Remember when we asked about how much you tip in non-service restaurants and cafes? A lot of you weighed in on the issue. Our poll indicated that about 70% of you don’t tip in these situations. We had an interesting discussion about the obligation of the customer in situations like this to which Dan from Eppie’s added:
I can’t speak for other quick service/counter service joints, but here’s what’s going on at Eppie’s. We started out without a tip line on the cc receipt. We added it after we’d been open several months b/c a lot of folks were asking how they could leave tips on their credit cards. However, by no means should YOU feel obliged to tip just b/c there’s a line on the receipt. It’s not on there to pressure folks into tipping. Nor does the staff take umbrage if you scratch through the tip line or put a zero in there. Does the staff enjoy getting the tips? Of course. It’s a nice bonus at the end of a busy shift. But we certainly don’t expect everyone to tip.
To my enjoyment, I found a fantastic New York Times article by Paul Wachter, relevantly titled “Why Tip?” In the article, you learn some very interesting things behind the relatively recent phenomenon of tipping.
Here are the interesting facts (i.e. things like laws against tipping), straight up, for you to share with your non-cVillain friends:
1. The great irony with tipping is that it is supposed to improve service by awarding good servers and punishing bad ones, but tips have little correlation with quality of service.
2. Tipping didn’t really start in the US until 1897, when the New York Times identified its presence in the States as an “aristocratic” tradition that spread like “evil insects and weeds.”
3. In 1904, there was an anti-tipping society of over 100,000 members. Tipping was, ironically, opposed by labor unions, and thought to create a new class of laborers “fawning for favors.”
4. There were actually laws against tipping for a short while.
5. As Americans got wealthier and traveled to Europe, tipping was adopted by people in the US to mirror the aristocrats of the more cultured Europe.
6. 80% of Americans prefer tipping to a service fee.
7. Economists can’t explain tipping. Does this strike anyone as a big problem? If you can’t explain tipping, how can you explain a financial crisis and a $700 billion bailout?
Go ahead and read the article if you have time. Otherwise, do you think we missed any big “facts” about tipping?
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Related posts:
- Tipping in Restaurants and Cafes without Servers
- 8 Things You Don’t Ask People Touring Charlottesville
- Do You Support Legalized Marijuana?
Not tipping would probably mean that restaurants would have to pay wages to their staff, which in turn would result in higher set prices. At least the tipping structure gives the tipper the flexibility of determining what the server should get
If tipping where gone tomorrow:
bad places would die faster
kitchen workers would be paid better.
Very attractive young people would would not work with food or drink for extra cash.
Bartenders would to only pay attention to the hotties.
Suits and cougars would have trouble getting a drink.
I worked very very very briefly as a waiter in an ice-cream restaurant patronized largely by old people ordering soup. The average tip was either 1) a shiny Kennedy half-dollar, or 2) a $1.00 lottery ticket.
You don’t tip me, I’m not gonna get you a drink as fast as the person who just did.
@1: that’s a good point, but having been on the receiving end of that equation, it’s not always better that way!
i’ve noticed that areas where a large amount of tourism comes from foreign countries do as the Europeans do and automatically add a gratuity to the check, sometimes “hiding” it under “bread and water” charges as seen in France and Italy. i don’t necessarily disagree with this policy if it’s well-understood by EVERYONE involved. i’ve run into both customer and server who didn’t know it was going on and the reactions from each were never what i would call appropriate.
@2:
there are a lot of people who have a standard tip amount and never deviate, no matter what size the tab. in Blacksburg there were lots of regular customers that the servers would fight about having to take due to this. no matter how good the service or how much the tab, the tip was $2.00.
@1 idiots & aholes should not have flexibility in determining other people’s wages.
@7: trust me, I agree.
Since the point of the article was “don’t tip”, my argument was just that if people didn’t tip, it’d probably wouldn’t be affordable to eat out and that the current system at least keeps prices way lower than they would be in a no tip world.
I’m also with Shen: in a world with no tips, service would be a lot worse everywhere
ya this was more about why tipping came about and the initial reactions to it which i thought were very interesting.. people saw it as anti-american, elitist, for needy people who weren’t self-reliant. etc etc
ah, so it started out being an elitist handout thing & the lawmakers made mandatory by giving servers a lower minimum wage. thanks, washingotn.
If tips don’t get better soon, I’ll be stripping.
If there wasn’t tipping I’m not sure that everything would get significantly more expensive. If prices were increase 18% you would pay more taxes and that would cost even more. Not all the increase would go to the server and servers would have to pay all the taxes they owe.
I much prefer the built-in service charge, except when the service is exceptionally crappy. Who wants to try to figure out what percentage to add in when they’re half-crocked? Or when a party splits the bill six ways and everyone has to figure out what their portion of the tip is? Big hassle, IMO.
