Tipping....how much do you tip?

[RJP]

I have no problem with tipping for good service. A deck hand that that stows my second steel tank below deck, dosen't bang it around, gives me a hand getting into my harness - I appreciate that and I'll tip $20.

$25 to be shared among DMs on a long 2-tank trip, like Hatteras.

So be it; if they do their job, I give $10-15 for a 2-tank dive. If they're really good, I give $20.

On behalf of my fellow crew members, allow me to extend an invitation for you guys to dive with us aboard the Gypsy Blood any time!

 

[RJP]

I hope you get a good tip from the owner for doing this for him. Sanding, glassing, painting, cleaning--(hint) the yard charges about $50-60 a man hour to do this.

Ever see the Seinfeld episode where the owner of an Ice Cream shop asks Kramer if he wants to work there?

Kramer asks: "How much?"
Owner offers: "How's $10 an hour sound?"

"Giddy-up!" Kramer exclaims as he hands the owner a $20. "Put me down for two hours!"



Not to belabor the point about "not doing it for the money" but here in NJ you can be sure your dive boat crew members are "volunteers" most of whom work a full-time job unrelated to diving during the week to pay the bills.

My Monday-Friday "surface interval" gig pays pretty well. There are a few crew members who could buy the boat by pooling the money under their couch cushions and others for whom the tips determine whether they can afford air fills to dive next weekend or not, but I think for all of us the financial aspect of any tips we receive is no where near as important as the simple recognition that our time and effort has some value and is appreciated by the passengers.

On any given weekend from April-December we happily wake up at 3:30am on Saturday to check the marine forecast to determine if we should get out of bed at 4am to drive 50 miles to get to the boat at 5am, picking up food, soft-drinks and ice on the way, so we can spend an hour getting the boat set up by 6am so that when you get there at 7am we can help you load your two sets of steel doubles, both your deco bottles, your giant tote box of gear, your wet/dry suit and two other bags of stuff on the boat so we can leave by 8am, securing your gear so it doesn't go in the drink, so we can get you to the wreck by 9am, spending the last half hour of the ride in the sweltering heat fully-geared up in a drysuit, fighting back our own seasickness so we're ready to jump into the 55F water as soon as the captain says "GO" so we can rocket down 130’ or so, solo, in the dark, fighting current, while dragging 50lbs of shot/chain, and in low viz locate the safest spot to tie in to the wreck and set a strobe for you, as quickly as possible so you don't have to sit in the sweltering heat, fully geared-up, puking all over yourself. After potentially burning half our back-gas doing that, we’re often getting back up and out of the water while many passengers are still getting geared up. And while you’re doing your first dive we're hurrying out of our gear so we can hose down your puke, hang your gear line, straighten the boat up and put lunch and soft-drinks together so that when you come up from your dive we can take your spear-gun/camera/catch bag, unclip your deco bottle, and safely get you and a dozen other divers in steel doubles out of the water, remove your fins, get you over to your seats, tanks bungied in, out of your gear, stow your deco bottles, put your catch into the game cooler, serve lunch, and do whatever else we can to make sure everyone is having a good time. During the surface interval we’ll help folks switch over their tanks if they want, provide an o-ring to a passenger who needs one, pull an extra mask strap out of our own sav-a-dive kit for another diver, and maybe lend an extra layer of drysuit undies to the diver that was really cold on the first dive. Over lunch we'll tell everyone where to find the 5lb lobster we didn’t have time to nab because we blew through 1,800psi on the tie in or maybe one of us will pull out a binder of deck plans to show you how to get into the best spot to find artifacts on a wreck sunk by a WWI or WWII U-boat. When everyone’s ready, we help get all the divers geared up again, pointing out un-connected drysuit inflator hoses, dunking masks in the rinse bucket, and getting everyone back in the water for dive number two. While everyone's under, we straighten the boat up and then sit around for an hour, wishing we were doing a second dive. (We often get to pass the time by unclogging one or both heads, cleaning the macerators, and putting them back together.) When divers start coming up we help everyone back out of the water, get out of their gear, and stow more lobsters/fish while one of us quickly gears-up to do a solo bounce-dive to 130ft, untie quickly, do a free ascent down current in the open ocean 20mi from shore while waiting for the 50' boat to do a “live” pick up while slamming up and down in 3-5's. (Depending on the charter and the needs of the passengers the crew member who unties is either the lucky one who gets to do TWO dives that day or the unlucky one for whom this is their ONLY dive of the day.) Out of the water and quickly get out of our gear so we can pull up 160’ of line, by hand, including 50lbs of shot/chain, get everything stowed, and get underway, so we can get you back to the dock quickly (while helping folks shuck scallops and/or drag mussels on the way back in) so we can help you get your two sets of steel doubles, both deco bottles, giant tote box of gear and two other bags of stuff off the boat and into your car so you can leave to get home early while we spend another hour and a half cleaning up puke, fish guts, sediment, soda cans, lunch leftovers and other general grit and grime, re-fuel, close the boat up, and drive 50 miles home, typically making an extra stop by one dive shop or another to drop off the lost-and-found items passengers inevitably have left behind so they don’t have to drive 100 miles back and forth to the boat during the week to retrieve them. If there's no traffic (there always is in the summer) we can get home around 6pm, having spent $20 on gas/tolls and another $20 on tank fills, and having told the passenger we gave our own replacement mask strap to “not to worry about it.” After rinsing our gear and deciding whether to try to wash the puke and diesel out of our favorite t-shirt from Cozumel or just throw it away, we get to have dinner and go to bed early so we can get up at 3:30am on Sunday and do it all over again.

