Square Employees Miss Pre-War Tips

"I'll never see these people again anyhow" is the attitude of men who are refusing to tip around the Square during the wartime rush, according to waitresses, hotel employees, and messengers.

The claim is that tipping is going down noticeably these days because steady customers are being replaced by war workers and people connected with the military services. And these groups do not tip much or often.

Students Fine Tippers

Waitresses are actually quitting their jobs, says John W. Mason, Continental Hotel headwaiter, because poor tipping makes war jobs look bigger and bigger, but even during the pourboire drought, Harvard men are always good tipsters. At least when they come to the Continental.

Mason finds that other liberal tippers are usually from somewhere East or North. His many years of service in connection with hotels has convinced him that traditionally generous Southerners and Westerners tip least of all.

Although she finds tipping suffers in the case of most soldiers and sailors who have little extra money to spend, the officers and Harvard men are Stars of Bethlehem for Marion E. Maloney, a waitress at McBrides.

Marion said, however, that the new classes of Naval officers in the Yard always seem to have different customs, and that she could never tell in advance just what she would get. Of Harvard men she spoke warmly: "They always tip good!"

Barbers Stand Pat

A LaFlamme barber, Frank Machachio, longest-serving barber in Cambridge, agrees with partically every barber in the Square that people are forking over about the same "extras" as they did before the war. Tippers at their places of business are still the steady type of customer.

Barber Machachio carries the idea further by asserting that tipping has always been the same about the Square, from 1898, when he first began working here, to the present time. Even when he shaved ex-President Eliot, he got only the customary ten or fifteen cents extra for a haircut or a shave. With the late President Lowell it was the same dime or fifteen cents for a Burnside trim or a mustache curl. It's always been like that, he said.

Patriotic Attitude Found

A good many employees in the Square, especially waiters-on-table and hotel men who contact service men more than anyone else, have a policy of not accepting tips from them as a patriotic gesture.

Typical of these is Stephen Sullivan, veteran elevator operator of the Commodore Hotel, who says he accepts tips from service men only when he must to keep from hurting their feelings.

It took a really veteran Western Union messenger boy, Russel T. Mann, who has been at his job since early 1939, to remember that people in prewar days had the tipping habit. "Hell, we never get any now," said a young and disgusted bicycle courrier.