Naughty Naughty Mr. Waiter You Made a Boo-Boo

Okay tonight I was struggling a bit. Maybe it is because I have to get up so darn early after a late Saturday night to drive my wife to work before 6 Am so I can have the car to get my son to his soccer game at 8Am. But anyway the last two Sundays for some reason have been tough to work.

Tonight I ordered 2 coffees and a creme brulee for this table. Inadvertently I punched it on another table by mistake. I get the creme brulee transfered to the right table but forgot to do the two coffees. The couple pay their bill without me charging them for the two coffees. Damn , so I forgot it was on this other bill and I give it to the other couple who had not drank any coffee.

Their bill comes to $96 and change. I see they have a $100 gift certificate and $12 more added on I guess for a tip in addition to the 4 remaining on the gift card. They call me over and point out they were charged for two coffees which they never had. My bad so I go and get the coffee deleted and print out the new bill. Other than that the meal was great and they were happy.

With the two coffees deleted their bill with tax is about 4-5 dollars less expensive. So the guy takes the $12 extra on top of the gift card and replaces the $10 bill with a fiver making the cash tip $5 less out of his pocket.

He hands it back to me and says there you go knowing that I know he just lowered the tip he was going to pay out of his pocket from $12 to $7. He says it works out the same which it did.

Now I am thinking that sure the tip amount was going to be the same anyway but was it so important to take away the five dollars. What was he calculating in his head?

You know it is like the guy whose bill comes to $88 and he leaves a $10 tip. Why not just round it off to $100? Or what I have seen a lot lately are people taking out their IPODs and calculating what the tip should be and them arriving at some strange number like $18.22 and when it adds up it isn't even a round number. It will be something like $178.31 for a total with the tip.

Is it me or are a lot of people really starting to watch their pennies? I mean in the above example the whole meal was covered by the gift card of $100. It wasn't so much the amount of the tip cause it remained the same anyway as to what he was going to give but like the meal cost him $7 instead of $12 after it was all said and done. Was he happy that he could keep an extra five and maybe start a retirement savings plan with it?

Is the middle class getting so untrustworthy of anything out there and so insecure about their future that it has to come down to calculating everything to the penny? Maybe , what have you noticed?