A heartfelt thanks with a smile and handshake – with or without a few bucks – says “Dude, I really appreciate what you do!"

Slinking off with no acknowledgement whatsoever – financial or otherwise – says “F--- you, you get to dive for free!”

 

[akbpilot]

Five dollars or fifty pesos per tank, depending what's in my dry box. A little extra at the end of the week depending on any additional level of service.

 

[firstdive2005]

hey bobbates-(Are you cheap. Are you Canadian, your quote) I am from Edmonton, CANADA!!!!!!!! When I got certified at Cozumel I did not know about tipping. However the guys that looked after me, and I felt incredibly comfortable outthere because of them, I thought I would pay extra because they made my trip so great. I did not see any of the other yanks give a tip to the DM or BC. They where a bunch of loud mouthed goofs but at their naive expense the DM and I laughed alot at them. When I was cleaning up my site on the boat the Captain said dont worry we will do it. I would have none of that. I dont leave a footprint on the reef, I wont on your boat either. I truly appreciated them, I will dive with them later when I get back. By the way, The BC took my cell phone number, I could not figure that one out, we live at little ways apart. But he did say,' Is it on while you are here on Coz. Yes I replied." Well I dove several times with them. Always got the same service, I always treated them the same, I even took them to lunch, I loved their stories. Well He phoned me one day and offered a free dip and night dive. What an honor. YOU know what, I was going to say where is your site so I could dive with you and then not leave at tip because I think your rude but if I did come and dive with you I would leave an extra bit because I know what type of expert you are. Please dont group people like you do and stop being critical, you will last longer at what you do.

 

[jeanne001]

Four of us went to the bahamas in November. We did 13 dives in five days. We set up our own gear, didn't need help getting into or out of our gear (that was what our buddy was for) and didn't need help getting into or out of the water.

The boat captain knew the other couple we were with well for they had been to the Bahamas many times with this dive operator. So w/ 10 people on the boat, the captain let us decide where we (the four of us) wanted to dive (we decided this after knowing what the qualifications of the other divers were).

so we tipped $80 per couple/per day (there were 3: 1 captain + 2 crew)

It was $400 for dive tipping for the week. Maybe we did too much? We knew before we went on the trip how much $ it was going to cost us to tip and included it in the $ of the trip.

 

[Buoyant1]

Usually $10. per trip if I'm doing multiple days on the same boat....If I've received good personal attention, I'll probably drop a $20. to the person that took good care of me.

 

[jeanne001]

wait, just doing the math here. at $400 total weeks tip, it boils down to a $13.30 per captain+crew/per day tip. On second thought, maybe we didn't tip enough.

 

[divingtigger]

The whole point of a tip is to show appreciation, well in my eyes at least. I would rather make sure that the person who did their best to ensure I had a good time see the benefits of their hardwork. The store owner is already making money hand over fist and paying their employees minimal. I have alot of contractors that I deal with and I won't use any contractor that charges me over 2 times what they pay their employee. When I was a paper boy I made more in tips than I did from the company I worked fo, is that right, hell no but it was always nice to know that I was appreciated.


I don't think that this topic was started so that we could debate if tipping is right or not, The way I see it, it was started to educate on how much is appropriate.

When I buy groceries, do I know how much went to the farmer, the produce picker, the guy who put gas in the farmers truck, the shelf stocker, the cashier or any of the other people in that food chain? When I buy a car do I know how much goes to the assembler, painter, mechanic, transporter, dealer and sales man? Should I care?

I believe we should be doing price analysis, as long as there is fair and open competition. The only time cost analysis is appropriate is if there is no competition (sole source) or other very unique circumstances (item developed at the offer's sole expense and he has patent rights, etc.). I don't care how they price it - if they add fees, surcharges, tips, taxes - just let me know what they are up front.

This may not seem fair to the workers, but don't you think word would spread rather quickly as to who is paying fair wages, and the DMs would flock to those companies?

Again, to reemphasize, the question is not whether to tip or not, but what is the acceptable amount and are there any generally prevalent rules globally. We all know 15% is the average tip for a wait person. We don't know, yet, what it is for a dive crew. Or even if we should be tipping each person separately...captain, dock hand, DM, etc. I have read that some do just that.

As example, last month I took my first boat dive trip (not including live aboards who tell you what tips and surcharges are expected) with my LDS. The LDS instructor who lead the group told us that $50/person is what he recommended. That is for 4 3-tank dives and 1 2-tank dive week. (The trip was a package deal, airfare, motel and diving, so I honestly don't know what the diving portion cost). That seemed pretty cheap to me, especially after reading this thread, but I didn't have anything else to go on. Most everyone followed his "expert recommendation" not knowing otherwise too. I think the crew got cheated. We put all the tips in a single envelope and gave it to the lead DM on the last day of diving. This is what I think the OP and I are trying to avoid (unless that is the norm, in which case many of you are over tipping).

 

[PvtStash]

I think a major part of the problem here is that some people feel that a "Tip" is to be given as a bonus, an additional sum as an additional thankyou , whereas...

Others feel that a Tip is to be given for ANY service (as if the customer hadnt Already Paid for their service [Good service costs extra does it?]) regardless of the service needs of the customers (some need more than others, but all have already paid to be there [which , I feel, includes your service]).

 

[peterbj7]

The store owner is already making money hand over fist and paying their employees minimal

How little you know! Most diving businesses are struggling for survival these days, which translates into the employees probably taking ALL the available "profit" with nothing at all left for the owner. Certainly where I operate I can think of virtually no dive business that survives on internally-generated income.