If your hostess should have a stable only and not a garage, and the man is only able to clean your car as he would a carriage and you have to do the filling of the tanks and the starting of the engine and so on, a smaller tip is all that is necessary.
In staying a week-end at a country house, if your car has not been used during your stay the tip of five shillings is quite sufficient. But rules on such points depend on circumstances. If the weather has been bad and the car is in a very muddy state the man will probably have had considerable extra work to bring out your car clean and shining. Remember what you would have had to pay at a public garage and act accordingly.
If you merely pay a call or go to lunch or tea with a friend, and your hostess has a chauffeur who takes the car from you and brings it up to the front door at your departure, a little tip, perhaps two shillings, should suffice.
But such a tip is quite an unnecessary one. The man has done nothing but what he has been paid to do by your hostess. He has done no special or extra work especially for you.
It is always a good thing to keep this in mind whether or no a man whom you are about to tip has performed any direct service for you, extra in any way to what he is paid his wages for, in connection with your car. If he has, a tip is not out of place, if you can afford to give one.
Do not let the idea run away with you that simply because you own and drive a car you must be handing tips to everybody. More than half the tips given are absolutely unnecessary.
There are dozens of cases where people foolishly tip. If your hostess’s groom drove you in the dog-cart to the station to catch a train you might think a two-shilling tip all-sufficient. Yet when her chauffeur takes you to the same place in a motor-car you wonder whether he will think five shillings is enough. It is really very absurd. If we have to tip, why not treat the motor-car as we would any vehicle and the chauffeur as we would any groom or coachman?
There are some people who feel justified, if sent up to town in a friend’s car, in giving the chauffeur as a tip the amount of the first-class railway fare for the distance. A tip decidedly should be given, but certainly not so large a one as this, in most cases, would figure out.
If taken to town from a country house, or vice versa, and one travels in the car with one’s hostess, certainly no tip is necessary; nor should one be given if one goes for a drive with one’s hostess.
Should a friend lend you a car for a day or a drive, a small tip is properly given; but if a friend lends you a car for a tour of some days, the proper thing is to offer to pay the chauffeur’s wages for the week. A tip on the top of this should depend on the manner in which the man serves you.