Local Waitresses, Hack Drivers, Bootblacks, Barbers Term College Students 'Cheapskates'

"Harvard men? They're a bunch of cheapskates!" say an overwhelming number of waitresses, taxi-drivers, barbers, and shoe-shine boys who walk away empty-handed after serving members of the University.

In an informal poll conducted at eating establishment, cab-stands, and barbershops around the Square, employees of these places reported that students are definitely not good tippers.

The pickings were better before and during the war, almost all agreed. Now, they said, the good tipper is the exception. "I've been driving a back around the Square for almost twenty years," one veteran taxi-driver reported. "Before, the war, all the boys were generous with their tips. Now you either get little or nuthin' at all."

Geographical differences make for big differences in the size of tips, one Massachusetts Avenue barber pointed out. "Evidently the boys from the West never heard of tipping," he said. "Fellows from the East are always better tippers."

A waitress in a Boylston Street delicatessen suggested that students might just as well come there in their pajamas. "Our tips depend on a rapid turnover of customers. The Harvard fellows come in and spend three hours over a sandwich and beer, and then walk out without leaving a cent," she declared.

According to the shoe-shine boy at Felix' Shoe-Shine Spa, tips come in all sizes, "from the large to the small, small economy size." Meanwhile, mecca for the penurious continues to be the Hayes-Bickford cafeteria, where a bright yellow sign, with big red letters, declares, "No Tipping, Please!"