The good morning, good night thread

[Ed]

$2.13 per hour

WTF? Is that even legal? How the hell can you live on that? Shelf-stackers in Tesco get way more than that here - I'm told the going rate is £10 ($14) per hour. I hope you get a decent amount in tips, though I can't imagine it makes up for such a crap wage. Unbelievable.

[fnord33]

Technically it is legal since we get tips. The minimum wage is 7 something per hour, but if you get tips the company you work for is only required to pay you 2.13. We also have to pay the bus boys and the bartenders a percentage of what we sell (not what we make). If I have 1 table and sell them 1,000 worth of food and wine I have to pay the busboys and bartenders 30.00 for making my drinks, running my food, resetting my tables, etc. whether or not they do anything for me and whether or not the table tips me at all. I never get a paycheck. The 2.13 doesn't even come close to paying my taxes. Luckily, I still make decent money (most of the time) because the national tip average is 20%. Every day that I work is a gamble. I could make anywhere from nothing to $250.00. I have even lost money by going into work before. It all depends on the generosity of the tables that sit in my section and the amount of money they spend on their meal. It really is a stupid system. Servers are paid nothing by their employers and encouraged to price gauge by the very guests that they are there to help. Still, it could be worse. As I understand it strippers actually have to pay the owner of the strip club to work there.     

[Ed]

Wow, that's a really cutthroat game, isn't it. We don't have the same kind of tipping culture over here, so you'll quite often find Brits abroad seem pretty mean when it comes to gratuities. I didn't even know you were supposed to tip bar staff until I found I couldn't get a second drink because I hadn't tipped the barman for the first one. Stupid system.

[delph_ambi]

It's outrageously hot here at the moment. Luckily I got up early: wrote a poem, played a few facebook Scrabble moves, did a practice French 'reading' exam paper and drew a set of thumbscrews (letter 'T' in the A-Z of Punishment and Torture I'm working on at the moment). Definitely flagging now. Off round daughter's house later for her 26th birthday 'do', then back here to melt. I fancy a Pimms.

[fnord33]

Yes, an accent is not going to do you any favors in a nice restaurant. There's always the question of whether they know better or not when a foreigner leaves a bad tip. I'm afraid that they rarely get the benefit of the doubt. I don't let stereotypes affect my service, but I'm in the minority. You might say that foreigners are to the American service industry what America is to foreign industry/other countries in general. Servers are a spiteful lot. Fair warning. The sad thing is that servers are the last group of people who are really motivated to make the customer happy and in return we get the worst treatment of any profession. Name one job where you can go to work and do a great job and your boss isn't obligated to pay you for your efforts. The people at Wal-Mart or Macys or whatever could care less if you are taken care of as long as they don't get themselves fired. Servers really want you to have a good time. They want to help you find those items on the menu which you will enjoy the most and show you a.good time. It's their job. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a nice young person brought to tears by the treatment that they receive from a guest. I've seen a 75 year old woman living out of her car get stiffed by rich assholes that spent more money on wine with their dinner than I spend on my mortgage. You learn a lot about people really fast and very little of it is good. None of the above is meant to be as preachy as it sounds. I could write a very long book about how much it sucks to be a server, but I've been doing it for the last 12 years. It's the best paying line of work that a non-educated person can find. That's why 80% of servers are either artists or college students. The other 20% are mentally ill.

If you really want to make the world a better place, tip really well. You would be amazed at how much a really good tip can mean to people. It's a life affirming gesture that creates a ripple of positivity that you can't even imagine. Imagine that you are feeling sick and a bunch of jerks come and beat the crap out of you. While you're down they come with chains that have hooks on the end and they put them through your flesh then they attach those chains to the back of their car and proceed to drag you through a parking lot filled with rusty razor blades, used syringes, vomit, broken glass, and all sorts of creepy crawlies while mongoloids walk along beside you and spit on you and hurl all the insults that they can come up with. Then, out of nowhere, some stranger appears and does something kind for you. That may sound melodramatic, but it's not much of an exaggeration. I'm going to stop rambling drunkenly now and go to bed. Sorry for droning on so long.     

