Have you ever been sitting at bingo, had a really good night, and suddenly wondered, "Am I supposed tip somebody?" Maybe the person sitting next to you who helped you keep up. Perhaps you want to share the luck with your regular bingo buddies. Or maybe you should show some love to the workers at the bingo hall. TIpping in the bingo community is one of those subjects that doesn't come with a rulebook. So let's talk about it.
[00:00:08] Hello, and welcome to The Broke Bingo Addict. This is a podcast that ventures through the wild and crazy world of bingo. This is much more than your grandmother's bingo. My name's Shari, and welcome to this week's episode, which as always is for entertainment purposes only. Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of The Broke Bingo Addict. You know, this is a topic that we've talked about before, but I absolutely want to revisit
[00:00:37] it, and that is the topic of tipping, a very big issue sometimes in the bingo world. So I want to talk about three categories in particular. The first one I want to talk about is just tipping the people that are around you, okay? You're sitting at a table, you don't know these people from spit, but you've won, and you know, you want to tip them. So do you do that?
[00:01:03] Because I've seen a combination of a lot of things, and it's certainly been a combination of things for myself, too. So basically, I think what is general is people would like tip a dollar to, I think, maybe five dollars if it's somebody you don't know, and it's just a basic bingo win. Certainly, that's my thing. Actually, depending on what it is, I generally like to do, like, if I've gotten a decent win, like five dollars, just because it's easier.
[00:01:30] Sometimes it's hard to get single dollars, and I'm certainly not going to tip everybody that. But if there's one or two people by me that I've had a win and I'm pretty excited about, because they don't come as often as I'd like, I'm going to be happy, and I'm going to want to share the wealth and give those people like one or two dollars, and like I said, probably up to five dollars. But the question is, do you do that all the time or do you not do that? I've certainly seen people do different stuff when it comes to that issue.
[00:01:58] And what generally has kind of been the case for me is if it's not the people that I play with all the time, you know, my friends and everything, it's just generally people sitting there. Part of that goes two ways. So if I've won first, right, you haven't won anything, we're all sitting there playing and I've won first, I am absolutely going to tip you. We want to share the joy and have good karma and that type of thing. But if I've been playing there, we've been sitting together for a while, and you've already
[00:02:27] won, and you haven't tipped me, like I'm sitting right next to you, and you didn't have to share with 10 other people, and it was a pretty decent win. And you don't give me a dollar, you don't even give me 50 cents. If it comes a time when I win and you're still sitting next to me, you can absolutely know that I'm not going to give you a penny, okay? Just because I feel like, you know, why should I do that? If you weren't willing to share with me, I'm not going to share with you. Although I will say sometimes there have been people where I actually did. You want to make people feel bad.
[00:02:59] Sorry, that's true. It's like, see, did it hurt you to be nice? Did it hurt you to give a little to somebody else and spread the joy? Right? So that's my kind of thing. But I've also seen a lot of people who don't believe in it. I've seen people who feel like, you know, you spend a lot of money at bingos sometimes, and if you win, you kind of want to keep that to yourself because you don't know what that person's economic situation is. They might need that money to pay a bill. They might have been playing with money that they shouldn't have been playing with, and they needed to win some of it back for whatever.
[00:03:27] So I have absolutely seen people who haven't tipped anybody, whether they have an economic situation or not. They just don't feel like it's their responsibility, or they don't feel the need to tip people who are sitting around them. Now, sometimes it can also be that they're not aware that that could be like a custom, like somebody who doesn't play bingo all the time, and they're visiting with friends or whatever, or they're just trying to go out and see what bingo's all about, and they just happen to win. And, you know, they just don't realize that that's something that a lot of bingo players
[00:03:55] do, just tip the people sitting around them or whatnot. So I, you know, can't fault them for that. I remember when I first started playing bingo in Las Vegas with my dad, and in Las Vegas, what happens is generally you're only playing for an hour. You know, back in the day, most of the places were all in casinos, and you'd go, you play for an hour, you do your thing, and you leave. So it's not like you had these major bonds with people. You're just doing it, and you're leaving. So there really wasn't any kind of tipping that I was aware of because I wasn't a regular bingo player.
[00:04:25] So I can totally understand that, too, people who are coming in on vacation, and they just see bingos available at the casino, and they play, and they leave. I think actually one time there was somebody, I remember, he won like a lot. They used to have these progressives at all the casinos, and this was a big one, and this guy was like some Texan or whatever, but he came in, and he won like $20,000, okay? He walked in there, and he won the progressive. And as my understanding, he didn't tip a soul, took the money and run. So everybody has their own way of dealing with that.
[00:04:52] No shame to anybody because it is absolutely a personal choice. I don't care if you tip me or don't tip me, to be honest. If you do tip me, I like it. I think it's nice, and it makes me feel good. But again, I don't expect anybody to tip me, even if I've had situations where it's the last game of the night, right? We've all been there. It's the last game of the night, and somebody sitting next to you or somebody you know bingos, and you kind of think you're going to get something.
