I'm still feeling utterly miserable about the elections, amongst other things. Yesterday, I should have phoned my local MP or branch and joined in with the process of recovery, indefatigably knocking on doors, putting forward the case for a hard-left turn, persuading people to see the light.
Instead, I bought a massive sack of Marmite-infused cashew nuts (thus proving that industrial food can be a good thing), a box set of all the decent-ish Star Trek films (1-6) and went to bed at 7 p.m., to catch up on the weekend's newspapers and some sleep. I didn't even listed to any news later than Channel 4's at 7, which is unprecedented for me: usually I take in The World Tonight on Radio 4 from 10-10.30, then turn over to Newsnight from 10.30-11.20, then the midnight news on Radio 4. Sometimes I'll even listen to the World Service news at 1 a.m too. That's how I know stuff.
By the way: if you eat at Café Rouge or Bella Italia, make sure you give the staff a tip in cash, but be careful. These restaurants, and many others, keep the tips to make the staff pay up to the minimum wage if you pay by card, and they're sacking staff who mention what's going on. From October, staff will legally be paid the minimum wage (currently £5.72 for over-21s) without counting tips. Of course, in a civilised society, everybody would be paid enough without tips, but being a waiter is a horrible job (as I know from experience), and they deserve something extra.
(title of the post is from 1984)
8 comments:
Did you hear Milliband on Today this morning? I thought he sounded impassioned and eloquent (until I think mistakenly blurting out that Alan Johnson 'still is the front runner'). But then the Today analysis proclaimed it an 'agonised' performance.
I thought he was quite good too, despite his bollocks about New Labour being the best of everything. 'Agonised' was a very poor choice of word.
The US have it right with their treatment of waiters and their tipping style. Over there, waiters are actually treated with a bit of respect, it's a valued job and therefore you get excellent and helpful ones. The quality of service is light years ahead of over here. At the end of your meal, you have no qualms tipping (although that is done by card)
True - but in most places, American waiters aren't paid - the tip is their only income. Mean, isn't it. That's why they're so nice to you.
I found the American tipping system very difficult to get my head around. It's ok in resturants, that works pretty much the same as in the UK, but for bars the system seems to penalise you if you want to do a pub crawl. Which when you've only got a few days or a week in a city is what you want to do.
It was explained to me that you give about a dollar a drink minimum but not necessarily for every drink, which when you're only having one drink then moving on makes it very expensive. This was back in 1999 backpacking on a tight budget.
In the end it just made it easy to not bother tipping half the time cause we weren't going back. But I made me feel bad that they weren't getting paid.
In bars it is a bit tricky, agreed. I frequented a few when I was over there last summer (watching Euro 2008, amusingly) and I just tended to chuck a few dollars in the bartenders way upon exiting.
In terms of finances, better to drink at one establishment than pub crawl I think.
Six comments and not one has picked up on the fact that you think the first six Star Trek films a decent-ish. They are woeful-ish at best.
As for tips I have always assumed that if you tip on your card then your waiter/waitress isn't going to see it. It takes several days to get from your bank to the restaurant's bank so it clearly isn't going to get split up at the end of the shift.
The Motion Picture - decent. The Wrath of Khan - good. Search For Spock - good idea, bad film. IV - nice but mediocre. V - poor, VI - awful. But I don't feel the need to defend them - it's more than about quality or the lack thereof.
Post a Comment