Tips downtown don’t pay the dividends they used to. Not so long ago, it was standard to tip approx. 40-50%, on the safe assumption that this would mean at least one free drink or a check-reduction the next and next and next time for a regular. Now of course this was bad for restaurant owners, but then again it kept one returning to the same waitresses/bars, and drinking more generally. Today, that sort of tip, which is still standard for me and i’m sure for many of you, gets you… precisely… zip-dick-squat-nothing.
@11: i will be lowering my tips from now on.
Yup. And being deliberately slow getting me a drink cause they don’t like the size of my last tip is a good way to reduce their future tips. What if I was short on cash that night? Bit shortsighted, what?
@14
a tour of the premises ain’t quite the same as moving in.
/just sayin’
Today, that sort of tip, which is still standard for me and i’m sure for many of you, gets you… precisely… zip-dick-squat-nothing.
You’re hanging out at the wrong bars. shen made it clear that she was given a “talking to” by her employer about giving away free drinks, so she is an acceptable exception, but at any other bar I frequent, I get at least 1 free drink per visit. Then again, I drink a lot.
i am going to the wrong bars, no question. i remember Buddha staff got slammed and some fired for giving away free drinks a while back. it seems like staff ought to have discretion, a few free drinks per shift—it certainly encourages one to stay/come-back.
And, given that most bars charged 11 bucks for a martini that costs the bar about 14 cents to produce….
If = part of a bartender’s job description is to be friendly & courteous, make a good drink to the customer’s specs and serve it in a timely manner in the same order it was placed
Then = the purpose of a tip could be construed as a “thank you”
If = a tip is given to ensure future free drinks or reduced checks
Then = is it still a tip, or is it a bribe?
//just curious
it’s a free-market exchange.
staff runs the risk in advance of payment, in exchange for under-the-table payoff at bar-owner’s expense.
if it were as you suggest, the tip should come BEFORE the service,
as to guarantee good service by buying the staffer’s attentions.
like ostentatious f*ckheads who wave a fifty at the waitress, saying ‘we anticipate preferrment’
Tipping more money so that you can spend less money next time is some pretty flawed logic.
Tips should just be a thank you but if it’s a big Thank you, I will give you better service next time.It’s my way of thanking you for thanking me so nicely. See, it’s all about manners. Yeah.
generally you spend the same amount of money and get the same number of drinks.
Just under my flawed system, the Old Way as at Miller’s, more goes to the waitress and less to the owner.
Lemme break it down, succinct-like. Tips are how you buy my favor. More you give me, more attention you get. If it were a set service fee, you would get no preference, no extra attention than anyone else.
/Cuz we are living in a material world and I am a material girl.
“Or when a party splits the bill six ways and everyone has to figure out what their portion of the tip is? ”
if you can figure out how much your portion of the bill is, you should be able to figure out what your portion of the tip is. the same as if you weren’t in a group. that’s what’s super about percentages.
@25 That’s why I don’t like going out with large groups of people. Most of them don’t understand that concept. And I stare at them in disbelief. I mean it’s no calculus, hell you can even turn it into equivalent fractions if percentages make your head hurt. Part/Whole. Instead I part wanting to have put a hole in my head.
If you’re out with a party, the restaurant usually auto-grats you. So you just divide the auto-grat by the number of people in the party. Not rocket science.
When you’re with a group, you just divide it evenly and make up the difference by buying people drinks at the bar later.
Except for those who have absolutely no concept of there being anything to make up.
What if there is no autograt? People seem to get goofy over just dividing it two ways sometimes. I mentioned this in the other thread, but one of my pet peeves is if you figure out your portion including tip, and your friend says “just put the rest on my card”… then that friend is required to tip on the entire bill, not just on “the rest”. Otherwise your tip for the server just gets put towards the bill.
@27 place where i used to work, it had to be a party of 8. on a weekend night, i once had a 7-top of small children from the ghetto (taking up 2 of my 3 tables). they kept asking for lemons and sugar packets to make their own lemonade. obviously, i got about a penny. i don’t know why they didn’t just go to wendy’s.
@29 some dude owes me a drink from about 26 months ago. sooner or later, i will collect.
@30 which is tricky for the server. how do you say “tip on the entire bill you idiot”? if it’s your friend, just tell him.
what do waitstaff and bartenders typically give to the bar-back and kitchen/bus-staff, dishwashers?
do they just take a flat percentage of their tips, or do they take a flat amount per-customer and keep the ‘overages’ because they ‘earned’ the extra-per-customer amount by being especially engratiating and swell?
flat percentage of SALES.
