Short version, cutting to the punchline as quickly as possible:
My mother-in-law sent us a plush nativity, complete with wise men and a camel. Its job was to sit under the tree and get played with.
About five years ago my son was playing with them, and from the other room I heard “Wap! Him dead! Now my take camel!”
That poor wise man was apparently unwise enough to get ambushed by some other toy (a Hamtaro, if memory serves.)
Or waiter. Or sushi-chef.
I’ve only got anecdotal evidence supporting this, but the impression I get is that with tighter economic times people are eating out a little less, and tipping a LOT less. The restaurant managers I’ve spoken to (I know a few, yes) have said that average tips have dropped from around 18% to around 10%.
Sure, sure… a lot of us look at tipping as a way to reward excellent service, and will withhold a good tip from a lousy waiter or waitress. But that’s not what’s happening here. What’s happening is that a lot of us don’t want to give up eating out, so we’re cutting back on our tips.
Two things:
1) Be the guy (or gal) who tips well. Start at 20% and round up. Factor that into your budgeting.
2) Crummy service? A low tip just says “I’m cheap.” Unless the service is absolutely execrable, it’s not really your job to discipline your server. Tip your server well, and then call the manager over and complain. If it was really that bad you’ll probably come out further ahead than if you’d skimped on the tip. If not, well… you don’t want to eat there again.
My friend Bob has a great policy when he eats out with a large group. He hands the unsuspecting server a $20 at the beginning of the ordering process and says “I want to make sure this is a great experience for everybody… including you.” At the end of the meal he strongarms the rest of us into tipping a solid 20%. Funny thing… when Bob’s around we ALWAYS have a great time at the restaurant.
But you don’t have to go the extra mile. Just make sure you don’t skimp. Waitresses and waiters are feeling the crunch at least as badly as the rest of us are.
If you’ve been following the news, there are lots of people screaming about how incredibly expensive the stimulus package was, and how it didn’t create enough jobs for the money spent.
I’m not a fan of stimulus, nor big government, but I do know how to do math like a capitalist. An employee costs a lot more than just salary, and I haven’t seen much reporting in this vein.
Let’s say you’ve been given stimulus money to hire somebody. GREAT! Do you start writing them paychecks immediately? No. You find work for them to do. Let’s go on to say that the employee is (as many of them are reported to have been) a construction worker. How much is it going to cost to put that person to work? Well… you have to have land on which they can put a building, materials to put up the building with, and tools for them to use. Some of this you might already have, but with stimulus money you’re going to go buy MORE of it so you can grow your business and (here’s another form of the word) STIMULATE the economy as a result.
Pulling numbers out of my butt: if twenty guys can build a subdivision of 40 homes in a year, and the homes cost $120,000 each to build, you’ve spent just short of five million dollars creating 20 jobs, at a cost of $240,000 per job.
You also created forty homes (in a depressed real-estate market that is saturated with defaults, foreclosures, and short sales, but I digress…)
Also, somebody out there sold you a whole mess of lumber, nails, concrete, PVC, etc.
Sure, if all we wanted to do was feed people tax money we could do it much more efficiently by just dumping the entire stimulus package into the existing welfare system. But that doesn’t stimulate the economy, and it provides incentives for the wrong sort of behavior.
Again, let me say that I’m not a fan of the stimulus package, not as implemented, and not in principle. But the math I use as a good capitalist who wants to be able to create jobs tells me that the critics of the stimulus package are being very loudly dishonest in their criticism.
(Note: If you gave me $240,000 and told me to create as many jobs as I could, I would hire a writer, two line-artists, and a colorist and create graphic novels out the wazoo. If the books sold well, I’d be able to keep my employees. If not, well… they worked for a year, and we all had a good time with taxpayer money. DO NOT SEND ME TAX DOLLARS IT WILL ONLY END IN TEARS.)
I ran sound for a comedy troupe called “The Garrens” back in the mid-90’s, and one of their largest performances was to be held at a Brigham Young University freshman orientation event. There were about 2,000 kids (even then they looked like kids to me) in attendance.
There was a dance before the show, and the huge floor area was packed. The DJ’s stage was in the middle of it all, and I was up there with him setting up the gear for The Garrens while he dropped jams, or mixes, or beats, or whatever you kids call that stuff. The heads and shoulders of 2,000 freshmen were a tumultous, rhythmic sea that came up to my knees.
Then the DJ dropped in “Macarena,” and there was order in the chaos. Like iron filings in Hell’s own magnetic field, 2,000 freshmen aligned themselves and oscillated in unison.
It was amazing, and just a little frightening. This was the sort of power supervillians crave, and it was being used as a party game.