[00:05:21] But I'm not going to sit there and wait for them to get paid out. If it's the last game of the night, I'm packing my stuff up, and I'm leaving. And I've had people say that to me sometimes. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's like, no, it's not about that. If you won, I am happy for you. That's my tip. You won, and I'm thrilled that you won. You don't need to share that with me. You shared the joy with me. So I'm happy for you. Now, that's when you're talking about people that you don't know. Okay? There's another side of this thing with tipping, and that's what people that you play with all the time. What do people do about that?
[00:05:51] Because there's certainly now, at this point, when I've been playing bingo for a long time, there's certainly people that I have developed relationships with, you know? And it's so funny. It's interesting how these things kind of come about. Either somebody starts tipping you, and you start tipping them back or whatever, or, you know, they're people that you play with regularly. There were certain people that I would sit with every single week. So you know that if they win, they're going to tip me a certain amount of money, depending on how much you won. And that's weird, too, because a lot of that goes on how much you won.
[00:06:20] Whether you get tipped $5 or $10 or $20, it's interesting how that goes and what the judgment call on that is. So I know that some people will sit there, and they've been playing for a long time. You might have been playing with these people for years. And I know sometimes they'll be like, you know what? I'm kind of tired of this. I have a lot of friends that play bingo at this place. And when I win, by the time I finish tipping all my friends, I've got half the amount of money that I would have had if I didn't tip anybody.
[00:06:48] So I know people who've done this, who've actually walked up to other people or that they've played with regularly. I said, you know what? I'm taking a break on the tipping. So I'm letting you know that I'm not going to be tipping you so you don't have to tip me, which, by the way, is the way to do it. You're not going to go out there and not tip somebody and then take their tip, which is something that happened to me. It took me a while to realize that there was this person that I thought was, you know, a bingo buddy. It wasn't like we were particularly close, but I thought was a bingo buddy.
[00:07:16] And at a certain point, I realized, wait a minute, I'm tipping this person every time that I win, which, again, wasn't necessarily a lot of times. But nonetheless, whenever I won, when I made my rounds to go tip people, this person was included. And after a while, you start realizing, wait a minute, I know this person won last week. I know he won the other time. I see them winning all the time. At a certain point, you're like, you're not getting tipped back. And they are tipping. OK, they are tipping.
[00:07:45] It's not like they're not tipping other people. They're just not tipping you. And you don't know what the reason is. They've never said anything. You guys talk all the time. There doesn't seem to be any kind of an issue. But clearly, for whatever reason, that person doesn't feel like tipping you. And that's fine, too. I don't care. But again, if you're not going to tip me, then I think it's kind of rude for you to always accept my tips. So at a certain point, like I said, I realized that and I stopped tipping that person, too.
[00:08:14] Again, I don't think we have a bad relationship. It's just we have moved on from that spot. But in the same vein, you can get that where somebody starts tipping you. And now you've got to do that yourself because there was a person that I was playing with recently. And I didn't expect them to tip me because we weren't sitting together. We hadn't played together a lot. We just knew each other from another location. And when they won, they tipped me. And I thought, OK, well, maybe this is just a one-time thing. They're feeling good. But they continuously tipped me.
[00:08:40] So after the first couple of times, I realized, OK, we are now tipping buddies and we're going to tip each other. So we do that now. And that's fine. I like this person. And again, he wins a lot more than I win. So it kind of works to my favor that he's so generous with his tipping. But then there's the other thing, too. If you have your friends, the question is, what is the appropriate amount to tip? When I was back at Buckingham and I had my little crew, I had my little crew, we used
[00:09:06] to do it like this, if it was $250, which back in the day was kind of like the average amount of the payouts for most places. It still is for the bingo club. We usually gave people $20 for every $250, right? So if you won $500 and you tipped the person $40. So that was the basic. But like I said, you still have to keep in mind, if you start having a lot of your friends there, that can take away a lot of your money. So it's also sometimes you sit there and say, there's just way too many people. I'm not tipping that much tonight because that's not going to happen. And that's fine.
[00:09:35] Again, I absolutely understand that. But so it's just interesting to sit there and try to figure out, you know, what happens when you've got a lot of people as opposed to a little people. How do you figure out how much you're going to tip your friends? And is it consistent? Because that's another thing, too. I had some friends who were, they were like into the $2 frame. They'd win $500 and they would tip you $2, which, you know, I always kind of thought that was a little odd. But that's OK. That doesn't stop me. That doesn't deter how much I'm going to tip you because it's all about what makes
[00:10:05] you feel comfortable and what brings you joy. Which, by the way, like I said, part of the thing for me is that tipping because it's just such a rare thing to win. You don't win all the time. And anybody playing bingo knows it's really hard to win sometimes. I played three nights this week and I didn't win a penny. So when you do win, it's just really exciting. And I like to spread the joy. I like to go around and I like to tip people. That's part of the excitement of playing bingo for me. But I totally understand if other people don't want to do that.
