These days its so difficult to know who and when to tip. There are several people that are obvious to tip, restaurant servers, baristas, hotel staff ect. But do you tip your garage repairman? And if so, how much?!
So to be honest with you it is always nice to tip someone if they’ve done a great job. Tipping repair people is kind of an old practice, but has fallen out of style. Most of our garage repairmen that I’ve asked rarely receive tips, but occasionally a customer will tip them when they are particularly pleased.
Tipping is customary when you’ve commissioned work from a service person. These people often include hair stylists, restaurant servers, wedding photographers, hotel staff, ect. But we don’t often tip home service people.
One of the reasons for this is that people often tip a percentage of the total, but with home services the totals can be much higher than say, a meal at a restaurant. With professions like garage door repair or install person, you can feel good by tipping them between $10 and $20 for a repair and between $20 and $50 for and install! Depending on the work being done the total bill could be more than a thousand dollars! So tipping a percentage on top of this is just excessive. Don’t feel pressure to tip a repair person like you’d tip a server. We usually tip our servers between 15% and 20%. Tipping an install person 20% on top of $1,500 would be $225! Honestly that would be a great day for your installer but I guarantee you that you would be their first and probably only client to tip them like that.
Around the holidays feel free to forgo a regular tip for a larger yearly bonus, or holiday gift basket. This is a good idea for anyone who does regular maintenance on your home. Usually garage repair people don’t come around on a regular basis for maintenance, but we do have a few clients who like to have quarterly maintenance done.
On the flip side, tipping repair people and installers is not often common practice. Many people don’t tip the people who come to do maintenance on their homes! And whereas it’s not necessarily needed, it is polite and is a great way to communicate how happy you are for the work done. It’s so important to have gratitude and show that to the people around us. When people are encouraged in their work, their lives can become more productive. When people who we do jobs for show appreciation in tangible ways (like money) It can have the effect of inspiring excellence in our every day work.