Waiters

Holding to my values can be an exceedingly difficult task. One value I'd like to call my own is "vote with your money". Purveyors of this phrase suggest that if you dislike the behavior of a business, you can facilitate its failure by not spending your money there.

To understand why I have difficulty holding to my values, the fact must be understood that I find food to be extraordinarily pleasing. Gluttony is such a major part of my life that if the Lord hadn't blessed me with high metabolism, my personal gravitational pull would have disrupted the earth's orbit by now.

Many years ago, some brilliant chap devised a scheme to make a business that appeals directly to people like me. He called his creation a "restaurant" and he themed it entirely around food. The finest chefs in the land were brought forth and spent their days concocting substances designed to provide maximum happiness to any human who inserted them into his mouth and proceeded to consume them. Truly there never was a greater source of joy among all the people.
As with all good things, though, these restaurants began to be corrupted. For when the unwashed plebeians entered, they came bearing disturbing ideas. The heretical notion was put forth that the experience surrounding the eating was of greater importance than the eating itself, and fearing the wrath of the masses, the restaurants succumbed.

One of the proclivities among these miscreants was laziness: another--inefficiency. The real horror came when they combined the two.

"Why should we get our own drinks," they asked, "when another person can get them for us."
"Is it truly necessary that we order our food when we're ready? Or should we wait for a person who isn't even sharing our meal?"

And worst of all. "I really hate having to make the decision on when to leave. Wouldn't it be best if some uninterested party made that decision for us?"

And thus the waiter was conceived.

The purpose of this waiter is to force those who come seeking delicious nourishment to wait. Would you like a drink? You'd better wait for the waiter to come inquire of you which liquid you covet. Even though you could reach the drink dispenser yourself with a single-digit number of steps. Have you beheld the food that you would like to order? Well, you'd better wait for that superfluous human to come by and ask you.

What if you would prefer a fork for your sushi because you've found yourself to be incompetent in the ways of chop sticks. Instead of surreptitiously slipping over to the fork area and acquiring one of the aforementioned devices, you have sit dejectedly until the waiter walks by and inform him that you wish to offend the culture of the restaurant and use American utensils.

Eventually, these inconveniences are set aside as you have both the glorious vittles and the instruments with which to eat them. The next fifteen minutes are splendid, apart from the minor bout of dehydration because your cup is empty and you aren't allowed to refill it. At the close of this part of the process, the restaurant has fulfilled the measure of its creation, and your most appropriate activity would be to vacate it.

But, alas, the waiting isn't over yet. You are once again forced to wait for the waiter to bring you the bill, at which point you cast your credit card at him and wait another five minutes before he returns with a receipt to sign. And here is the part where things get truly abominable: You are expected to pay extra money to this person who lengthened your visit. They call it a 'tip', and if the waiter has only mildly damaged your eating experience instead of utterly destroying it, you are expected to make it's value 15% of your food purchase. It is, after all, much more difficult for this person to carry a twenty dollar steak than a three dollar plate of mashed potatoes, so the tip must be inflated appropriately.

It is here that my values are challenged. "Vote with your money" is my theory. By bestowing my hard-earned lucre on this person, I uphold their position. Clearly then, it's vitally important that I give no tip. In fact, to ensure that a revolution succeeds as I desire, I should eat out as often as possible, always withholding my tip.

But then I have a realization: it goes something like this: "Josh, you make video games for a living. You go to a nice office full of cool people who treat you well. Here is a poor sap who spends his days dealing with annoying people like you. He's probably struggling to make ends meet. He works evenings which has brutal effects on his social life. In addition, the restaurant pays him roughly the amount it costs to buy the gas to drive home. Give him some frikkin' cash, you incorrigible miser."

So I do. Perhaps one day, I'll develop the skills necessary to be a jerk, but until then, waiters, you'll get your tip.