[00:10:34] And I actually had a friend not too long ago who had a big win. And so she had to sit there and try to figure that out because it's like, well, how much do you give? Because, you know, you got to think about how much you got to end up within if you start doing it. And in this part, this is where I'm going to go to the third thing. So the first thing was tipping people just sitting around you. The second thing was tipping your friends that are, you know, your regular friends. But my third thing is, I don't know if there's going to be a fourth, but the third thing is
[00:11:01] how much do you tip the people at the location where you're playing bingo? All right. So this kind of varies, I think, across the country. I know that there are places where you're not allowed to tip at all. I think I've heard of places like in Texas where you're not allowed to tip at all. And there are other organizations that I know that you're not allowed to tip at all. But trust me, in California, you're allowed to tip. And people want those tips. And back in the day, when I was playing at the place that was across the street from
[00:11:30] my house, when I was playing at Buckingham, and I'm not going to name any names, but there were certain people, like if somebody sold you a pool tab that ended up paying like $1,200 or $700, whatever it paid, if that pool tab won, and they knew that they're the person that sold you that pool tab, they wanted that tip. They expected that tip. They would walk out to your car and make sure they got that tip. So I think that that was a little over the top. I think that that was a big problem that some of the people thought that they were entitled
[00:12:00] to get a tip. And I think everything, like a restaurant or whatever, tipping is your choice. You don't have to tip people. But it was amazing how that would cause a lot of controversy at times because these people really absolutely felt entitled to get that tip. Now, again, that wasn't everybody, but there were certain people that everybody knew. It's like if you don't tip her, she's going to come get you, okay? She's going to make sure that she gets her portion of whatever she thinks she's entitled to. Now, I know that there's a big conversation out there, too, that a lot of times people
[00:12:28] say, well, how much should you tip? And I think what I've heard from a lot of people, people like the bingo addict and cash and some other people, pressure. I think a lot of people think that it should be like 10% of what you win. So if you win $250, you should tip $25. And then the question for me used to be is like, well, is that for everybody? I mean, for each individual person at the bingo hall? And when I'm talking about this 10%, I'm talking about the people at the bingo location that you're paying for.
[00:12:56] And if it's 10%, is it 10% for the person who sold you the tab or sold you the paper? Is it 10% for the caller? Is it 10% for the school or the function that's sponsoring this particular thing? So generally what I do, this is my theory, is if I can, again, depending on how many other people I'm going to have to tip and how my bills are looking at the time, I do try to do the 10% if I win something. Like if I won $1,000, then I'm going to tip $100.
[00:13:24] I'm probably going to do like 40 for the caller, 40 for the location, and 20 for the person who sold me the tab or whatever, or the person who's going to take my winning up to the caller or whatever. So I try to split that up. I try to split the 10% up between the person who's picking up the tab or the paper, the caller, and the function that's hosting the bingo thing. Now, mind you, I do try to give the caller more of the percentage than anybody else, but I do try to make sure I keep it around the 10%.
[00:13:53] I did that at one place, and they were so appreciative. I couldn't get over it. They were like, oh my God, thank you so much, which is nice. You want to know that people appreciate you making the effort to kind of show that you appreciate what they've done for me. So that's really nice. But I can understand, too, that it gets to be an issue when you've got a lot of money. It kind of seems weird when you've won, like the one place I'm playing right now, they have some huge cash balls. And say you win $6,000. Are you supposed to tip $600?
[00:14:23] I know that sounds like, yeah, out of $6,000, that's not bad. But at the same point, you're like, $600 is $600. So I don't know. I don't know if they do that or don't do that. Technically, I guess it's the same either way. But you do kind of wonder whether that's like too much or not too much. And that's a thing that I guess is a personal issue. As luck would have it, that hasn't been a problem for me. I haven't won that amount of money.
[00:14:52] I did have a big win one time. And trust me, I always felt bad. I never knew if I did enough. And I always felt really self-conscious about it. But at that time, I have to say the other issue is you get so excited. You're so nervous when you have a big win that you really can't even think straight. I mean, that's the honest truth. At least for me, I was so excited and so freaked out that I actually won. I could barely spell my name, much less figure out how much I should be tipping everybody. But anyway, so those are the things I wonder about. I don't know what other people think about this.
[00:15:21] If I'm like an outlier when I'm thinking about this kind of stuff or how I consider it. But like I said, it's really a great feeling when other people tip you. There have been nights when I've made more on tips than anything else. You know, you can walk away with a couple hundred bucks and tip sometimes. It's awesome. But I totally understand if people don't want to tip or don't feel that they should tip. So just throwing that out there that you should be aware of that.
[00:15:46] Don't feel bad if people don't tip you and tip what you feel is the appropriate amount. Okay? So again, I just wanted to touch on this again because I do think it's interesting to see how other people tip and how this culture is so part of the bingo community. So thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Broke Bingo Addict. I hope you enjoyed it. And as always, I hope you'll come back for the next episode. Thanks so much. Bye.