@33: Sales. So if you dick over your server/bartender you actually cost them money.
hey, i’m the idiot who still tips 40–50% downtown no matter what.
only one getting dicked over here is me.
@33, Depends on how well the bar-backs and dishwahers do, how busy it was, blah. But on average, they get around 10 percent of tips. But like I said, depends. All restaurants have different systems for support staff. And if the server is extra swell, they’ll never leave out the people who help them BE swell.
Anyone else had to have the “no you don’t tip on tax” discussion on the auto grat?
Also when I waited tables had the drunk suits tip after the auto grad, which is nice.
See? Different system @34, @35.
i suppose if i drank more i could tip less.
feel like extra tip is paying rent for sucking on my gin and hanging around
instead of pounding a few quick shooters then leaving early with some tart.
Double grats RULE.
My friend went out to dinner the other night and had her baby counted as the sixth person for an automatic gratuity added onto parties of six or more thing. Which was funny since all the baby ate was breastmilk.
@42 that mother should have been charged with a corkage fee
@42 i counted babies too. and people who just stopped by to visit.
btw, a cakeage fee is the most brilliant invention.
7. Economists can’t explain tipping. Does this strike anyone as a big problem? If you can’t explain tipping, how can you explain a financial crisis and a $700 billion bailout?
Don’t know why, but this made me laugh out loud for the first time in two days.
I tip when I can afford it and I tip when I’ve received good service. (Which means the men I’ve dated only got the minimum… Zing!) Bartenders, where I’m from, always gave me free drinks because I tipped well and wasn’t a douche about maybe having to wait a few more seconds for their attention. Besides, who in bloody hell is in such a hurry to drink?
Regardless, I think the whole auto-grat thing is absurd, but that’s only because I’m from a small town, I’m sure. I’d pay for my first drink and tip big because usually I’ll hang around for several. But tipping big where I’m from meant $5 or $6 since I could get martinis, long island iced teas, and bacardi and cokes for under $5. And that’s not even at happy hour prices, either.
Don’t worry about tipping in this town because I can’t afford to go out with the tumescent prices of everything.
Trying to tipping philosophies, it just sounds so very… self-righteous. There’s almost a social Keeping-Up-With-The-Joneses feel to it. It’s like sex, do it how you want to. If at all. Or whenever you can afford it (zing!).
/guarantees that she’s only amusing herself.
clearly you don’t know echo.
or orchid…
or oy.
and who could forget Ms. Floozy
@48 i didn’t want to have to self-identify; thanks for doing it for me
Yeah!… I made honor roll.
orchid, oy, Floozy, caroline and I. Now that sounds like a party. Tell me when and where and I’ll bring beer, wine, tequila and whatever Johnnie Walker I have left.
@46
amusing me also, BBT.
“I tip when I can afford it”
If you can’t afford to tip, then you shouldn’t eat out
@55 – just what I said to UVA freshmen when they visited my bar in the 80’s. If ya gotta figure out whether to order that last pitcher of beer or tip your waitress, UM, friggin’ tip her, people!
@33: (and that’s about where i stopped readin, sorry)…
in my professional experience, the waitstaff is generally paid 2.13 an hour, plus tips.
that includes set-up and closing, during which time there are no customers.
when there are paying customers(at thier discretion) they tip. of the tips recieved, 10% goes to the bar, 10% goes to the support.
both bartenders and support make several times more an hour than 2.13.
the taxes, however, (in my experience) are paid on the full amount, by the server. so the bartender and the support are getting tipped out (regardless of thier performance) earning a higher wage, and not paying the taxes on thier tips- the server is.
yippee!! so yeah, unlike shen, i ain’t gonna strip- but you won’t be seeing me if ya’lls answer to “economic hard times” is
“let’s just tip less”.
/guess what- we still have to pay the same bills increasing that you do…
//do you ever get annoyed at those compupterized corporate voice thingies when they can’t understand what you said? – yeah, now imagine not having to tip because service was rendered by an aoutomated voice/server system.
///press one for steak. “here is your medium-rare snake. thank-you.”
i wrote something both informative and brilliant, with a heavy dose of humor about an hour ago… it didn’t post.
if you have a beef with tipping, my advice:
a. stay home
b. imagina super new nano technologica; server that needs no tip.
“press one if you would like a steak”
15 minutes later, hungry and looking forward to your experiece, you receive your order.
“here is your snake, medium rare. dial one for more options. the requested voice mailbox is full.”…..
/maybe tipping humans who make 2.13/hr is’nt such a bad option.
If tips don’t get better soon, I’ll be stripping.
You just pretty much guaranteed you’ll never get another tip in this town ever again.
