What makes it lucky?

Like most of the sayings that you can recall in your head, you don't know where they came from, they are just there. For example..."Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" or "a watched pot never boils", but one that popped back in my mind today as I headed in from the spot where I park my car at work was; "Find a penny, pick it up, and the rest of the day you will have good luck."

I would suppose that this is one of those sayings that has been around for quite some time in the big scheme of things. I say that because it involves a penny...who would think today about a penny being the harbinger of "luck." Now days, for the saying to mean much it would probably have to say something like; "Find a $1.00, pick it up, and the rest of the day you will have...a dollar in your pocket." Now, I'm not against bending down to pick up a piece of money I find lying around, but chances are, if it is a penny, I'm the one that threw it down in the first place. I am well known in my little circle of one of tossing pennies haphazardly about to spread as much luck for others as I can.

Pennys have become about as useful in our monetary system as the proverbial "screen door on a submarine" or any other more colorful euphemisms you can think of. Try using a penny (or several of them) to pay for something today. Unless you put six of them together, buying a piece of gum is out. Forget about finding a "gumball machine" to take your pennies also. And that pretty much limits your commodities available with less than 10 cents worth of pennies. Watch the expression on the clerks face if you try to count out more than 10 to 20 cents worth of pennies to them. Now before any of you die-hard penny slot players remind me about the hours of joy you can have sitting in front of a one-armed bandit dropping in your pennies, just remember, I don't care.

Our government can argue legislation to give and take away just about anything in our society, but I would suspect the debate to do away with the penny would be one for the ages. But how much does it cost to administer the infrastructure to accommodate the penny? Couldn't that money be used instead to fund the NEA so they can give money to an "artist" who paints with poop?

Back to my original thought, of why should it be lucky to pick up a penny. It hasn't done much for me in my pocket when it was there to start with, so bending to pick it up and put one back in my pocket wouldn't carry much mystical powers of the all-powerful luck I think. Now a dime, that's a whooole different story.

Tipping? Is it a city in China?

"Too Insure Prompt Service", at least that's what I thought "tipping" always meant. But the mystical "tip" is something that has taken on a life of its own. Now I'm all for rewarding effort in any arena, but a tip should be just that, "a reward". Animal trainers rarely "reward" their subject for sitting and playing dead rather than fetching the stick, Crimestoppers is not going to pay you a "reward" for giving them a tip that doesn't pan out, and unless you're a Canadian Ice Dancing team, you are not going to be "rewarded" with top marks at the Olympics for stumbling and falling down during your performance.

So why is it that merely placing an order in a restaurant requires me to "reward" the employee that brings that order to me? Am I not paying fair-market value for that order to start with? In any other sales environment, I am paying the proportionate amount of overhead to cover items such as salary for the particular item that I purchase. Now I fully expect that I may be inundated with responses from waitpersons telling me how hard they work for very little pay...granted, being paid less than minimum wage for serving food should not be allowed. But we have taken the reward system of tipping and bastardized it to the point where I am vilified for not laying down at least a couple of dollars on the table after my meal, regardless of the level of service I received.

As the customer, I should not be required to directly fund an employee's salary. That is why there is such a thing as overhead, which is figured in the actual price I pay. I should be free to offer a gratuity of my own choosing. A gratuity is a small amount of money given for services rendered. But services rendered requires you to go over and above simply taking my order and managing not to spill it on me when you bring it to me from the kitchen.

But let's step aside for a moment...why is there a waiting list for top wait jobs in many restaurants, clubs, casino's, etc.? Because a "good" waitperson can make a KILLING! It's not hard to do...be attentive, anticipate needs, and simply come back around every once in a while and ask; "can I get you anything else?" Being attentive means noticing that when you brought my food I didn't have anything to eat it with besides the utensils I was born with. Being attentive is not even bothering to check if I need more tea...assume that I do; I will tell you if I don't want any more. Anticipate the needs, like bringing ketchup when I order something with fries (or whatever condiment is appropriate wherever you are [which should be ketchup regardless, but that's a whole other blog]), or if I ask for extra lemon in my tea when I first place my order that I might expect some more when and if you come to fill my glass up again.

Being a waitperson is not hard...and I don't mean it's not hard work, obviously it is...but just having common sense and thinking of how you would like to be waited on if the roles were reversed should go a long way in letting you know how the job should be done.

I have gone as far as leaving a 2-cent tip before, rather than nothing at all, just so the waitperson gets the message. I've gone to the manager to give them my tip because they were the one that happened to smile as they walked past my table, not bothering to stop themselves if they noticed something was amiss...thinking maybe it would give them a hint about their establishment's service. I've left very generous tips as much as 30-40% at times when I received exceptional service, and I've obviously never gone back to a restaurant where the lack of service made that decision for me.

Tipping should be plain and simple, as a waitperson, bust your tail as many do, and you will have money falling out of your pockets at the end of the night...or continue to be a mediocre or failing waitperson and you will have only your own complaints to line your pockets with.

But then again, that's just my 4 cents worth.