ANNALS OF CATERED HOSPITALITY: TO TIP OR NOT TO TIP?

We saw something interesting last night, at a store-launch party in Soho, thrown by a style magazine: A cater-waitress had a dollar in a plastic cup, in the middle of the tray of free cocktails she was passing around to guests. Now, we've seen tip cups at hosted bars before, where a guest is happy to know that a flash of green might connect him faster with his free cocktail, but a tip cup on a passing tray was new to us. We're standing around at a party, doing what we were invited to do-- look great and lighten trays of refreshments-- and we're also being asked to dig into our pockets?

Normally, our hearts are with the workers, but this chick struck us as laboring under a deal-breaking misunderstanding about what parties like this are all about. Hosted events are supposed to preclude the idea of money, aren't they? Doesn't the host himself-- in this case, a very nice magazine editor who probably didn't realize what his hired help was doing-- invite us to share in a warm feeling of being taken care of, so we can feel free to celebrate whatever we're supposed to be celebrating?

But we try not to get an attitude about shit like this. We know that manners are constantly evolving-- and, since we go to a lot of parties, that everything is more comprehensible after another drink. So we had another coupla drinks and tried, when that waitress passed again, to get down with whatever fun/sleazy/ballsy vibe she was working from. In our pleasant, sake-fueled, party haze we tried thinking, "Yeah, baby, work that fucking tip cup"-- but our attempt fell apart when we noticed that there was still only one, miserable dollar in the cup, which indicated how little our fellow party guests were feeling this act.

On the way out, we saw our host and told him what a fabulous time we'd had. But as we jumped into a cab, on our way to the next party (for the new issue of an "extreme fetish" magazine), we couldn't get the waitress's pathetically defiant look out of our minds.