/until you start stripping, that is
i wrote something both informative and brilliant, with a heavy dose of humor about an hour ago… it didn’t post.
more than one slashy in a post makes baby jeebus sad…
/he’s good with one slashy tho
Dammit!
TAKE IT OFF, BABY!!!
@53…Echo… a veritable line up indeed…. my parents would be so proud to know that my expensive education has finally paid dividends and I am on ‘The List’ of the biggest pissheads in Cville… tearing up right now.
Oy, they said you’re not allowed in the Club anymore. You gotta stop touching the dancers.
@63: I know. I feel so honored. I’m preparing my speech/toast right now.
echo keeps half of charlottesville’s bars in business. He shouls be awarded his own pimp cup that he can carry around as he wanders from bar to bar.
Was just thinking of a buddy of mine, bartender at a watering-hole on the corner, former roommate, who cleared about 68,000 a year. this is while i was, with an advanced degree, paying half the rent and earning roughly 28K after 7 years in a corporate job requiring a degree, doing research and writing and so on.
i assume this is exceptional, and never the case for wait-staff. Still, i did spend two years trying desperately to scrounge up a few bucks to put into the kitty on ‘euro-beer and steak-night’ when he’d just peel off a fifty from his wad of tip-cash.
@66: I’m just doing my part to stimulate the local economy.
I don’t think any bartenders around here are making $68K right now.
This was three years ago, and on the Corner, where the captive audience and the Daddy’s-Credit-Card-factor plays in. He would routinely receive hundred-dollar tips. I suppose downtown with all the rampant greed of owners and massive overpopulation of massively overpriced bars, one m,ight expect a bar-to-bar deflation in/of profit and consequently staff-earning.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/newmoviespeeches/moviespeechwallstreet1144.mp3
can we bring up european tourists? they have to know that tipping 15-20% is pretty standard in the states, right? apparently not because last night i waited on a german family and i got $3 on a $123 tab. FUCK. THAT. I usually don’t expect a decent tip from foreigners, but less than 3%!?!?
and i don’t believe that any bartenders on the corner make 68 gees a year(even three years ago), that’s just ridiculous. where did said roomie work?
not comfy disclosing that here, but an eliewood bar. salary plus tips. pissed me off immeasurably.
@71. the germans are the worst.
what is even more apalling, is that thier native money is worth a crap ton (not quite as much of a crap ton lately, but still worth) more than ours. so tip!
i’ve even waited on a couple two days in a row-sat themselves, i remembered thier drink orders, gave them good service in spite of the lackluster tip the day before, they left less.
i vowed if they came in a third day, no one would wait on them.
Why would it piss anyone off that a bartender makes more than 68k a year? Probably really earned it b/c they’d have to go really fast in a packed solid bar consistently to pull those kindof tips. Its hard physical labor. They don’t get the same societal esteem and praise that white collar careers carry with some circles, and it can be hard hours for people with kids — all the more reason for restaurant owners to pay/let them earn those kindof tips, so that they can keep good workers.
And foreigners that look shifty and likely to employ willful blindness to our tipping customs in America should just be auto-gratted
And “kind of” is 2 words.
@74
not pissed off at him, i was pissed off because i took a bullshit cubicle job instead of bar-backing for him. i was positively delighted he was raking it in and that he was having a jolly time doing it. he earned and deserved every penny. best and jolliest roommate ever.
@76
/ i vary on ‘kind of’/'kindof’. by use, ‘a kind of dog’ differs from ‘kindof cretinous’? same as ’sortof’ versus ’sort of’. but i’m sure it’s a vulgarisation by decayed use… common enuf on the interweb and in TMs, dialogues in novels?
but either way, in @75 should have been ‘kind of’
http://xkcd.com/326/
Economists work in a “soft” science—basically a social science that wraps itself math. That they are unable to come to a conclusion about matters economic is a basic feature of the field of economics.
/ducks and runs away from the Econ profs
wraps itself in math, that is
http://xkcd.com/451/
Atreyu: don’t forget this gem.
Oooh, good one
Hope you’re having loads of fun Stanley… like we are only at fucking war with some bunch of weirds from NOVA and you are trading XKCD funnies with Atreyu… just carry the fuck on dude. I’m strategizing… something based around sending bp over to their site to spew shit on all their threads at 3am… cunning I know.
@85: For the record, I was also mocking economists. I can multi-task, you know.
Stan…..Wanking AND mocking economists…. you go boy… pull the Popes hat off for me.
pull the Popes hat off for me.
I don’t know what this means. Is it supposed to sound dirty, or does it just sound dirty?
But Posner’s a genius, no?
@89: He’s certainly prolific, and he’s said to write some of the most readable and interesting decisions. Beyond that, I don’t know much about the guy. Most economists do a lot of hand-waving. Does he do a lot of hand-waving?
