Gift Cards as Tips

The question for the poll is: What is the appropriate Christmas gift for teachers?

I don't know if it is a private school thing, or the rules of etiquette have changed, but we're pretty much expected to give my kid's teachers a gift/tip for Christmas. As I recall, when I was a kid, this was rarely done. Maybe it is just that my parents are cheap, but I recall they gave my 5th grade teacher a candle for Christmas. What a crappy gift! Does anybody ever actually use candles anymore? Go to any yard sale and you'll see enough to provide lighting for weeks.

Back to the point, my wife asked me if we should go get gift cards from Kona Grill or Agave (two local restaurants). I said, just give them cash, because:

1. You won't have to go out of your way to buy the gift cards.
2. The teacher might not like the chosen restaurant.
3. The teacher might lose the gift cards (as I think I sometimes do).
4. Giving cash costs us the same amount, but gives the teacher endless options of how to use the money.

In other words, I saw no downside to just giving cash. My wife said it was horrible etiquette, and made a statement like they were the same as menial labor workers. By that she meant the type you normally give cash to as a Christmas bonus to service workers like the mailman, newspaper delivery man, gardener, and pool guy. To that I said, exactly, why are teachers treated differently? At that point she said "I'm not going argue about it with you."

I think she retreated because she looks down on anybody who performs manual labor. Meanwhile I say that everybody from the ditch digger to the brain surgeon is performing some service to society, and is deserving of respect for their contribution. Of course the brain surgeon worked harder to get where he is, and deserves to get paid much more, but I would personally afford both people the same level of courtesy. My wife would not, and I think we were starting to tread into a sensitive subject. She was probably right to nip off an argument in the bud.

deleted

You're entirely correct that all workers deserve courtesy, and I'd even question whether the brain surgeon necessarily worked harder (the market fortunately doesn't reward effort, but value created, much to the chagrin of artists of little talent). That said I think it's clear there is a social norm that says cash is in poor taste as a gift but a near cash gift card isn't. Since you're only giving the tip in the first place due to social norms I'd give the gift card.

Ps - fancy candles that smell nice are good gifts. My wife loves them but they're too expensive for me to want to buy regularly. I think that makes them a good gift candidate.

Quote: Wizard

... and I think we were starting to tread into a sensitive subject. She was probably right to nip off an argument in the bud.

I think the stylish comment is "LMAO". So your wife tries to avoid marital discord by suspending/ending argument, and your response is to post the whole debacle/conflict on the internet. Wiz, maybe you're lucky not to get shot!

As for the subject of the poll, my position would be to let my wife handle a minor item like this however she wanted, no objection or comments from me. I value the peace in my life more than the cash or gift cards.

I recall from your blog about a cruise that this is not the first time tipping conflict has come up between you two.... What did you do for the teacher's last year?

It is appropriate to give gifts, but cash can be a bit gauche. There may also be some income reporting issues with receiving cash as well. What if you gave a more general "Visa" or "Amex" gift card? It is just as much, (and maybe more) trouble to get as a restaurant gc, but it allows much more flexibility for the recipient. Unfortunately, there is often a, "service" charge or "activation" fee added on, so it costs you more than the face value.

I agree with Doc's sage advice to go with your wife on this one. It may cost more out of pocket, but what is the price for "Peace on Earth"?

Quote: Ibeatyouraces

And as for the brain surgeon woking harder to get where he is. I think that is misleading. He may have studied more and went to school for years but I hardly doubt he "worked" harder. To me there is a huge difference between "working" and "having a job".

Studying hard and going to school for years IS working harder. At least that is how I meant it. He/she deserves to be rewarded for that.

Quote: Doc

I think the stylish comment is "LMAO". So your wife tries to avoid marital discord by suspending/ending argument, and your response is to post the whole debacle/conflict on the internet. Wiz, maybe you're lucky not to get shot!

