E tenebras, lux dormiens

Hey, I gave a two-dollar tip to a hairdresser, also the owner of the hairdressing place. The normal cost was eleven dollars. And I felt really guilty. I mean, I am fine with tipping, but I might have sewn some seeds of jealousy and resentment between the owner and the hairdresser.

I was just trying to conform to a norm, but now my mom said that almost nobody tip the hairdresser. Well, what did I just do by giving a tip of two dollars just for a haircut. My mom said that she tipped only one dollar for both of us, a perm for her and a haircut for me. Thirty-dollar value for one-dollar tip.

Call it an act of kindness.

Is it really? I didn't feel right about tipping so much, because I am really inexperienced at it. What circumstances merit tipping; what don't?

From this lesson, I won't do it again. But if I don't, would it send a message to the hairdresser that she is not doing her job right? Sometimes I wish I could take that money back, so that I didn't have to make that mistake again.

Is it a mistake to be so generous?

It is a mistake if I've irrevocably changed the other person's perception of me to such an extent that any future relationship between this person and me or the other person is worsen. This is just a relationship of owner and buyer, and I should not have done anything to change that. I certainly hope the consequence won't be terrible.

I know what I just did. I'm truly embarrased and angry at myself now. The Art of Tipping teaches that you don't usually tip the owner of the salon, but usually 15% for any hair styling.

I must have hurt that hairdresser that didn't cut my hair, because she usually cut my hair. It was only last time and this time that the owner cuts my hair, so I tipped doubly big. I screwed up big time. I screwed up multi-big time. Now, the next time I go there, I'm sure that hairdresser is frothing at her teeth that I didn't tip her as much as I did the owner.

Oh man, I'm usually guilty that I didn't tip enough, but now I'm feeling guilty that I tipped too much and overstepped my boundary by overstepping the norms.

All this over a two-dollar tipping to an owner of the salon for a simple eleven-dollar haircut.

I'm not going to do that [overtipping my hairdresser] again. That doesn't mean I won't make the same mistake regarding other matters. I only want to go back and have another haircut and not tip at all, so that the dollar I overspent might be balanced out by the dollar I underspent.

The only problem is that if the next time I go for a haircut, it is actually the hairdresser who cuts my hair, I certainly can't tip less than the amount I tipped to the owner.

I really appreciate everybody's opinion on this.

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