/we are soooooo busted for being OFF TOPIC
Stanley… shame on you. To ‘pull the Popes hat off’ is a euphemism for wanking. Did you donate your brain cells to the Palin Fund?
@91: Dang. That’s quite the zinger. One might even say it’s a Ratzinger.
He applies economic analysis to social phenomena, now that I think about, he’s not really an economist.
@93: He gets lumped in with the Chicago School crowd, due to his time at that U. plus his Law and Economics stuff. Probably a fair lumping, on my drive-by reading.
It’s interesting but soft science as well at the end of the day. We really need a superman-economic-monetary-genius hybrid to come and rescue us, so that we can all tip really really well (on topic).
Q: Did you hear what the leper said to the prostitute?
Keep the tip
And just like that we are magically back on topic.. Stanley you are a master of your craft.
That craft being bating.
I’m a master—-. Oh. You already made the joke. Dangit. NO TIP FOR YOU!
Why do you give Floozy the shaft?
@101 MD…ERR..excuse me Dude… do you see me complaining?
I alway tip 20% because it is so easily calculated. Multiply total by ten percent and then double it. I still think business should pay their help – I don`t tip at Walmart.
@85 – ex-fucking-secuse me? where the fuck do you get off, flooz????
@104, i don’t want to be a jerk, but you’re picking a fight with a comment from eleven days ago.
@105… give her a break parlie… there was a big word in there …. she confessed on the binge drinking thread that she can’t count above 6 so we have to be kind to the ones that got dropped on their heads as babies.
Here it is….
@105
Cvillains know better than most that the liver can only process the toxic at a certain rate. Having read a score of Floozy-comments, one assumes BP had to wait a couple days for bio-chemical health to return to her before absorbing more venom. Understandable.
/i don’t get the sedulous uncharitably towards BP. I knows y’all luuuuurrrrrrrrv HM tho!!!
@107 Thanks, Flooz, and early on in the same thread, I believe your “contribution” was
“People that don’t drink creep me the fuck out. I do admittedly keep one around to occasionally drive my pickled ass home…. It’s a bit like having an icky old fleece in the trunk… it’s there when you need it but you wouldn’t wear it unless you’re really fucking freezing… and you chuck it back in the trunk as soon as possible. And on that note I would like to declare today to be ANALOGY DAY… posts to contain lots of ‘It’s a bit like….’
/ Attack me you teetotallers and face my cirrhotic wrath.”
@108 I guess I just elicit a certain amount of passion in some people. Mea culpa. My own personal crown of thorns to bear.
/later, ya’ll, much later
@105 – and there goes Parlie, doing the math, again
@108 you’re one of the few then.
Backthefuckup Planet…..
And your specific problem with my post is what exactly ? If you are going to critically repost something, at least have the ability to rip it to shreds with some intellectual finesse. Did I fail, like you, to understand the difference between 0 an 10? Awwwwww…I know… the darn binary system can be a bitch at the best of times.
Your adversarial post #104 (careful… that’s a scary 10 and a 4 all squished up together…stay with me now…) was according to parlie ‘picking a fight’ so you are either a really slow learner or fucking stupid. Rub my e-Ass with sandpaper and I will snark you back with no mercy… keep it coming because I have no qualms about doing it. Unlike you I am not using the board as an emotional crutch, merely a source of amusement and casual sex.
Dear Dear Floozy, by way of explanation, obviously, it was meant as a joke, albeit a bad one and not nearly as startling epic as your verbiage, since the “0″ appears in the column below the “5+” instead of ahead of the “1″. As for emotional crutches, I’m thinking a good therapist might be in your future. Using the board for casual sex? Not so much.
/yet another confirmation that I’m glad to be me
oh hey flooze, that casual sex thing, don’t forget our meetup time!!
/hugsandkisses
BP you should really enter this competition. No really. http://www.2camels.com/international-imitation-hemingway-competition.php. 1990 winner…
ACROSS THE SUBURBS AND INTO THE EXPRESS LANE
by Scott Stavrou (originally published in United Airlines Hemispheres Magazine
“I was deep in the rear advance of the long line at the Express Lane at the Von’s in the low brown hills on the outskirts of town. You couldn’t say it was in town because it was a suburb but we didn’t know that when we lease-optioned the condo and it felt like a town to me. Maybe that’s what a suburb did.
I had driven my hunter green sport utility vehicle there to hunt for some milk of the lower fat variety, some swordfish and a stuffed dog. I knew it would be dangerous during the running of the commuters but I had been a member of the elite Von’s Club for some time so I had lost the fear. I had tried to find it at the lost and found but all they had there was a generation. Someone said it was perdue but maybe he was just chicken. It was tough to know and maybe I was not tender enough to understand.