I can be big on principle, and in rooting out inefficiencies in everyday life. I strongly identify with Larry's character on Curb Your Enthusiasm, in that he is bothered by trivial things, and will argue vehemently over small amounts of money. For example, I totally agree with his complaint that the perfume shop should have had just one line (Wendy's style). I also totally agree about stiffing the maitre 'de when there was a line item for that in his check. One good thing about forums is it gives you a chance to vent about such things somewhat anonymously.

Quote: Ayecarumba

I recall from your blog about a cruise that this is not the first time tipping conflict has come up between you two.... What did you do for the teacher's last year?

It is appropriate to give gifts, but cash can be a bit gauche. There may also be some income reporting issues with receiving cash as well. What if you gave a more general "Visa" or "Amex" gift card? It is just as much, (and maybe more) trouble to get as a restaurant gc, but it allows much more flexibility for the recipient. Unfortunately, there is often a, "service" charge or "activation" fee added on, so it costs you more than the face value.

I agree with Doc's sage advice to go with your wife on this one. It may cost more out of pocket, but what is the price for "Peace on Earth"?

We never agree on tipping. However, it really comes to a head when it is an unusual situation. Prior years my wife just gave gift cards without consulting me, which is probably best. I do agree that acquiescing in such situations is usually the best choice.

About gift VISA gift cards, those are a pain in the *ss. You have to call a special number to activate them, and about 90% of merchants don't know how to run them through properly. There is some trick it to. It always comes up whether you are supposed to run them trough as credit or debit, and I forget the right way. Then, even if you get that right, there is still something else you have to do to get them to take. I presented lots of them at Joe's Stone Crab once and they tried both ways, and vehemently said that they must have expired, so I had to pay cash. When I got home I looked them up online and they were all perfectly valid, and I used them successfully somewhere else later.

Quote: Wizard

We never agree on tipping. However, it really comes to a head when it is an unusual situation. Prior years my wife just gave gift cards without consulting me, which is probably best. .

My wife gets gift cards where she works and loves them. Last year I gave her a gift card for Xmas and she was thrilled, saves her the trouble of taking back half the crap I give her every year. I was thrilled too, I hate shopping. Guess what she gets this year..

The teachers I know seem to get a whole bundle of Tim Hortons and Starbucks cards every year, and really appreciate them.

Seems reasonable to give a thank you and acknowledgement to the person in charge of your child's education. I always like a the couple of quid per house I got as a Christmas box on my paper rounds, but would have been happy with a gift card too :)

Not that I was drinking much coffee at age 12.

Quote: Wizard

At that point she said "I'm not going argue about it with you."

You know your wife best, of course. But in my experience that line is what a woman uses to win an argument without having to fight it.

FWIW, regarldess of her views on manual laboreres, your wife is right about 1) it is bad etiquette and 2) cash is more or less something you give, as a gift, to people like manual laborers or the pool guy and so on.

1) It's bad manners because you're supposed to put some thought into a gift. It's a token of appreciation, or affection, or both. So unless you know the receipent wants cash, it's thoughtful and considerate to get him something you think he wants.

2) People with low-income jobs can put cash to better use than gifts. Therefore giving them money as a gift is appropriate.

A gift card for a restaurant or a shop is a more appropriate gift than cash for a teacher. However, any restaurant gift card should be able to pay for a reasonable dinner or lunch for two people. Otherwise your receipent needs to spend his money to use your gift.

So she did win ;)

Wiz -

Gift cards are the acceptable form I believe - my child's elementary school is even suggesting it this year, because the PTA is making gift card wreaths for the teachers (but that's another topic). While cash would be king, I believe your wife has the common perception of giving cash at this time of the year. I think it gives the perception that there was no "thought" into the gift, since it's the thought that counts, right? :)

-B

If the teacher is the kind of teacher who SHOULD be rewarded (cares about the kids, sets clear expectations, pushes them to excel, etc), we give them a gift that shows that we appreciate their work. If the teacher does jack crap and it shows, they get nothing.

Candles--the good kind--are almost always appreciated by female teachers. Male teachers get something different, but they like what they get, too. I prefer a gift to a card or money. It isn't hard for me, because my wife does the shopping. If she didn't enjoy shopping so much perhaps I would change my mind about what should be given...but a gift is more of a gift when the giver actually thinks about what they are giving.

