There is a story about a person getting out of a taxi and giving the cabbie the exact amount shown on the meter. As the man handed the money to the driver he asked, “Is this correct?” “It’s correct,” the cabbie replied, “But it’s not right.” Reader’s Digest had features, and maybe still does, that were half of a page or less in length, had names like “Famous Last Words” and “Life in These United States” and were humorous. In 1946 my folks gave me a book that was a collection of these pieces and the correct vs. right story comes from that book. In the original a woman was getting out of a cab in New York City. And there wasthe underlying assumption that women were stingy tippers. In 1946 the word “woman” was understood, without saying, to include stingy tipping, silly hat buying, moderately dizzy but very wise housewife. Many modern women are offended by this stereotype and I didn’t want to offend women so I wrote, “person getting out of a taxi.” But then I got stuck on “person handed the money…”. That sounded awkward so I said to myself, “To heck with it.” and let “man handed the money” be the final version. I didn’t actually think “heck” but I felt uncomfortable using “hell” so I edited my thought for publication. I realized that I would now be offending men both by having a stingy man hand the cabbie money, men think of themselves as generous tippers, and by chickening out and using “heck.” Oh, well. We come to one of the pressing questions of our time: How much to tip? How much should the man have tipped the cabbie? Generally, how much is the right amount to tip? I was going to graduate school in Troy, New York and my dad passed through town. He took my new wife and myself to a restaurant in Albany right across the Hudson River from Troy. This restaurant was very posh and was popular with New York State politicos. The waiters were all male and quite full of themselves. Now, my dad was of the generation and temperament where the range of possible tips started at zero and he left our waiter a nickel tip. Considering the service, this was probably a nickel too much. I was not surprised by his behavior but my wife was horrified. She was a New York City girl and in NYC you tip at the drop of a hat, so to speak. You tip a guy in the men’s room a quarter for handing you a towel which you neither want nor are incapable of getting for yourself. (And in 1958, a quarter was not small change.) Our waiter was also horrified and, behaving badly, threw the nickel at my dad. My father had grown up on a ranch in Montana, had worked his way through high school laboring for Anaconda Copper in Butte and had been in the South Pacific in WWII. His nose had been broken so many times in football and fights that it was shapeless. And when he had grandchildren, they had to call him “Colonel.” Even though the waiter had a 30-year age advantage, he stood no chance. Thus Spake The Old Fogy, who unashamedly gives better tips to attractive women but beyond that he has no suggestions on how much to tip.