As the front lines advanced I executed a simple veronica and just missed the charge of a soccer mom and her troops. When I saw The National Enquirer I knew my time was near. The Enquirer was like death. You tried not to think about it but it was always there waiting for you right above the spearmint Tic Tacs and the ChapSticks of various flavors and there was not a thing you could do about it. You might find out that Elvis was seen at Le Sélect or even that they had discovered Hemingway’s Things To Do Lists and would publish them in the spring. That’s how it was in the Express Lane in suburbia only we didn’t know it was any different than anywhere else. Maybe suburbia was what we had instead of God.
I finished off a fiasco of chianti and reached into the J. Crew safari coat I wore on Fridays of the casual sort and retrieved my Von’s Club Card. I counted my items again. There were three and it made me think of the number of serial ports on my Toshiba laptop. I had heard some men had three but that was probably in the city. In the suburbs you really only needed two or at least that’s what we told ourselves then.
I tried not to notice the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition until I remembered that my wife was at aerobics. The model was blonde. The Swedes were very popular in those days. Beside her picture was a story about Robert Cohn fighting for the over-45 middleweight championship at the Y. I was wondering if I had seen the girl of the cover on Baywatch or maybe during happy hour at Harry’s Bar & American Grill.
When my turn came I was all alone on a small rise at the front facing the cold hard stare of the young checkout girl in a uniform of the same color as the Italians. They were damned fine chaps but I was not sure if it was politically correct to say so.
I placed the milk of the lower fat variety, all two-and-a-half pounds of swordfish and the stuffed dog on the swift moving blackness of the conveyor belt that would have reminded me of the trout streams of the Irati if my wife had not decided to take the kids to Disney World instead of Spain last year. Disney World was like Harry’s, it was swell and good but not Spain. Most places weren’t. The señorita of the checkout had to call for a price check on the stuffed dog and it was something like the road to hell.
“Is that all?” she said in that manner some checkout girls with the rank of Assistant Manager will use. It was a kind of dialect but I understood.
“Isn’t it pretty to think so, my little rabbit?” I was pleased not to have left the stuffed dog unbought.
“Paper or plastic?”
It was a question I hated because I never knew how you were supposed to answer. My wife always knew but her cell phone would be turned off. For a moment I felt the weight of the whole environment on my shoulders and it was maybe the toughest thing I ever did.
“Nada. Nada y nada y pues nada,” I said, as I pulled my ATM card through the machine and walked out the automatic sliding doors into the warm suburban air without even waiting for my receipt. I felt some remorse about leaving the receipt with its redeemable coupons behind but it was a casualty of the battle that you had to pay to win the war.
I knew there would be other purchases and other opportunities to wrestle with weighty environmental value decisions but that day I was sure that I was a man who knew how to shop. There is never any end to suburbia and the memory of each person who lives there differs from that of any other. Or is it just the same. I would ask my wife. She would know. Maybe I could page her.”
Ok..now you again.
Fuck you taliesin
You and the floozy you rode in on. I’m tired of trying to be nice to you “ladeez”, fuck you in the nicest possible way.
114, that was a winner? really?
just fucking say it: low fat milk. masturbate with your syntax on your own time.
Stop bullying Backup Planet. I have never seen her write anything that should solicit uninhibited wrath like such, so if you know her in the real world and have beef with her there, save it for dirty looks in the grocery store. Otherwise, stop using your internet anonymity to be a cunt.
@119
i’m sorry, but as much as i love Floozy and Taleisin’s venom (because i have a bucket of my own), i am entirely with BP and Pink Panther on this one. Seems an unfortunate choice of target at the least, and an unfortunate use of your wit at best.
You’ve wasted a great deal of time lambasting a decent, committed and regular poster, obviously supportive and affectionately disposed towards us and Cvillain, when all that magnificent bile could have been tossed (like shit from monkeys) at the subjects of the post, aat vanity or pretension in the community, at bad ideas and bad restaurants and bad people and bad behaviors in town, or just to the general good of humor for the sake of humor and enlightening the board.
Only as an example, I invited you by name to scatter sunshine at HM for throwing a tantrum about his own bungled business deal—anent a potential mockery of 1) poor form 2) bratty nouveau riche 3) a failing to uphold southern gentlemanly values and virtues inculcated at Woodberry, UVA and by default in his quasi-aristocratic arrogation to himself of Carter’s Grove an architectural embodiement of dignity and personal reserve, 4) a disappointment in the global comportment of our newet and most favoured wealth-spalsher… and you stroked his hair and patted his collar down and played succubus to him instead him instead. If vanity, petulance, poor sportsmanship and bad hair doesn’t fire you up, I can’t imagine why enthusiastic and generous and gentle posting would so much? I loathe sincerity in most forms myself, but have a certain regard for those inclined to it.