I asked my wife and she said giving cash is very bad manners but a giftcard is not because you went out of your way to get it and put thought into it. She likes cards from Target, women love that stupid place. At Xmas, I get a Visa giftcard from my bank for $1000 and my wife has no complaints.

Quote: Wizard

What a crappy gift! Does anybody ever actually use candles anymore? .

I do. I heat my office with candles in the winter. About 15 years ago I bought 3000 candles from a going out of biz sale and now I have 5 going all the time. When I get up its about 60 in my small home office and it steadily climbs with the candles to about 75. Saves on gas but it wouldn't be cheap if hadn't got the candles for nothing. 5 going at once really throw off a lot of heat.

Quote: Wizard

We never agree on tipping. However, it really comes to a head when it is an unusual situation. Prior years my wife just gave gift cards without consulting me, which is probably best. I do agree that acquiescing in such situations is usually the best choice.

About gift VISA gift cards, those are a pain in the *ss. You have to call a special number to activate them, and about 90% of merchants don't know how to run them through properly. There is some trick it to. It always comes up whether you are supposed to run them trough as credit or debit, and I forget the right way. Then, even if you get that right, there is still something else you have to do to get them to take. I presented lots of them at Joe's Stone Crab once and they tried both ways, and vehemently said that they must have expired, so I had to pay cash. When I got home I looked them up online and they were all perfectly valid, and I used them successfully somewhere else later.

I agree they used to be a big pain, but I think alot of the troubles have been worked out, as I see AMEX gift cards being sold (along with gc's from restaurants and other retailers) in grocery stores, and even Best Buys. If the teacher's are Amazon fans (and who isn't), Coinstar is running a promotion now, where you can get a $10 bonus for cashing $40 worth of coins toward a gift card (or code in Amazon's case). I suspect you may have to mail away for the $10 bonus, but it is a good deal if you are going to get the gc anyway, and have the coins....

There is a rare night that there is not a candle or 10 going in our house. My wife loves them...

Quote: Wizard

...but I recall they gave my 5th grade teacher a candle for Christmas. What a crappy gift! Does anybody ever actually use candles anymore?

In the Secret Santa at work, we are encouraged to write a wish list. I got the same person I got last year. She put candles on her list again.

Quote: Wizard

In other words, I saw no downside to just giving cash. My wife said it was horrible etiquette, and made a statement like they were the same as menial labor workers. By that she meant the type you normally give cash to as a Christmas bonus to service workers like the mailman, newspaper delivery man, gardener, and pool guy. To that I said, exactly, why are teachers treated differently?

Quote: Nareed

2) People with low-income jobs can put cash to better use than gifts. Therefore giving them money as a gift is appropriate.

A gift card for a restaurant or a shop is a more appropriate gift than cash for a teacher.

The cash gift / tips thing normally applies to UNSKILLED labor.

Therefore, it would seem that teachers should be lumped in with other skilled professional people in our lives, and not be getting gifts.

The exception comes from the very common knowledge that teachers in most areas are woefully underpaid. And unlike, for example, the underpaid policeman, you have a regular, ongoing relationship with the teacher. So perhaps a gift IS appropriate.

For what it's worth, I do not remember giving ANY teacher any gift - not even a card. But maybe things change.



If forced to answer the poll, I'd say either no gift, or a gift card. Whether the gift card is for a specific store, or a Visa card, is another matter entirely.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

the very common knowledge that teachers in most areas are woefully underpaid.

Common to who? Fact is, the vast majority of teachers in this country make very good wages and have terrific benefits, not to mention getting 10 weeks off in the summer. Unless your MKL, who gets 5 months off. LOL!

Quote: DJTeddyBear

In the Secret Santa at work, we are encouraged to write a wish list. I got the same person I got last year. She put candles on her list again.

You'd be surprised the things I do to wrench myself free of that awful ritual (here known as a "gift exchange"). You'd be even more surprised why.

