Lucy, Lemme 'Splain You Something

MUSIC +++ FILM +++ SPORT +++ PHOTO +++ LINK +++ POORLY REASONED POLITICAL OPINION AND STUPID JOKE

SPRT
Love January. Love it. The five feature headlines in my local sporting green today:
Super Bowl hype.
Tennis.
Memorabilia. (??)
Golf.
Professional lacrosse.

This ubiquity of terrible, terrible entertainment (plus, I'm a Warriors fan, if there can be such a thing) is almost cancelled out by snowboarding season. Sweet fuckin' action! Except that my weekends are spent here in town, waiting tables. And I'm new, so I've been getting screwed, bigtime, right and left. And yeah, my coworkers know I write this.

WRK
One thing about waitering (waitering? waiting? Only girls are "waitressing," and "serving" sounds like you're a fluffer) is you get the world's best five second conversations, like the single-serving friends in Fight Club. (A doctor tells Terrell Owens he can't play in the Super Bowl on his bad ankle. Owens says he wants a second opinion. So the doctor says, "Okay, you're an asshole.") And, as an even newer coworker pointed out -- and admittedly, his perspective is badly skewed by not drinking -- there's no better job for making you a racist. In a town deeply stricken by cultural diversity, I speak only from experience:

CHINESE: Tip a flat 8-10%, no matter how subtly, or boldly, you indicate that 15's pretty much the starting point. They also have a charming method of exclusively nonverbal interaction. They enjoy holding up dirty plates so you're forced to do extra shit at their whim, screwing up their own dining experience by throwing off your timing. They order by pointing at something somewhere on the menu, forcing you to bend and squint to see what they might possibly want. They will not look at you or in any way acknowledge your presence as they do these things, at least until they raise one hand as you take another table's order, with a look like you just peed on their car. Otherwise, if you were replaced by a six foot tall dildo, they would act exactly the same, except, perhaps, to forego that little remark on the way out.

BLACK: Yes, we have free refills. Yes, you can have separate checks (if I'm feeling generous.) Yes, I can bring two extra forks. No, our straws are not "messed up;" no, we do not have some different straws. Yes, I can bring one more fork. Yes, I can bring three more napkins. What, you needed to space this out at ten-second intervals? Try and avoid letting these people see you at all; if they do, they feel obliged to call you over for something else. They will start at 15%, but love to penalize for shit you can't control, to show they've got the power, for once. And you have to chase them down at the end of the meal because they try to pay at the host stand.

MEXICAN: Actually it's kind of cute, because they don't know how to dine out. So as often as not, they're shy about it: for instance, the free refills are like Christmas (which lasts like five weeks down there, right?) So what you usually get is a party of eight, totaling three appetizers (to share,) two entrees (to share,) plenty of bread and water refills to piss off your busser, who's also Mexican, and a bunch of soda refills because you can't resist their grateful stares. Generally they're very nice, and would certainly tip if they knew it was part of the process.

FRENCH: Ah, the French. Everyone loves the French. I speak French. I lived in France. You have to understand about the French: they love food and drink like life itself, and they gave up on any notion of a hard edge shortly after Napoleon. IF everything is the very finest, and IF everything is done just right, and IF you discuss their country, their language, and their politics intelligently and at great length, they're guaranteed the best time of their lives. By the time they leave, you'll hear their sincere thanks, shrug off their preposterous snobbery, and applaud yourself for spending that extra time schmoozing, when you should have been running table fourteen's lemon drops. Of course, it's only after they leave that you realize your new best friends still tip in Chinese.

AND A FRIENDLY NOTE TO EVERYONE: WE'RE TAXED ON SALES. So "not believing in" tipping, ala Reservoir Dogs, is one thing already... but if you order anything at all, the government assumes you ARE tipping, so if you don't, we LOSE money. (And by the way, due also to this custom of tipping, waiters are on the clock at a fraction of minimum wage almost everywhere in the US. And as for those 15 minute breaks every four hours that are required by law? Are you even serious?) Believe me, I've done it bunches of places, and waiting tables involves more intelligence, precision, dexterity, planning, athleticism, and high-speed tightrope walking than whatever job YOUR lazy ass does. So cut us a break.

Oh -- and you may not believe it, but as far as I can tell, the spitting, peeing, etc. in your food myth is just that, a myth.

But don't test us. We're passive-aggressive as shit.

THE DOLLAR FUND: For all you starving waiters at your less classy establishments -- let's just say, hypothetically, Chevy's Fresh Mex (neither Fresh nor Mex) -- I'm starting up a charity called The Dollar Fund. See, a lot of times, you get a bad tip that, for just a dollar more, would have been a good tip. (For instance, on a $21 check: $3 tip=13%; whereas, $4 tip=19%.) In these cases, The Dollar Fund will pick up those last 100 pennies.

Our funding comes from a tax on stupid people having babies.

MR

QWTOFDY
"Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls. We drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. DO NOT FUCK WITH US."
-Fight Club