Once in a lifetime.
Shared in my Google Reader by Jean of Jean’s Bargains!
A Food-tastic Building
Well, bus stops really.
Via Web Urbanist
Speaking of food, why do Pho (“fuh”) restaurants usually have numbers?
USB Panda Speakers for $27
Could have been creepy, but turned cute!
Via UberGizmo
A clock made out of scroll bars
This looks a lot better in Safari on the Mac.
Via toki woki
Need to resize images but don’t have Photoshop?
Well you could always download Paint.net for free.
But if you’re truly lazy, and want to resize AND crop (jeez!) here are 5 sites to do it for ya.
Via Smashing Apps
An thought provoking photo
(And a funny conversation)
BF: I’d stare too! Look at that, it’s disgusting. Too much public display of affection for me.
Me: It’s meant to be a portrayal of two very different cultures and values with just a photo.
BF: *ignores* Look at her smooching him. Have they no decency!?
It’s like she’s EATING him!
Via Sea of Sin
Rainbows make me smile
Especially when they show up in jewelery 😀
I’d look like Rainbow Brite!
Via We Heart It
Finally, your discussion thought of the day:
Is it illegal NOT to leave a tip?
Cops in Bethlehem, PA thought so. They arrested these two for not leaving a tip!
Via The Consumerist.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
That's a super cute panda. @_@
I always see comments like "if the service is bad I don't tip". Come on, why should waiting table be the only job where you don't get paid at all for doing a bad job? All other jobs are "allowed" to make mistakes and still get the same pay (that is until they get fired). Why is that?
But why is it our guilt and issue to tip them when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do to get that tip?
We all generally tip out of good faith.
As for other jobs that make mistakes and get the same pay, they run the risk of being fired from their jobs completely, as they don’t depend on customers or clients for most of their income, whereas I’ll bet it is not the same in the service industry. If they are a good waiter or waitress but someone doesn’t leave a tip, their boss won’t fire them.
It’s two different thoughts and two different industries. You can’t compare apples to oranges.
Service industries are notorious for being horribly cheap to their employees, whereas if you work in an office as a secretary… or sales person.. not so much. It’s a different ballgame with different skills.
I think what you’re really upset about, is the fact that the system here sucks. I think their minimum wage should be an ACTUAL minimum wage and not service minimum wage. And we should just do away with tipping altogether.
I like the panda speakers! And I can't believe it about the tip. It's completely ridiculous. They received shoddy service. How on earth did their bill come to $73 for salad and wings?? And what a waste of the police's time and money. Maybe next time they are better off leaving 10 cents.
I think it was a group of 6, not 2 people…. but it is a waste of time and money.
I actually think in that particular town, they MAY have a strange, antiquated law that says not tipping is illegal! I feel like I’ve heard of Bethlehem, PA before in a book of Weird But Legal Laws.
We had been discussing that article at work and on one of my forums last week 😉
I've been taught that the price on the menu is the cost of food preparation and thats it. A tip is only for service and anything extra. I hate when they automatically include it even for take out, why not just include that in the menu price then. If you pick up your food yourself at the counter, to-go or take out, no tip. If they bring the food out to you, at a table or at your home, then yeah they should get something extra unless the service is really really bad. For really horrible service I've not left a tip and not been ashamed of it.
My boss (the human calculator) is the complete opposite of me, he'll always leave the exact percent of tip down to the penny. Me, on the other hand, I tip by the quality of the service. Once and a while for exceptional service the tip is more than my food, rarely but sometimes its nothing. I'm not going to break out a calculator to figure out a percentage.
My Grandfather had a lot more balls than me, heres what he would do: If it was clear we had a bad waiter, usually obvious fairly quickly, he'd break out a stack of ones and the next time they came over he'd explain the rules to them. "See this? This is your potential tip here on the table. Every time I have to do your job for you I take one dollar back. I've already had to call you over here and ask you to bring us a menu after waiting 15 mins and had to get up and get silverware from another table when you didnt bring any for our meal so I'm taking two back already. See how this works?" etc. Usually highly embarrassing for me at the time and I felt like hiding under the table when he did something like that LOL but its highly influenced how I feel about tipping.
I agree that I won’t leave a tip if the service was as awful as they said!
I also tip around 15% – 20%, depending on how good they were. Generally, I also round up.
BF likes to be exact, like your boss.. and he tips BEFORE taxes..
Me, I just leave a full bill if it’s AROUND $5 or AROUND $10.
*LAUGHING*!!!!
