Colors

White Glove

The term "white glove" can be used to indicate a first-class service and high-end treatment or something available only to the wealthy. It comes from the now mostly-lost tradition of those providing service to the wealthy wearing white gloves.

How It's Used

“A few Manhattan buildings, most of them exclusive co-ops, have endeavored to short-circuit the social anxiety of tipping their staffs by organizing holiday tipping pools, which are then distributed to the staff according to seniority. At 10 Gracie Square, a white-glove building on the Upper East Side, the average donation to the fund is around $5,000.”

“'On a lot of items, Amazon is not making much margin,' says Darren Chervitz, director of research at the Jacob Internet Fund (JAMFX), which owns eBay shares but not Amazon. Chervitz recently purchased a big-screen television on Amazon.com that was roughly $1,000 cheaper than rivals were offering, and he got white-glove delivery and installation. For that, he loves his Amazon experience. But not the stock. 'The consumer can always be a click away from your competitor, so it is a never-ending game of sacrificing profit to make the consumer happy,' he says.”

“Several European investors were also apparent victims. Bramdean Alternatives in the U.K. said it had more than 9% of its portfolio invested in Madoff funds. Geneva-based Banque Benedict Hentsch, a white-glove private bank, said it is exposed for $47.5 million.”

"Ah, the glory days of air travel in the 1950s, when Howard Hughes's TWA and Juan Trippe's Pan American lifted Hollywood stars and business titans across continents and even oceans in white-glove style. There was plenty of legroom, nary a security hassle and planeloads of excitement when people could buy a ticket to defy gravity and arrive in new cities in hours instead of days."

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