Re: My first convention (and I met JMS!!!)

David Williams wrote:
"Rob Perkins" <rperkins@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:C20A20AA.55B7%rperkins@xxxxxxxxxx
Apropos nothing, I'll say that there is little which improves on the way you
get treated if the waitstaff gets to know you as a regular who always tips
better than average, or performs the cultural equivalent if tips aren't the
thing.

YEARS ago, during my pizza delivery days, we got to know which households were tippers and which were "stiffs." Usually the BEST tips were in the working-class neighborhoods. There was one guy who ordered a small cheese pizza, late every Saturday night, but always tipped $2-3. We would have his pizza in the oven before the order-taker even hung up the phone with him. And we would drive PAST other delivery points, even if their pizzas were older to get him his first, still mouth-blistering hot - sometimes in as little as 10 minutes from hanging up the phone (if the traffic lights went our way...)

I won't share it here, but 20 years later I can still remember his name and address. THAT'S the difference tipping can make!

OTOH I was always amazed by the spotty tipping in the most affluent neighborhoods. There was one household that NEVER tipped, no matter how speedy, friendly, etc. we were. I tried, honestly TRIED to kill them with kindness, and NEVER got a tip. No one did. After going there for 3 years, I came one night with an order that totalled $something.98. The father came to the door and let me keep the 2 cents. After he closed the door, I stood there in utter shock. But I recovered, and balanced the 2 pennies on the door-handle of his Mercedes.

David W.

During my brief tenure working at Wing Zone as a Mechanized Hot Wing Distribution Specialist, I had worked out in my head who the best and worst tippers were. The worst tippers, in general, tended to be the ROTC cadets at the A&M campus (which miffed me a bit, since I know that at least SOME of those guys get paid $250 a month by the military just to get a 2.0 or better each semester), just after them were the folks who lived in the poorer neighborhoods (around Krenek Tap in College Station and most of the city of Bryan), and then from there it went uphill pretty quick. My manager and I joked about "The Holy Grail", that is, a cute girl who tips well and answers the door in a form-fitting wifebeater and boxer shorts (they tended to be in the apartment complexes on Holloman near 2818, on the far side of College Station).

Actually, what pissed me off to no end were the apartment complexes that were designed to baffle delivery drivers. Building numbers that rarely faced into the parking lot, and if they did, they were located under a light that was so bright as to render you unable to actually read the sign under it, some of them didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to the building arrangement, and these were usually the places where the person who ordered the food had turned off their cell phones, keeping me from asking for directions.

On one occasion, they didn't even have a guard at the gate (oh, BTW, there's a great security measure, a gated community where the guard lets anybody in if they're dressed like a pizza guy), AND the guy had his phone turned off, AND he lived at the far end of the apartment complex (which was roughly the size of the Principality of Monaco), so I had to walk my fat ass a quarter of a mile each way hauling his hot wings at 4PM in southern Texas in late May.

I ALWAYS tip the delivery guy from Papa Johns, even if delivering pizza to me for him consists of a 3 minute drive each way, with two turns.

--
--Jeffrey MacHott

"Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua"

.

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