[delboy]

Wow, I think I'll stop the moaning about my job, now!

Had a lie-in this morning. The intention was to get up at six and go for a good long ride before it got too hot. But I didn't wake until gone nine. Haven't slept that late for two years (since we got the dog). I guess the last two weeks are catching up on me.

On the bright side, spent the morning drinking coffee and practicing my guitar. Taking some lessons at the moment and haven't been able to focus too much in the weeks recently. Talking of focus, I got a small telescope for my birthday, and was enjoying my first ever views of Saturn and its rings and moons last night. It's awesome to actually see something that far away.

That A-Z sounds intriguing, Delph. Some of the tortures that man has devised for use against fellow man defy belief. What a strange species we are.

Derek

[Geoff_N]

The sun woke me up at 5 and possibly because I didn't have a drink last night, I felt alert. So I upped and rode my bike to Mold for a haircut. Round trip of 40 miles and back before lunch. Temp reached 27C by 2pm but I sat in the shade with a breeze and read a review copy of Sam Stone's latest vampire novel - Demon Dance.

I gave the barber a good tip

Geoff

[Ed]

Not your usual, "Don't try to stand up in a canoe," tip, I hope, Geoff

[Bec]

Our conservatory key would have to go missing just when we get some hot weather. Someone locked it and then didn't put the key back in the right place. Trouble is, my lettuces (the only plants I seem to be capable of growing) are doing nicely but really need watering and I can't get in to do the deed.

So my day is going to be spent hunting for the wretched key. Fun.

Hope everyone here is having a good weekend.

[Russell]

Yup Bec, the day is going well. Been to Pets at Home for supplies to Harvey, our Border Collie, will be happy. Also did Sainsburys. Nothing to do now except chill  until it is cool enough to cut the lawn.

We've no conservatory so no key problem.

Have a good one everybody.

Russell

[Caz]

I had an irate motorist shout a me today, "It's a pedestrian crossing" as I'd had the cheek, in his opinion, to ride my bike across it. I stopped, looked into the car, his wife wave a hand at me in an angry gesture and they drove off. I watched as they drove into the supermarket car-park and though that maybe I should follow them and point out a few facts.
Fact one. There is a little bike symbol as well as a pedestrian symbol on the crossing. Fact two. There must be half a dozen signs, some that even say cycle route, showing that the pavement is a shared between cyclists and pedestrians. Fact three. He's a dickhead who shouldn't be allowed on the road as he can't read or recognise basic symbols.
In the end I left him to his ignorance. It was too nice a day to waste any part of it on a fool.      

[Pharosian]

Just got back from a lovely week in Michigan with my family at a resort near the Sleeping Bear Dunes (I survived a week with both my parents and my in-laws and didn't go crazy). The weather was mostly fine, but quite chilly the first half of the week. My mother's birthday was on the 19th, and we had a really good day. The resort was very posh, but the so-called wireless internet access was unreliable. I'd have a connection for a few web pages, and then click the next link and the browser would just sit there spinning its little "loading" symbol. Apparently the management have known about this for two years and haven't managed to get it fixed. Maddening. So it's good to be back home.

The downside is that I have to go to work tomorrow.

[Ed]

Made my wife cry yesterday. She's been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so I stopped into the local garage to buy her some flowers and a tube of fruit pastilles on the way home. It was nothing worth shouting about, but as soon as she saw them she welled-up and threw her arms around me. It's amazing how something little like that can cheer a person up, isn't it?

Talking of weather, it's been a beautiful few days here. Hot and sunny. It's like this every year for a couple weeks in May, then it seems to rain until Christmas. Let's hope this year's the exception.

[Rev. Austin]

Spent yesterday afternoon in a beer garden (on Coke, though) then a big group of us went to Hull in the evening to watch Chris Morris' new film FOUR LIONS.  It was very good, not half as offensive as any of us thought it might be, and was actually quite sad. 

Been working on another novel today, and just passed the 41k mark and got to a deeply satisfying point when everything goes mental haha seems a shame to spend a sunny day in a small, hot study but oh well 

[Geoff_N]

and got to a deeply satisfying point when everything goes mental )

My kind of story 

Geoff