The Lighthouse Keeper
BY DANIEL W. DRAKE ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

SERVICE NEAR AND FAR

As the season approaches, the "tip tax" becomes more visible in Nantucket. In many stores, front and center, near the cash register, is a container with some sort of label on it that requests either directly or indirectly, that the patron ante up for service. Under the watchful eye of the cashier, the very presence of the tip jar makes the customer feel guilty if he or she does not add a least a sou to the jar's contents.

Unlike a restaurant, where one spends some time over a meal and, at least theoretically, the tip reflects inter alia the attentiveness and care of the servers, tipping when one buys a cup of coffee to go or, yes, for the likes of a newspaper, is beyond the experience of most people. This leads to all sorts of quick mental gymnastics on the customer's part. "Does the purchase warrant a tip? What is the service I have gotten?" More importantly, "What are these people going to think of me if I don't leave a tip?" And then the tie-breaker, "Will they ever let me back in here if I don't drop some money in the jar?"

After due consideration of these questions and making a snap decision that it is better to give than be shunned, the patron must then decide how much to give. Again, emotion plays a lot more of a role in this than common sense. The coffee is $1.75. Twenty percent (a random number) of that is 35 cents.

The reasoning continues, "But I only have the quarter I got back in change from my bills. I don't have any other coins. Is a quarter enough? Will they put strychnine in my coffee next time if I only leave a quarter? Why is the jar filled with dollar bills? Why should I tip? The coffee is in a disposable cup; it was practically thrown at me. No one has to clear off the table or wash the dishes. Making coffee isn't nearly as difficult or time consuming as making hollandaise sauce or a BLT. But these people are nice, even when they are throwing full coffee cups, and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I certainly don't want them to think badly of me." …and so on.

What happens? Another dollar bill goes in the jar and the customer beats a hasty retreat, reflecting that a $1.75 cup of coffee has just cost $2.75, but confident that, on the next visit, the red carpet will be out. (The 57 percent tip rate in this example is, it is worth noting, a great deal higher than the highest income tax rate anyone currently pays. The only difference is that the tip tax is voluntary - sort of.)

This renewed awareness of the tip jar comes at a bad time. It's a good thing that the big multinational corporations don't put out tip jars, because they would be empty, After this past week, I would be tempted, if I saw one, to take out anything that was in there.

First, there was the overseas telephone call. I dialed and, in return, got the dreaded beep-beep beep followed by the mechanical "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again." Since this was a number I had called numerous times, the message got a little old after the fifth try. So I changed lines and tried again. Same result.

After wading through the AT&T Web site, trying to figure out how to telephone for assistance, I ended up speaking with someone in a faraway land who insisted on calling me by several variations of my first name and finally announced that everything was fine at the AT&T end. Verizon must be blocking my calls.

Verizon's office, of course, was closed and my emailed request through the Web site received an auto-response that I would hear back in 24 hours. (In faraway places that means 72 hours.) Eventually, I reached Verizon by phone and was told, with absolute certainty, by two separate people - because I was cut off before I finished with the first one - that Verizon was not blocking my calls.

A return call to AT&T to report the impasse yielded, successively, another rep in that faraway land, then a supervisor who sounded about halfway between, and, finally, a home-grown, technical specialist with a southern drawl. The last asked me to repeat, as I had numerous times over at least two hours of dialing, waiting and conversations, the number I had been calling. When I gave her the country code, she said, "Are you calling Zurich? The city code for Zurich has changed and as of May 1, there is no longer an automatic rollover." Who knew? I wanted to kiss her for putting me out of my misery, but if there had been a tip jar out, I wouldn't have left a thing, because the gratuity would have been shared with all the others. No tip for AT&T.

The postal rate change resulted in a similar discussion with Pitney Bowes. The instructions of how to change the default setting from 39 cents to 41 cents left out a key step. A call to the same faraway place, or at least one of its neighbors, resulted in my being asked my name three (before I lost count) times and there was enough background noise on the other end of the line to obliterate any conversation. However, eventually, solving one problem led to another. After some searching, I found online instructions on how to resolve the second problem. The difficulty with that was I had to run back and forth between my computer and the postage meter as I went through each step of the process. No tip for Pitney Bowes.

Finally, the phone line in the office that carries our DSL internet connection went down. Verizon deserves some credit for having improved its responsiveness to small business customers. Nonetheless, I was given the usual treatment; basically the problem is not Verizon's fault until proven otherwise. I was told that my line tested fine and the difficulty must be internal. I was then told to plug a phone into the computer line jack to see if there was a dial tone, or, better yet, into the line at the service box outside the building.

Guess what? Fancy phones don't work for such purposes. I carried the fax machine outside into the alleyway, hoping no one would see me. That, too, didn't function because the device needed power for the phone to operate. So I had to go out and buy a simple phone to test the line. Guess again? There was no dial tone at the service box. It was a Verizon problem all the way! No tip for Verizon; not when I spent more than an hour confirming that it was their problem - as is often the case.

Tip tax? Whatever! Happily, it's time to buy another cup of coffee and today's newspaper before I start, once again, to deal with "customer

service." I

The "Lighthouse Keeper" reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the editorial position of The Nantucket Independent. Please send any ideas or comments to drake@nantucketindependent. com.