Snow, slop, tips and trials

[pseydtonne]

Oh emm Wendell Gee I feel meta today. I had to do something to relax my muscles: I can only shovel for fifteen minutes at a stretch, moving the spongecake of foot-deep and rain soaked snow, before needing an hour of break time. I finally cleared the steps to the house and made 50% of a sidewalk channel, but I still haven't gotten to my car nor its driveway. Thus, howdy!

I'm shoveling as fast as I can before the sun goes down. I would like to rescue adaptively and take her and get her dear rat Diesel to the vet in Woburn. I fear it's going to be five or six before I have such a path. [Update: by the time I posted this, Diesel had passed on. He will be honored with a Viking burial on the Charles tomorrow.]

I was rolling through Your webcomic is bad and you should feel bad. You can figure out the blog's premise rather readily. The blog stopped around October because the author seems to be out of steam.

It's clear how he ran out of things to talk about. There were certain comics he really hated and then... he was finished and went to sleep. He hates Dominic Deegan, he hates Shortpacked!, he hates Ctrl-Alt-Del. Then he bags on each one again. He gets so out of ideas that he makes fun of his own ironofan comic, Dominic Durgan. Yeah, that's when you're tapped like a frat party keg floating in a swimming pool.

His writing skill is lacking, but mostly because he's writing while still in vitriol mode. He uses the word "shitty" as almost his only adjective, like a punk band chanting 1-2-3-4 not to get themselves on the beat but because it's what the other punk bands do. If he could get out of that rut, his signal would be a lot stronger.

He can make good points, good enough to get me thinking. It's tempting to start blogging YouTube reviews -- collections of interesting stuff I found. Then again I'm not on the cutting edge of YouTube, so nothing would be that timely.

One last note before I go: it's really strange reading this BBC News comment section about tipping. One third is Britons saying "I don't tip because it encourages underpaying a worker and besides they get enough". The next third is Americans trying to explain that waitstaff get paid $2.15 per hour legally in the U.S. thus tipping is essential for some people to live. The last third are folks from other nations with our system of underpaid, screwed over waiterstaff.

It made me angry to see people defend not tipping. I'm a massive tipper -- 20% is my baseline. The minimum wage in the U.S. is ridiculously bad but the lower waitstaff wage has not gone up in more than a decade. That means these people cannot afford to drive to work if I don't tip. If I can't afford to tip, I don't go out.

Would it be better if we paid waitstaff adult wages? Of course! It's not happening anytime soon, though: most restaurants barely pull together the rent and food costs. Mandating a living wage would mean the end of half the restaurants that aren't fast food.

I remember hanging out with some Mancunians in Montreal during a Sunday snow storm back in 1998. We had some dessert at a tiny place in the Old Town and the lads weren't planning to tip. I had to explain, what severe volume, that we were almost obligated to tip. I wound up putting together a large tip from my own money to avoid us looking like European tourists.

I have heard their lame arguments before: "they should get better jobs;" "I won't be coming back anyway;" "they're supposed to give good service -- why should I pay them for doing their jobs?" This obligation always seemed concrete to me: you tip anyone that could poison your food and you tip more when someone makes your time out of the house more enjoyable. You all read my story about duking the stewardess on the flight from San Francisco to Sydney because she upgraded my seat, so I realize I'm being redundant. It still galls me to hear such noise.

Then again, it's Britons complaining. In America, most teenagers wind up in a service job instead of winding up in the military. This is our training about life: the pay sucks, the work hurts, and you have to take shit from everyone. You either find something you like about it or you are a sadist and go into management. They seem to think waitstaff are subhuman and treat them accordingly. I engage with everyone I meet, so I assume the person slinging plates is getting a far more raw deal than I get so I give. Does that make me insane?

-one tenth of the bill then added to itself, Dante

Comments

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Does that make me insane?

No.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Germans are the worst, even worse than the British. The traditional form of tipping in Germany is to take the coin change and hand it personally to your waiter, saying "Das ist für Sie" (This is for you) as if it were the most magnanimous gift ever. The more passive-aggressive way is to hand the waiter a bill and specify exactly how much you want to pay. Now, the largest coin is two Euro, so that can add up to some real money, especially in a cafe, but most often not. Since, until recently with the advent of the ein-Euro-Job, waiter's jobs in Germany have paid well, it's not so horrible. But what's horrid is when Germans abroad make like they don't know the local customs. When my mother used to wait tables in Palm Beach, some German millionaire once handed her a quarter saying, "This is for you". She handed it back to him and gave him a brief lecture that this was not acceptable behavior in the U.S. When I was in Germany, I would use the local tipping procedures, but always give more than was customary, because as a former waiter I simply could not get over the idea that if you leave a tip the money has to have some heft.

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

I spent four summers waitressing, and I feel half-seriously that everyone should work in a restaurant, if you're going to eat much in them. It was quite difficult and educational on several levels.

So I do the minimum 15% for half-assed service, and significantly more for really good service.

[proudlyfallen.livejournal.com]

20% is a baseline, yeah. I've tipped 10% before, but for really shitty service. If someone is really good, or if it's a place I eat alot, I tend to tip more, sometimes insanely more. Back when I was dating the "bad Jason", we ate at the Friendly's in Hadley a few times a week. It was just habit. And most of the waiters/waiteresses in there knew us well enough after a while that, more often than not, they'd just bring over a water for me and a Coke for him without even coming over to ask. Now, this was before my brother and me both went to college, so when I asked my father for money for dinner, he'd hand me a $20. That $20 got left on the table every time, even though the meal we usually got came to $11.84. (Yes, I still remember that. I have no idea why.)

The "good Jason" (the one I'm dating now) has a story about going out to eat with his brother... it was a pretty nice restaurant, but the waitress they had seemed to be constantly there. They asked about it, and it turned out whoever assigned tables had only given her the one table, since she was new. After they finished and paid, they left a $100 bill on the table as a tip. Not something you could do all that often, I know, but it's a nice story, and I'm proud to be dating someone who would do that. Because yes, I judge guys I go out to dinner with based on how much they tip.