Christmas tips - postmen, dustmen, deliveries etc?

Doc_N

Just curious.......for those of us who choose to tip dustmen, postmen etc at Christmas (and yes, I know, they're just doing their jobs and nobody tips the till operators in Tesco!) what's reckoned to be a reasonable amount? I'll kick off with £25 for the postman and £25 for the guys who collect the rubbish, but I'm thinking that might now be a bit on the low side - though we do give them stuff like chocolates and ice creams occasionally during the rest of the year as a token of appreciation.

On-the-coast

Seems high to me…. (Baa-humbug and all that)
£10 would be generous round here. 

hugheskevi

£25 per 'dustman' is going to rack up quickly, taking into account the 2+ guys who move the bins, the driver, and the different crews who collect general rubbish, recycling, and green waste.

Post would be much cheaper though - our deliveries are so infrequent we are unlikely to see our postie in the two weeks before Christmas   

Brie

I don't tip the post delivery people or those that collect my garbage as there's no guarantee from one week to the next who will be there collecting/delivering or whether things actually get delivered/collected!!  I don't blame them for being short staffed (by about 35% in this area) and thus me having sporadic service but can't ensure I reward those who do the work most the time and get it right.  Today's post for 3 houses was all delivered to the one in the middle (expect it saved a bit of time doing so).

I have the last couple of years given the guys that did our garden one each of those big tins of chocs (£5 each?).  They were genuinely surprised and pleased.  But the chap running the business decided to cut out his personal customers in preference for commercial work for large firms.  And the replacement I found hasn't shown up for the last 3 booked times so won't be getting anything.

Florenceem

The dustmen do a job that is smelly and hard work. There are a crew of three who do my road - a driver and 2 men moving bins. I am going to give them £20 each.

-taff

I give the binmen on both collections a tub of chocolates and ten quid to the milkman and window cleaner

greyteam1959

Well I don't give anything to anybody. 
However a friend of mine is a bin man.
Him and his crew get many many hundreds of pounds worth of goods at Christmas. 
Plus many hundreds of £££ of actual cash gifts.
The downside to this is that he has to write about 400 Christmas cards to people on his round!!

Floss

I give both bin lorry crews something to share - this year it's a bag of Quality Street.  During Covid I left packets of individual wrapped biscuits & packs of soft drinks in a bag on top of my bins.

Milkie & Postie will get also get a bag of QS.

marcia_

 I usually by a bottle for bin men and the postie. Bin men say they drink it at their Christmas night out 

twopenny

I have very little recycling and put it in easy to pick up groups so they can be quick and get round fast.
But there maybe a tip this year as the current crew take my elderly disabled neighbours bins right up the drive to her front door. Usually something I do.
They also return mine to the side of the driveway where I left them and not across the drive so I have to move them before I can get out.

After a postie who would throw the letters on the porch mat I now have a good one who says he will always put them in the letterbox because that's his job. So there's likely something for him.

But it's a good point to wait and see if it's the same people on the Christmas shift because holidays are where it can go pear shaped.

£25 is a goodly sum. It really depends what your own income is. That would be a week's food for me.

The_Unready

A tenner for Postie and a tenner for the newspaper lad/lass. Nowt for the refuse collectors, though, as our bins are left with our neighbours' bins at the end of a 100 yard long drive, and I can't  be sure that any tips would still be there by the time the refuse collectors turn up! ☹️