Last year I suggested "Why don't I pick myself, you pick yourself, and so on, and we each get exactly what we want?" It went over worse than a lead balloon (The Mythbusters amde a lead balloon rise off the ground, after all).

I understand gift-giving. I like to give gifts when I can afford it, especially to people I know well and care about.

I just hate getting gifts.

Quote:

Therefore, it would seem that teachers should be lumped in with other skilled professional people in our lives, and not be getting gifts.

Some of that is cultural. Back before the Mexican government swallowed and then eventually spit out the banks, it was common to give gifts to the bank personnel. Tellers made out best, but curiously security guards got more than a few gifts, usually booze.

Okay, y'all have made your point. Nareed put is very well. My a vote of 8-1 it seems my better half was right. I admit I put a lot of emphasis on utility and efficiency, and not much on grace and style.

Giving somebody who makes a decent living cash is not going to mean much to them. It would be a drop in the bucket compared to their total wealth, and quickly forgotten. However, a gift card might cause them to treat themselves to something they wouldn't normally buy for themselves. Meanwhile, the manual labor guy probably would really appreciate the money, as he might live paycheck to paycheck during the year, and Christmas bonuses may be the only time he gets to nice windfall.

Thank you to all who participated.

Quote: Wizard

Thank you to all who participated.

Aren't you being hasty? You have yet to hear from the forums two most prolific posters on the subject and you darn well know why.... LOL!

Quote: Wizard

Okay, y'all have made your point. Nareed put is very well.

Thanks! Not bad for a hasty post at work.

Many rules of etiquette do have a reason for being, and it's usually a good reason.

Quote: EvenBob

Aren't you being hasty? You have yet to hear from the forums two most prolific posters on the subject and you darn well know why.... LOL!

Since mkl is a teacher, I'd definitely take his point of view under advisement. However, I didn't want to get thrashed any further waiting for him to come off suspension. I'd lay good odds that Jerry would vote for no tip at all.

Quote: Wizard

I'd lay good odds that Jerry would vote for no tip at all.

Wow. Talk about a "safe bet"...

Late contribution.

Gift cards take no thought either. I hate giving and receiving gift cards unless I know they are going to get used. My 13 year daughter absolutely LOVES I-Tunes gift cards, but I would feel better if I actually bought her CDs or Videos that she wanted.

Retailers love gift cards because they have statistics that show that the average use rate of the cards is only 88 percent, and that for those using the gift cards, more than half spend more than the value of the gift card.

Most of the readers are right - Cash is poor etiquette but I feel that gift cards are not much better. On the other hand, the teachers are there to do a job and get paid well (especially private school) to teach your kids so a tip shouldn't be necessary. Cash is saying "I don't care about you but I am supposed to give a tip, so here you go". Gift cards are saying "I don't care about you but etiquette says I'm supposed to get you a gift card". An actual gift is actually saying, "I am buying in about the whole tip thing, and I am actually bribing you by pretending to know about what you like, so here's a candle".

Actually, next time I tip the cleaning lady, rather than giving them cash, I'll pick up a Bucker's card for them.

Someone made a quip once about gift cards, "they are the same as cash, just not as good" [since you restrict choices]. HOWEVER, I am going to agree with your wife, giving cash is just somehow not proper etiquette. Nareed says it well.

Quote: boymimbo

Retailers love gift cards because they have statistics that show that the average use rate of the cards is only 88 percent, and that for those using the gift cards, more than half spend more than the value of the gift card.

I believe you're right. Once I attended a talk on this topic, about utilization rates and how long it takes gift cards to get cashed. While the talk was very mathematical, it was clear that retailers loved selling gift cards, in part because it was an instant 12% profit due to the cards that never get presented.

It really makes me sick when they also put on expiration dates.

Quote: Wizard

... It really makes me sick when they also put on expiration dates.

I think that federal regulations, as of this past August, require that expiration dates be at least five years into the future. It seems more likely that a user would lose value because they physically lost the card rather than delaying so long that it expired.

