Between Andy Clees and his thirsty customers at Coffee World is a shiny, black mug. But this ain't no java cup. It's for tips.
``I don't try and push it or anything,'' Clees explained. ``It's entirely up to them.''
He said he drew the line at putting a little sign on it saying ``tips.''
``That's a little much - a little tacky,'' said Clees, who has made as much as $25 in tips in one shift at the coffee shop, 16th and Market streets in Center City.
With Pavlovian reflex, customers are dumping money into tip containers left and right these days, leaving coffee shops, ice cream parlors and greasy steak joints to cash in on a growing trend.
``It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you put a cup out someone will put a tip in it. It's begging,'' said Christopher Muller, an assistant professor in Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration.
``Why do we tip people for doing their job well?'' Muller asked. ``Do you leave $10 in an envelope for the garbage guys at Christmas? Does it mean that they'll toss the garbage on the lawn if you don't?''
Tip cups seem to be popping up in minimum-wage retail establishments that seldom solicited gratuities before the coffeehouse craze made them commonplace.
Kim Long, who documents annual trends in the American Forecaster Almanac, speculates that the tip-cup phenomenon is rooted in the growth of gourmet coffee shops, which invite tips by showering customers with smiles and specializing in hard-to-make coffee concoctions.
Seattle-based Starbucks is at the forefront of the coffee shop phenomenon. Unlike many retail food and beverage establishments, Starbucks pays part- and full-time workers starting wages of $6 to $7 an hour and offers them generous benefits and stock packages.
Even so, tip cups abound. The company allows workers to display 4-by-4-inch, unmarked Plexiglas cups by its registers.
At Dunkin' Donuts, individual store owners decide whether employees can display tip cups as a way of boosting morale, said Jennifer Rosenberg, spokeswoman for the Randolph, Mass., company.
Jamie Rubin, 20, knows the benefits of a well-placed tip cup. As a part-time worker at Ashley's Ice Cream in New Haven, Conn., the college student has taken home as much as $30 in tips on a good night.
``It's real important, because we only get paid five dollars an hour,'' said Rubin, who attends Southern Connecticut University. ``It really makes a difference.''
At Everything on a Bagel, a Philly sandwich shop, the tip cup has been around virtually since it opened last September, said co-owner Barbara Cahill.
Two young women who worked there got the idea from another sandwich shop and Cahill, 48, who describes herself as a good tipper, had no problem with it.
``A tip is a tip is a tip,'' she said, adding that customers are not forced to put a cent into the cup.