Your Grandfather really had some nerve. I’d be horribly embarrassed with that kind of display, but I think it really displays the reason why waiters and waitresses have to do SOMETHING to get tips, not just to expect them.
With that being said, waiters and waitresses also get screwed a lot of times, being absolutely FABULOUS, and then some cheapo diner won’t leave a tip regardless. Spoils it for all of us.
Yes its a shame that most wait staff is underpaid to the point that they are dependent on tips for their income. I can see the managers point of view, if they are getting extra income from tips then they can be paid less, but that way of thinking eventually reaches a tipping point to where the employees then have to supplement their income with tips or they cant pay bills. For this reason I'll usually always give them something even if I feel they dont deserve it and I was once briefly a bus boy for 2 weeks once before the place I was working for folded LOL so I have a little bit of an idea what they go through 😉
For my sister things were even worse because she was a waitress at a casino on reservation land and they are not bound by Federal labor laws and many of the non-native workers get paid less than minimum wage. So on a very good day she'd break 5-$600 if some high roller or singer was in town or someone was feeling generous from their winings but on slow days shed get as little as 30-$50 which is not enough to live on at just under $4/hr. A few unlucky bad days in a row one week and you're really scraping by.
You got me thinking… The last time I sort of didnt tip on purpose was maybe 2 years ago, we were waiting for 90 mins and the food never came and we had a performance to go to. When I just wanted to pay and leave the manager comped our whole meal, but I paid for the drinks anyway and then we left. The bill was 0 but I paid for our tea, I'm not sure if thats a tip or not.
I think that could be considered a tip. Paying for your tea when you didn’t have to…
It sounds to me like the whole system of tipping and not tipping needs to be overhauled, and they just need to pay their waitstaff minimum wage at least.
They do that in Europe and nobody tips! I think in some areas they even tell you “no tip please”, especially if they know you’re North American.
Those panda speakers are so adorable!! Love them 😉
Panda speakers. So cute. *pet pet* 🙂
Omigosh! That video. I laughed. I gasped. I applauded. Lately, I've been giving a lot of thought to the direction in which I want to take my life. That little montage really makes me want to tell myself to stop thinking so much and just live.
My favourite is when the guy steps out of the car and something huge falls on it
What a lucky man!
The article didn't mention it but the article it linked to did .. this was a situation where there was a large group so the restaurant did that thing where they automatically include the tip in the bill so that it's mandatory. This was an 18% mandatory tip, which is higher than anything I've seen anywhere else (I've seen 10% and 15% before).
I think it is pretty horrible to demand a tip and give bad service, though I understand the issue with large groups and the stress it could put on the server whose table it is. At the same time, I've been in situations where I had a party in a pub, people left early and left money for their share of the bill, but only left the tip they thought was appropriate (less than the mandatory one), and then I got stuck having to pay for all the unpaid tip that was left over at the end when the restaurant surprised us with the bill including tip (there was no warning beforehand). That made me very angry. Realistically speaking you can only fit so many people in a pub, and the fact that one group is large doesn't change that fact and shouldn't make it any different than if you had several small groups. If it's stressful for the server, more than one server should attend to the large group or the server in charge of the group should be given fewer tables that night. Screw the mandatory tip and allow people to tip what they feel is appropriate. And those students should not have been arrested, but since the tip was part of the bill I see how the restaurant would've considered it akin to a dash 'n dine. Still, if the service was very obviously bad, the restaurant should've just accepted their reasoning and let it be. Honestly, calling the cops over a $16 tip is ridiculous.
Thanks for clearing that up.
It was a mandatory 18%? Well.. that is pretty darn high, but it’s one of those “can be argued both ways” sort of deal.
If it’s “mandatory” for a big group, then I almost want to say it’s not illegal. But if the service was crap.. well.. 🙁
Another issue that kind of complicates things is that servers in Ontario (not sure about the rest of Canada or the US) usually get paid minimum service wage, which is lower than the standard minimum wage, because tips are assumed. So if you don't tip you really are kind of screwing the server over, which is why I feel guilty about not tipping or giving a low tip even when the service is awful. So I usually only do that if the server had a bad attitude, as opposed to just being forgetful or preoccupied. Still, it's nice to have leeway with how much I leave. 18% mandatory .. eesh!
I do agree that the waitstaff really gets shafted.. and it’s almost like it’s better to work at McDonald’s at minimum wage than to deal with the hassles of being a waitress or waiter!
Generally speaking, leaving a low tip makes me uncomfortable, so I tend to leave around 15%.
It has to be really awful for me to leave nothing. I am talking godawful, no food, no service, get your own silverware….