Parlie is clearly the cleverest lad we have here, and rarely tosses someone off just to toss them off.
Could i be the whipping-boy instead, if such and offer would help you to accept my begging you to leave BP alone and not so determinedly drive her off this website? Same of BBT, whom i assume you’ll target nextly now that you’ve driven poor BP to quit/mcquit?
@120
‘newest and most favoured wealth-splasher’ was an honest typo.
the rest were more or less deliberate hasty sloppiness.
It smells bitchy in here. Woooo!
@122
don’t it though?
i love reading Floozy’s stuff and get a sortof quasi-sexual ‘frisson’ when she calls me ‘myopic twat’. And this new candid revelation from her that ‘casual sex’ is available on this website and from her directly can only intrigue.
Just can’t bear to read cruelty to the sweet kid posting as BP, and again no doubt nextly BBT. Taleisin just confuses me, and posts generally as irrelevantly as BP is accused of doing, but she does it with so much acidity and vim and splashy erudition that it passes quite well here in spite of inscrutability to avowed and unregenerate lowbrows like me.
How are you, Shen? We did half of a thread on unfortunate happenings to you late last week… hope the guy in question fell down some metal stairs into sheep-dung (sheep is the new black), and that you are feeling much better.
I learned this weekend that when boys say the L-word, they are LYING. That’s a tip for you ladies.
this weekend AGAIN? same boy or is this the MBA you spoke of in the other thread as visiting here from his multi-gazillion job shuffling paper for Halliburton and Enron?
i’m not one to spend much time apologizing for offensive things i didn’t do, but i didn’t say anything about bp. and my @114 refers to @115, not @ sweet caroline.
now to go wash all this dried blood off my hands. gross!
@126, @120
my point exactly. your escutcheon remains unblemished (or whatever, etc.).
….see Otter, you knew about the casual sex thing all along, and as regards the rest of your rant, I have no reason to be anything other than nice to BBT and Halsey, because they have never picked a fight with me. So here’s another deliciously relevant quote for you on this wet and dreary afternoon…
yeah, charming or tedious! do the math, somebody.
@128
i’ve spent too much time with Wilde to see that as other than a provacation and a disendearment after his chosen manner, but see your point and his, of course. You are yourself charming but violent, with a splendid gift for both overstatement and low-english as high, and loveable always.
didn’t realize there’d been fight-picking. in any case, reacting just to seeming cruelty SUBSEQUENT to that unseen gauntlet-throw. what myself found tedious was that it seemed never to end, except now ultimately that the poor old shoe has been tossed out the Cvillain window.
/i tend myself to the tedious, as any HM you pass will avow.
“i tend myself to the tedious”
/as does my job—had enuf of making america great through commerce. audi.
proving the point:
avow or aver, your choice.
Dearest Otter….I aver that you often times appear to type with your face… are you perhaps momentarily passing out from corporate-prison induced boredom, forehead banging around on the keyboard and inadvertently hitting ‘Submit Comment’ with your ear? Seriously? I had to go and put a wet towel on my forehead after reading #130. Do you have a fever?
@124 duh.
@124: I had a girlfriend in college who didn’t care if a guy meant it. She just wanted to hear it. I wonder if she still feels that way…
@133
sorry floozy—i have both hands bandaged after rushing into a burning building to save a tow-headed lad and his yorkie puppy from the encroaching inferno. I am forced now to dictate my replies to an earnest yooveeeyay sophomore gal (typist’s note: with a huge rack and loose morals, and a ‘penchant’ for geezers) who takes frequent liberties with my otherwise hemingway-esque stripped and lucid prose style.
She thinks it makes me sound ‘distinguished’ and ’scholarly’, and i frequently observe her (when i can see more than the top of her head) scurrying through my prep-school Virgil crib-sheets and old William F. Buckley Jr. columns to ‘punch-up the language’.
As a former soldier, my speech and writing is on its own muscular and direct. Like this:
/i have a fever in my loins for you, sultry bitch with the fire in your eyes.
@124, 134. really?!(never woulda guessed- wait, did you mean lying like fibbing or lying like horizontal hoping to …)?
@135 if she is, i know a guy in town who said he couldn’t have a long term relationship with me because he couldn’t lie to me, so maybe they should meet up.
All this talk of Hemingway and Wilde and loins and loose morals is kind of turning me on…
/am currently drained by not just by aforementioned vampiric work schedule but by the soul-sucking ignorance and aloofness of the patrons of my work establishment, the seemingly apathetic-towards-those-lesser-than-them-on-the-salary-food-chain administrators, and debt-collection agencies otherwise I’d whole-heartedly love to just write and write, more for my entertainment than those who frequent this place.
