Society

Tipping must die

August 11, 2013

If there’s no tipping, then how will the servers be motivated to do a good job?

When you step back and think about this for a second, it’s actually kind of hilarious. The person asking this question would have a full-time job as a software developer, or lawyer, or journalist, or doctor, always working to a pay rate that was negotiated ahead of time. We would never suggest that a code jockey or surgeon would be motivated to do better work by the thought that their clients, if pleased with the service, might toss in a few extra dollars.

~ Jay Porter from, http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant-part-3/

Hear! Hear! You should go read that whole series by Porter.

Then you should start talking about how we should include the cost of providing service in the price of the menu items, or include a line-item percentage service charge on the bill. Pay EVERYONE who works in the restaurant a fair, living wage.

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Timeless message for teens

May 26, 2013

The New Zealand Herald reports, Kiwi principal sends teen message viral… 53 years on

According to a 2010 post on the Pierce County Tribune website, the words come from a letter by Judge Phillip B. Gilliam of Denver, Colorado, published on December 17, 1959, which explains why the advice sounds somewhat dated.

…

Almost 15,000 people shared the link on their own Facebook profiles, attracting the attention of American news website the Huffington Post and fuelling the internet sensation.

Words for teenagers everyone…

Always we hear the cry from teenagers, ‘What can we do, where can we go?’

My answer is this: Go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons, and after you’ve finished, read a book.

Your town does not owe you recreational facilities and your parents do not owe you fun.

The world does not owe you a living, you owe the world something.

You owe it your time, energy and talent so that no one will be at war, in poverty or sick and lonely again.

In other words, grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone.

Start behaving like a responsible person.

You are important and you are needed.

It’s too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday.

Someday is now and that somebody is you.

~ Judge Phillip B. Gilliam of Denver, Colorado, published on December 17, 1959

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Can we have a little less irony?

April 20, 2013

Throughout history, irony has served useful purposes, like providing a rhetorical outlet for unspoken societal tensions. But our contemporary ironic mode is somehow deeper; it has leaked from the realm of rhetoric into life itself. This ironic ethos can lead to a vacuity and vapidity of the individual and collective psyche.

~ Christy Wampole from, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/

slip:4unyho1.

I’m not concerned with — or perhaps, “I’m not interested in spending time on” — the stylistic ironies which are common today. I see no point in assaulting things like “hipster” fashion, when every generation criticizes the fashion of the next. I seriously say: Sure, fine, whatever.

However, it does seem that there is a lot of “shallow” out there; Shallow thinking in particular. That scares the crap out of me.

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Three Waves of Massive Change in Human Society

March 29, 2013

The Republicans fondly remember 1860, when the common man stood behind a plow, and the Democrats fondly remember 1960, when the common man stood behind a stamping machine. … the Republicans shovel money at farmers, endorse prayer in school, and tell us to worship our heroes fighting for manifest destiny, and the Democrats shovel money at unionized teachers, endorse government run mass transit, and tell us to worship dense urban living.

~ Patrick Clark from, http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/12/one-wave-behind/

slip:4upooe1.

From a great piece about the waves of change in society; You might want to bone up on your Alvin Toffler too…

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