Drawing upon her rich experience of life, Prudence (Prudie to her friends) responds to questions about manners, personal relations, politics, and other subjects. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. Queries should not exceed 200 words in length. Please indicate how you wish your letter to be signed, preferably including your location.

Dear Prudence,

Tipping waiters is easy enough--15 percent for adequate service, 20 percent if they give me the post-dinner coffee free. But what of those other services that require tipping?

A day in the life presents this newly minted Manhattanite with any number of palms to grease--hands extending from disparately different uniforms and expecting some coinage commensurate with the services their owners provide. They're cabbies, coffee shop waiters, and even official looking guys in old-timey police hats turning the revolving doors for me.

Recently my girlfriend began forcing me to forego my usual visit to the $12-a-cut barber in favor of her "hair artiste" friend, Raoul, who wants not only the customary $50 for the half inch he shears with such aesthetic sensibility from my scalp but also a tip. And bartenders have their own ideas about what it's worth to me to have them put a lime sliver and a tiny straw in my martini.

The question, Prudie, as you may have guessed, is: How much dough should I be shelling out? If I make the bartender mad, the vodka tonics start tasting less like vodka and more like tonic. And if Raoul doesn't get his just deserts, I'm stuck with a $50 bowl-cut. Lately I've been purposely overtipping, just to be safe. At least, I think I'm overtipping. Is five bucks extra enough for an eight block cab ride? The American economy, we're reminded frequently these days, is becoming increasingly service-oriented. And we know what that means. More tips.

Please help.

--Tip o' the Hat, the sober guy at the bar with the bad hair

Dear Tip,

Your letter was so charming that Prudie almost forgot it was about a problem. It was also a reminder that whereas the Hands Out Brigade used to be an issue mostly when traveling, it is now a fixture of everyday life. Prudie, for starters, thinks a $5 tip too extravagant for an eight block ride--unless, of course, the driver provided wonderful therapeutic advice. Most people Prudie has observed tipping taxi drivers tack on a couple of bucks, no matter what the meter. As for people you deal with regularly (like doormen, since you're a Manhattanite), grease their palms once every several encounters, or else you'll go crazy and broke. With people like the artiste Raoul, remain generous--as with the bartender--because some consequences of withholding tips are more noticeable than others. In other words, pick your spots, while at the same time remembering that many service people rely on tips to get by.