Reblog: Tip Your Server and Save The World

Image from newyorktimes.com

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” – Dave Barry

Just yesterday I cited William Pitt. But goddamn if he hasn’t hit a grand slam two days in a row. This is a great, great article that will hit home if you or someone you love currently waits tables, or works in any kind of service occupation, or ever has done so. (I have.) The whole article is here, well worth a read, but here are some excerpts.

Tip Your Server and Save The World

Image from abcnews.com

By now, you’ve certainly heard the story of the nasty note given to an Applebee’s waitress, who lost her job because she posted the note online. The waitress, one Chelsea Welch of St. Louis, penned an explanation of the incident, and a manifesto for everyone who works service and deals with this kind of galloping obnoxiousness for less than minimum wage every single day.

A slice of Americana, in an age when service industry jobs are the best many can hope for, in a country where Right To Work laws make service employees as expendable as toilet paper. This is happening where you live every day.

There are two types of people in America: those who have worked in the service industry, and those who have not. Those who have know this story like the back of their hand, because they have lived it. Those who haven’t are, virtually without exception, the reason stories like this exist.

Worry about drones, about lawyers for the president arguing they can kill Americans anywhere and for basically any reason, worry about all of that and everything else besides…but real change comes in small doses, and actual kindness happens within reach of your arm.

Want to help the workers? The economy? The whole country?

Tip your server, don’t be a jackass about it, and worry about the rest of the world after you do what is right within reach of your arm. Maybe, if you’re really interested in helping your community, work towards establishing higher wages for the people who bring you food when you go out to eat; there are thousands of them right where you live. First things first; if you shaft the person making slave wages who feeds you and then go home to whine on Facebook about the poor, poor people from somewhere else, you’re as much a part of the problem as the people in Washington dropping bombs and deploying drones.

All politics is local.