Edit: Of course I meant USA federal regulations -- forgot what an international forum this is. I should also note that currency can be physically lost, also, so I don't think this type of value loss is all that unfair.

Gift cards are handled in the Accounting world by using "Breakage Accounting". When you sell the gift card, you debit cash and credit a liability. As the gift cards are spent, you debit the liability, credit the revenue and debit the cost of goods sold. That leaves an amount in the liability account that represents the value of unspent gift cards. Because some of that never gets spent and the money is not owed back to the owner of the gift card, there has to be accounting treatment to write off some of the liability as pure revenue. With the issues of Enron, companies were very sensitive in when to record liabilities as revenue or assets as expenses.

The most accurate way to record this liability is to put an expiry date on the gift card and simply move the expired amounts to revenue. In the early day of the gift card, I am sure that accountants advised the companies to set the gift card up that way for accurate accounting. Later on, with good models and industry experience, you could reasonably expect the amount of gift cards that would not be spent and create the revenue accordingly (not unlike bad debt and receivables) without jeopardizing the integrity of the financial statements.

What cheeses me is the automatic deduction of part of the gift card's value over time. This I think is unfair and many states have laws forbidding that (including California). The expiry date I understand from an accounting standpoint. For example, there are escheatment laws stating what happens if a check isn't cashed (for example, if you write a check to me for $1,000 but I don't cash it, how do you reverse that -- many states require you to send the money to a unclaimed fund).

BC law changed about two years ago to state that there can be no expiry.

Unless you prepay for the BC ferry service. Bit that's a different story...

Quote: boymimbo

... What cheeses me is the automatic deduction of part of the gift card's value over time.

Before posting above, I tried to check how long the new regs required the cards to be valid. I got that "five years" figure from a web posting at Best Syndication, so use your judgment as to how much faith to put into it.

That same posting said that there can be no service fees charged unless/until the card has gone unused for a year. I don't think that some charge after that amount of time is unreasonable. I would expect to spend a gift card within a few months at most, provided I did not lose the dang thing. Perhaps a series of "service fees" after extended delay, followed by eventual expiration after a long delay, is a reasonable way to clear the accounting books of liability for cards that will never be redeemed due to loss or destruction.

The web site said that the regulations are part of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 under regulation E for the proper handling of gift cards. If anyone is into reading regs to glean the details, look for this one and have at it.

Quote: boymimbo

Gift cards take no thought either.

In the very short-lived Dilbert animated series, Dogbert, IIRC, defined gift cards as "like cash, but less useful." Dilbert winds up getting his mom a gift card anyway, because he says it shows he put some thought into it.

One trouble with gift cards is denomination, the amount of cash they contain. If you get someone a gift card for an expensive store, say like Saks 5th Avenue, for $50, you might as well not have gotten them anything. If you give him one for $500, you may as well buy him something concrete. On the other hand a $50 for a restaurant may be just right, and one for places like Target, Borders or Walmart are positively generous.

I mentioned I don't like to receive gifts. One reason is I am a hard person to know, I'm eccentric, odd and I like it fine this way. But epople get to know just part of me. So, for example, my family knows I love to read. They don't know I read almost exclusively Science Fiction, Alternate Histories, real histories and science popularizations, and that for English works (which are extensive in the genres I mentioned), I read only the original English editions (I LOATHE translations).

So if my sister in law wanted to give me a gift, a card for Amazon or Borders would be much better than fi she were to pick a book.

Huh, a Gift Card or even a GIFT for a TEACHER??? WTF? What era is that out of, or who's the clown that made that the newest fad of the day?

You don't bestow gifts upon your kids' teachers, not in a million years. If those people think they're gonna get a GIFT at Christmas then they'll just wait until Feb. to start failing your kid if they deserve it. My opinion is if you run across a teacher who seems to be going the true extra mile for your child, you can't do enough for them anyway even if you wanted to. And can they accept anything that is meaningful anyway? A crappy little $50 gift card is like rubbing their faces in the fact that they chose a lousy paying profession to go into because they like teaching children. Just leave them alone and let society take care of them the way they were meant to be taken care of.