Tips On Gratuity

Compulsive butt-picking, an unnaturally close relationship with their mother, a hideous yet curiously beloved novelty-sweater collection. . . These are all very bad qualities in a potential date. However, these are also things a person could conceivably overlook in an otherwise charming prospect. But in the Dealbreaker Hall of Fame, excessive frugality is up there with homicidal tendencies, a Coldplay fan-club membership and weeping sores.

When I did my highly unscientific survey on stinginess, people of both sexes pulled out male examples. For some unfathomable reason (and I'm not saying it's right), women tend to get away with being cheapskates far easier than men. I once set up two friends-both of whom made well into the six figures. That night I get a hushed call from her, sequestered deep inside the ladies room. "He's making me pay," my girlfriend hissed. Turns out, she'd offered to pay half-which she could easily afford-and when he accepted her offer, she went ballistic. I've never really understood why two boobs and a cooter means you get fed for free, but apparently a lot of people are of this mind. Go figure.

While women seem more able to get away with it, and men more likely to be pegged for it, the bottom line is, nobody likes a cheapskate. And nowhere is the tightwad more obvious than inside a bar. I don't care if the guy is rocking a giant set of big baby-blues and a package like a pound of walnuts; a girl sees him stiff a bartender and you can bet that's the only stiffy that skinflint is going to see.

Sometimes you can just tell when a dude is going to give you nothing but trouble-a psychotic stare, a pair of too-tight trousers on a lumpy, wide-load kiester or a "Rumsfeld Is My Homie" t-shirt are all shrieking red flags. But the tightwad is much harder to detect on sight. I asked my pal Zach, a barback at the notoriously lowbrow Mars Bar, to see if he had any pointers on detecting this breed. "Any time there's a bunch of guys and they're obviously NYU students, they're going to be shitty tippers," he assured me. "And they're going to flirt with the Asian girl behind the bar, because that's what college boys do-tip badly and develop Asian fetishes."

Melody Henry, proprietor of the Lucky 13 Saloon in Park Slope, disagreed. "Youth used to mean they were cheap-they'd ask for the cheapest beer," she said. "But now the twentysomethings have money." She added, "Sometimes you see guys with the nice watch and an expensive suit and you think they're gonna be a good tipper, and they suck."

I was once on a very, very bad blind date with a dude whose insistence that we meet at an art opening-for the free booze-should've clued me in on his miserly ways. When I arrived, he was already drunk, and the woman manning the crappy white-wine table kept shaking her head and miming "nooo!" at me from behind his back. Yet still I was surprised when we repaired to Swift's Hibernian. Upon the bartender handing over the bevvies, he grabbed his, turned to me and said, "I'll get you next date." Not bloody likely, jackass.

Not that I wouldn't buy a guy a drink. Hell, if he's foxy enough I'll buy him a champagne cocktail, complete with umbrellas and whatnot. I'm not alone. Zach has seen tons of ladies pony up for a certain breed (inevitably of the musician variety). "They're willing to overlook the guy's financial shortcomings because they like that he has tattoos and is willing to hit people," he laughed. "I think you've dated some of them, Judy."

So funny I forgot to laugh.

Now, I am not a heartless gal; I've certainly been down on my luck in the financial department. So I asked Larry, a bartender at the Knitting Factory, how a busted-broke guy might successfully entertain at a drinking establishment.

"He should stay home," Larry replied flatly. Larry has a point. Zach has dealt with numerous patrons who are chatty and fun to talk to but leave a crappy tip, using the excuse that they're skint. "When punk dudes are like, 'I'm broke,' I just think, then have your girlfriend from Connecticut buy your drinks and leave the tip."

One thing I discovered is that you never ever leave coins as a tip. Larry is willing to overlook quarters or silver dollars, but anything less could prove dangerous to your health. "If they put pennies on the bar they get them flicked back in their face. I've done that."

Finally, there is the humiliation factor. Melody swears she rarely publicly castigates a bad tipper, but that's probably because she also owns the bar where she works. The ladies of Mars Bar are a different story. "Tracy or Francesca will devote a good 10 minutes to dressing down a cheap fuck," Zach reported with a glint of admiration in his eyes. "Ten minutes doesn't seem like a long time," he laughed, "but in a quiet bar, 10 minutes can be a very long time."