people take a huge amount of trouble – staging their complaints as if they were giving a presentation at work or reprimanding an employee in the modern manner, i.e. constructively, with huge emphasis on the positive, suggestions for the future etc. On the whole this is a good thing, but be careful you’re not making a mountain out of a molehill. There’s no need to spend ten elaborate minutes going through all the strong points of your hotel room as a prelude to asking if the bedside lamp could be fixed.
Tipping
‘Why do we have to have tipping?’ says Zoe, for whom the occasional taxi is quite expensive enough. She’s right, of course. It’s patronising and drives everyone into a frenzy of indignation and anxiety – who to tip? How much? Why?
In theory, a tip is given for personal services beyond the call of duty. It is supposed to be freely given. In practice, punters compensate for meagre salaries and if they don’t they’re punished in ways too terrifying to think about.
Tipping gives unfair advantages. Very rich people ensure good service by wisely distributing £50 notes on arrival in hotels and restaurants.
There is no rationale to tipping. You wouldn’t think of tipping the person at Tesco’s who helps you find the frozen peas.
The whole thing stinks. In Iceland tipping is outlawed.
But we are lumbered with it.
Black-cab drivers in London are tipped 10 per cent – a practice which should have been discontinued long ago. They earn good money. They don’t need a tip.
The custom of tipping has never taken root in the minicab world. You agree a price at the start of the journey and that’s it. Don’t for goodness’ sake start tipping minicab drivers.
Restaurants usually add a 12.5 per cent service charge. This isn’t a tip but an extra charge although you can withhold it. Only do this if you are absolutely sure the poor service was the waiter’s fault. Most people feel sorry for waiters since they are poorly paid.
If you pay the service charge it is not necessary to leave any further tip.
Some people tip hairdressers. This is absurd. Nowadays hairdressers are glamorous professionals. You wouldn’t tip your child’s teacher or your lawyer, so why tip the hairdresser?
Porters in hotels have to be tipped for carrying your suitcases to your room – annoying when you have just arrived and only have a 100-euro note. The usual tip is a couple of pounds or euros.
If someone has provided really exceptional service over a long period (a waiter, hotel staff, a coach driver or builder perhaps), it would be far more personal and less patronising to give them a present. At one time ‘grateful patients’ used to give their doctors expensive presents. Lawyers too would often get cases of wine or cigars. But now everybody hates doctors and lawyers. If you were really grateful, you could lavish something choice upon them (see – Presents: It’s the thought that counts, page 222).
At the leisure centre or gym
Mrs Gibbs gave up the public swimming pool in her midseventies because she was afraid of being mown down in the water. Matt and Zoe are both dilatory attenders at gyms. Matt only goes when he has to stay down in London for the evening for some reason; otherwise he is rushing back to his wife and children in Peterborough. Besides, he complains that his gym is full of ‘rather aggressive types’. We know what he means: usually men, scowling, banging away at the machines, breathing in and out in a noisy and conspicuously efficient way, allowing others to have a go with bad grace. Some of them never put the free weights back in the right place and, sweating being a proud feature, leave horrible sweat patches all over the machines. At Zoe’s council-run gym, women-only evenings have been introduced to counteract this problem. Not that this entirely suits her, since she sees the gym as a good opportunity to meet men and indeed has come across a number of boyfriends in this way.
Gyms and swimming pools are social places; many of them are indeed clubs.
If your idea is to be ‘totally focused’ on your own fitness programme and to resent any ‘distractions’, perhaps you should take up some solitary form of exercise such as round-the-world yachting.
It is not unreasonable to assume that members of the same gym will smile at each other and exchange the odd friendly word.
Allow others to use a machine while you rest between sets – this is called ‘working in’.
Don’t ‘reserve’ a machine by putting a towel on the seat before wandering off for a prolonged chat with someone on the other side of the room.
Put equipment back in the right place and wipe down machines after you’ve used them.
A great deal of ‘picking up’ and ‘chatting up’ goes on in gyms (as it does in libraries). Disapproving of this is priggish and pointless – what else would anyone expect when a lot of youngish people with few clothes on are working up a sweat together?
If you have to turn somebody down, try to nice about it (see Chatting up, dating, turning down, page 186).
A gym is one of the few places where straight men may gaze at themselves in the mirror without risk of being mistaken for gay – not that gay men would ever waste time in that way, of course.