"Don't Be So Cheap!" (Tips on Tipping)

Okay, we’re here a TGIFriday’s in Taipei. Free beer tomorrow.
This is William—Hi—“Hi, nie hao”. Say Merry Christmas—“Merry Christmas, Sheng dan jei kwai la”.
Okay, William’s going to help us out here with our video, and, uh, I’ve got my friend Christopher from Boston here. Say something—“As-alam-a-lakem”.
Oh, I don’t know what that means, but he says a lot of stuff that I don’t understand. Anyway, I want to make a point to all of our listeners today—is that, um, if you get good service in a restaurant, make sure you leave a good tip for your waiter or waitress.
There’s a problem here in Asia—restaurants serve—charge ten percent “service charge”—but they keep it! They never pass it on to the waiters and waitresses. So be generous, don’t be so cheap—don’t be so cheap! Remember that.
Think about all the money you waste on shoes and clothes and cars and everything—but we never treat our fellow human beings generously. So give a nice tip to your waiters and waitresses—they’ll treat you better the next time you come in, and you’ll feel better.
Christopher always leaves a nice tip when we come in, and, uh, he does it because it’s the right thing to do—it’s the right thing to do. So, don’t be so cheap—remember that!
Are you going to eat all that? “Yeah, I have to, I just got married.”

Key Words

Generous-adj-giving more than is expected. We can be generous with our money, time or attention.

Cheap-adj-cheap usually means that something has a low price. But when describing a person who is “cheap”, we mean that they are not generous, they are not willing to part with their cash, to the degree of this being a negative personality trait.