Excerpt from Doormen, by Peter Bearman (University of Chicago Press)

"The dilemma tenants face is clear enough. The expectation is that doormen ought to get a bonus. So should the super. The conflicts when one comes to think about them can often be deep... It is both a gift, a way of saying thanks, an obligation, and yet also a sign of expected reciprocal attention and an expression of social power. These contradictory meanings make the bonus difficult to talk about, and tenants often squirm in their seats (or cognitively) as they try to describe just what it means…

"From seeing the bonus as compensation for past or future service, or avoidance of a shakedown, columnists and pundits seemed trapped in an interpretive frame that encodes the bonus as an economic transaction. It is really a social transaction, in which ambiguity over valuation and ambiguity over timing and value of the return gift are the central elements… [This] will also help us to understand why many people lie when they report how much they give, often reporting less rather than more. "