/I’m a good girl, I am
/ Debt collector: “I’m sorry miss, but I can’t take it personally the hardships you’re currently enduring.”
@138 Not turned on by Shen’s on-going romantic challenges though… I feel you, darling.
/To add to the Wilde quotations: Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Hey BBT…. if you are really in the poop with debt collection agency, you need to know how to handle them. They are rewarded for getting you to pay anything, so offer them a tiny biweekly payment until you get back on your feet… it’s like throwing a chicken nugget at a lion but they will then move on because any payment is better than nothing and they can tick a box on their daily sheet saying ‘payment plan in place’ and move on.
Propose something to them and tell them you have worked out your budget and this is what they are getting rather than have them tell you what they want… you may be surprised.
HTH
@137 i hope you appreciated his honesty. better than being lied to for years.
@140 Thanks for the advice, Floozy. I did try that approach with them but they said that I was two days away from the agency taking “any and all legal means” to collect this debt, so that kind of scared the poo out of me. Also, the debt they are collecting are my state taxes (insert collective gasp of horror and anxiety at my anarchical attempt at evasion….not). I knew it had to be paid sooner or later and they were adament that there is no payment plan option with this type of collection. Maybe had I contacted the state before they put in the debt… Seriously has been a tough year.
/still maintain that I know there are many people worse off than me but still…tough.
@141 The succinct jaded tone in that statement makes me wish I had an open bar, bittersweet flourless chocolate cake with a semi-sweet ganache (made one recently, fucking orgasm in a springform), and an endless playlist of alternating exceedingly good bad 80s pop-tarts like Debbie Gibson and Kylie Minogue and 80s hair-flare power ballads to which I’d invite all the scorned and embittered women I know (and don’t know, like some of you) to drink, eat, and sing til the cracks in our hearts are, at teh very least, filled in if not healed.
@141: oh, i did. i actually took it as a compliment.
/and relieved to have honesty rather than lies.
to which I’d invite all the scorned and embittered women I know
And embittered men, we’re just left to hang? Such a fucking cruel trick of pop society to think that men dont go through the same shit women do. Said it before and I’ll say it again and again… heartbreak is a human experience. Consider your xx chromosome’s title to it revoked. Seriously.
Jesus Christ.
@142…oh shit….in fact I’m officially upgrading that oh shit to oh fucking shit… yes state taxes are collected rather more aggressively than a JCPenney credit card debt…. I hear Mexico is darling this time of year.
@145 Absolutely, completely unintentional to exclude embittered men. Honestly. And I’m an honest woman. But what I said was all those I know. Sorry to say that I don’t know any embittered men. Mostly because I don’t know any men. Those I do know, I now knew, and they were the ones who sort of embittered me. Is it too late to strike that from the record and amend that I’d invite anyone scorned and embittered?
/Really, very sorry. Usually am very prone to empathy.
/Jesus, I’ve never been made to feel so guilty by a stranger since I stole a piece of gum when I was three.
/btw, that was the first and last time I ever stole, if that has any bearing on the current indiscretion.
As humans, we are all, ALL, hopelessly flawed. I vote for forgiveness and celebration of said flaws, whatever they may be. So dont be to hard on yourself just cause I gotta call it as I see it.
/your guilt has no currency here. it is unnecessary…
It’s my belief that those who accept that they are flawed (and if they are so lucky, recognise what those flaws are) are more complete (although maybe not so much at peace) than those who deny that there is nothing wrong.
I concur with your vote for forgiveness and said celebration.
Your calling it as you see it was more than just brutal honesty… It was completely unexpected, the vehement umbrage literally rolled off the monitor in waves. Also a little judging the book by its cover. Easily done given the nature of the internet.
/unnecessary perhaps but I’ve just never inherently been the person you seemingly called out. it was a bit of a shock.
/but…glad it’s cleared up.
Darren Hoyt made each of us in his own image. The more human we become, the less flawed. You’ve got it bass-ackwards. Less animal, more human. More human, more like Darren Hoyt. Humanity, humane, etc. It is our nature to tend towards this imitative perfection, towards Darren Hoyt, not otherwise. Not hopelessly, as hope is definitionally inherent. Not all flawed, merely not all striving adequately or successfully.
get your shit straight bizotch.
Maybe I’m a Hoyteist.
By his grace. You are growing into wisdom, my poppet.
Those words… Reminded of some faded teacher-student fantasy.
As someone aptly stated, I think too much. Way too much.
B-Yo and BBT should hook up. Mmmm…menage à flaw.
@154 LOL