It's my livelihood, and professional courtesy means I rarely, if ever, tip under 20%. That's on the high end, there are favorite places and staff I happily tip a little more, but I'd rather err on the side of generosity, but I get it, it's gotten away from itself a bit much, I mean, a dollar on a cup of coffee to go? That's 30%. And the etiquette on tipping on to go orders, it annoys me, in part because I have to tip out the kitchen on the order, but in other part because no one should be expected to tip on a to-go order. I generally try to fast forward the customer past that screen, forgetting to only when I'm tipping the kitchen on a few hundred dollars of to-go orders that I've received nothing on...
But I was in the valley the other day, with the boy, and we hit a fashionable little cafe, like a lot of places out here it's counter service, order at the till, give them your money, they give you your drinks (twist tops, open yourself) and bring the food to your table when it's ready. Take this wooden spoon with a number with you so they can find it.
There's a tipping option on the debit pay machine, and I'm a little shocked to notice that the preset tipping options are 15%, 20%, and 25%. I'm more than shocked, it's laughable, absurd, this is counter service, on a good day it's worth 10%, tops, and yet here they're raising the bar, a "cheapskate" can leave you 15% and still feel cheap when they've not even given them 10% worth of service. And here your tipping them up front, before any service other than retail has been rendered. It's offensive. I have to wonder what staff here leave when they go to a restaurant and have food and drink and menu's brought to them, drinks made especially for them, et cetera, et cetera, but out here, there's a large and entirely clueless body of people that have suddenly on the recommendation of their accountants found themselves in possession of restaurants without the faintest clue as to how they should be run.
Tipping: There can be too much of a good thing.
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There's been a tragedy, it's all over the news, 24/7. the spectacle of grief, young lives cut short, an accident.
There's fundraising and in-depth profiles of the victims, pictures at the scene, interviews with spokespeople for the survivors, people that knew them, family, friends.
Commonplace utterances, things like "We'll miss them" and "They brightened our lives" and other such banalities, they shouldn't publish this, air it, but the news, they're in the business of tragedy, of grief, and this is great. The "human" angle, how ordinary people cope in the face of extraordinary adversity, imagine, it could be you, your loved ones, your family, wife, child, husband...
There's fundraising, because, well, because money mitigates grief, huge sums are raised, the community comes together, rallies, people from all around the world donate, exceeding all reasonable expectations, the survivors, they can afford the best of medical care, the fatalities, well, they can have statues built in their honour, the line between victim and hero is blurred, no longer are they victims, they're martyrs, heroes, inspirations to us all...
Now, on the news, darker tales emerging, people "exploiting" the tragedy, selling merchandise, twee sentiments and support emblazoned on Tee Shirts and Ball-Caps, without proper accreditation or generous charitable donation of royalties, the media is outraged, this tragedy, it was theirs alone, for the amusement of their viewers, their sponsorship, their paid adverts, the thought that anyone else might stick a finger in their pie, well, it's incomprehensible, villains, indignation, disgrace, scandalous, more news, more sponsorship, more ads sold, buy, buy, buy, life insurance, extended medical coverage, no one rejected...
There's been a tragedy. It's called The News.
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Thought I was done with this shit, it's been years.
The computer, nagging me to update it, stop my routine of hibernation, restart it, download all the new and latest updates...
And the nagging turns to bullying, and the computer interrupts me to threaten a restart in "choose my time", 4 hours, 10 minutes, and eventually just restarts without warning when I'm off grabbing another coffee......
And, the slow rebooting, 30 minutes before I see the "Starting Windows" screen, another 30 before the login screen....login, and another hour before my desktop appears, slowly, slowly loading, these updates, a slightly more modern or contemporary graphic layout, that is all. And then begin the errors. Every loading application throws them up, I need touch nothing, the update, the Microsoft Kill signal, it's fucked everything. 4 reboots later, 10 hours later, still trying to reboot to safe mode, roll back this fuckery, and there's no saving this, and I console myself with the thought that Gates, that asshole, is too busy saving Africa with my involuntary investment in his shit operating system...
I thought I was done with it all, thought in 20 plus years of computers they'd have figured this out, but they still haven't, or maybe they have and this kill signal they send out is part of the planned obsolescence, another perfectly good PC in the trash so Gates can send my next donation to Africa....
Fucking Bloody Hell
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And, with interest following the story of the Alberta Farmer who shot at people on his property that were in the act of robbing him, and after slight investigation (read: Angry Farmer Confesses to shooting at thieves) the police intervene to arrest the farmer...
Uh-huh.
Now I get that the Police don't want people taking the law into their own hands. But I also get that the "Sit back and let them rob you" recommendation isn't a hell of an approach either, and given the general level of interest police show in these cases (none), given the fact that they don't even manage to recover and return even 10% of stolen property, and that's of what is reported - easily 90% of property crimes go unreported - because we're all familiar with how interested the police are in these situations - well, it seems a bit absurd to demand that he allow himself to be robbed and trust the police to solve it, return his property and bring the thieves to justice. Given, as well, the rural nature of farms, which imply even slower response times (if the police indeed bother to respond) - well...
I'm curious as to what develops here.
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