Thursday, February 19, 2015

Long Ago When Cash was King ©2015 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Ok, this episode of These American Servers™ is going to start with a couple of jokes that I hope you'll find somewhat amusing. The first one is included strictly for SEO purposes and it's filthy. The second one is more family-friendly and, for a clean joke that's probably 90 years old (even though it was new to me), pretty funny.
     These three guys, Adrian Peterson, Goran Dragic, and Stevie Wonder walk into a bar. The bar is called Champions League and it's famous for excellent  Pączki. But these guys just wanted to get their drink on, and so they did. For some reason, after awhile the conversation turned to who had the largest genitalia, everybody bragging and making claims. Eventually a way to settle the dispute was arrived at: Everyone would whip their junk out and set it on the bar for visual inspection (I guess Stevie'd just have to take someone's word for it).. At the exact moment the johnsons were arrayed on the counter, who should walk in but German Chancellor Angela Merkel? "Would you care for a menu this evening?" asked the hostess.
     "No thanks," replied the leader of unified, democratic Germany, in perfect English, "I'll just have that delicious-looking buffet!"
     Have you Amber Heard this one? An arial and an antenna got married. The ceremony itself was merely Ok, but the reception was amazing!

     I have this co-worker I like a lot. Her name's Merrie. Last night we both closed. After most of the crew was gone, Merrie and I each got two tables. My fourtop's bill was $216.00. We don't have to close out our credit cards immediately, so I merely glanced at the tip line on the voucher. The amount I saw was 30 dollars, which is not a disaster but I felt a little chintzy from people who were nice and seemed to have a really good dining experience but oh well. Plus I had a deuce that left me $20. Merrie didn't fare quite as well, getting about $37.00 total on her couple of tables she got during our late mini-pop. I told her I'd gotten a total of $50. Then when it was time to check out, I realized that the tip I had thought was $30 was actually $50. So instead of the 50 bucks I'd told Merrie I'd gotten, I actually harvested $70! But I kept my mouth shut about that realization.

     Are you familiar with a "fast-food" concept called Sonic®? Their servers are called car-hops. You park next to an intercom and place your order through it. A car-hop brings it out to you and asks if they can do anything else and negotiates payment. I rarely visit Sonic, but when I do, I always pay and tip in cash. One time I received a Sonic gift card for my birthday. There was nowhere on the voucher to leave a rip. I always have cash, so this was no problem to me. But last night the afore-mentioned Merrie told me that she'd taken her daughter to Sonic and paid with her Visa® debit card. For a good waitress who makes decent money, I'm often surprised by how Merrie never has any actual, you know, money with her. Merrie scrounged up some change from the floorboard and maybe got some jingle from her daughter  in order to leave something. But Sonic needs to put a tip line and place to total up the payment on their vouchers. I only go to Sonic once or twice a year (awesome banana splits!) so no big loss to them, but until they rectify the situation, I won't go there at all.

     I hope you had a happy Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras, and wish you a Happy Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year if you're like in Taiwan or something). Cheers!