I remember Bob Berger. When I first submitted a piece to him (he accepted my first piece and nothing after), the people at Cato warned me that they called him "Mr. Personality."
The materials museum as "petting zoo" reminds me of your description of the GE materials facility (where clients could touch and handle interesting new materials that could be used for their products) in your book The Substance of Style.
TSoS is a great book. It was a required text for a large course on design culture that I taught at my U from 2004-2014.
In Italy I found it somewhat customary (but not expected) to leave a small tip (5-10%) for exceptional service; for ordinary service no tip is expected. Always in cash; credit card receipts don't have tip lines.
And, of course, Uber has a tip provision in their app worldwide.
I also found waitstaff to really show out for Americans, because they knew there would likely be something in it for them.
For drinks at the bar sometimes we would leave the small (<€1) coins.
I can hardly believe that America is more tip-oriented than other places, even taking into account the practice of tipping cows. I am told that in England it is common for tip bins to be the size of garbage cans, or even dumpsters. I imagine that (unlike Wikipedia which was soliciting tips “today only”) Materials Libraries do not set out a variety of vessels made of glass, metal, polymers, plants, and so on, to collect tips, but I guess they do accept “donations,” right?
I remember Bob Berger. When I first submitted a piece to him (he accepted my first piece and nothing after), the people at Cato warned me that they called him "Mr. Personality."
The materials museum as "petting zoo" reminds me of your description of the GE materials facility (where clients could touch and handle interesting new materials that could be used for their products) in your book The Substance of Style.
TSoS is a great book. It was a required text for a large course on design culture that I taught at my U from 2004-2014.
In Italy I found it somewhat customary (but not expected) to leave a small tip (5-10%) for exceptional service; for ordinary service no tip is expected. Always in cash; credit card receipts don't have tip lines.
And, of course, Uber has a tip provision in their app worldwide.
I also found waitstaff to really show out for Americans, because they knew there would likely be something in it for them.
For drinks at the bar sometimes we would leave the small (<€1) coins.
But no tip jars. Never ever.
I can hardly believe that America is more tip-oriented than other places, even taking into account the practice of tipping cows. I am told that in England it is common for tip bins to be the size of garbage cans, or even dumpsters. I imagine that (unlike Wikipedia which was soliciting tips “today only”) Materials Libraries do not set out a variety of vessels made of glass, metal, polymers, plants, and so on, to collect tips, but I guess they do accept “donations,” right?
Have you been to England? I lived in Scotland and never saw trashcan-sized too jars.