Tipping Culture
On the financial penalty of Irish fairies.
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
I have had two lovers tell me that they wanted to take me to Ireland. This year, I took myself for the first time; the lovers were nowhere to be found.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m dreadfully American. I grew up in places marked by industrialization and plummeting economy, metallic erosion is in my joints and my bloodstream is mostly rust. I haven’t had the opportunity to travel abroad very much. I didn’t go to Dublin expecting a great anchoring of my magical self. If I didn’t feel it in Germany, Ireland wasn’t on the hook — ya know?
But the first, very jetlagged, night I was on Irish soil drinking Irish Guinness, a small voice broke through the din of the room of people:
Bare bar, bad luck.
Most psychic intervention in my experience is just a download. Of a thing you weren’t thinking before, and didn’t know before, but suddenly you know now.
I’ve never felt uncomfortable with nudity quite like the nakedness of a bar. It’s like an uncovered mirror. That voice rang in my head and I started putting Euros on as many surfaces I could find. Because a bare bar is a bad luck, and none of us needed that.
As an American, we have a very compulsive and mandatory (if you ask me, tip workers) tipping culture. We under pay service workers as a means to subjugate the working class, and it has racist origins. So I’m used to tossing dollars onto the bar and onto checks as moral retribution. I’ve worked service and friends of mine work service. When my father was terrorizing waitresses with personal stories and exhausting jokes, I was signing at 30-40% just to compensate them for something they didn’t sign on for.
But in a foreign country as I slipped a round Euro onto the bar, mortification set in. Like I was committing some social faux pas. Petitions often feel like this, like I’m in the villainy of generosity. In clothing the bar with my coins, I felt naked. Obvious. A desperate sort of transparent as I petitioned the literal spirits for good luck.
I don’t know if the spirits of Ireland were chastising me. I don’t know if they were amused to have this painfully American person drop coins on empty surfaces like a superstition. Or if they just wanted to remind me that petitioning each other is just as important as petitioning potential ghosts.
In any case, clothe your bar. Bare bars are bad luck.
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