4. Tipping: If Only That was the Punch Line

I've been meaning to reflect on this subject for a while: tipping.
Tipping is like a dark, unknown shadow that unexpectedly creeps up on you at the end of your enjoyable meal at a restaurant. You're sitting there, and unexpectedly, you begin feeling the coldness of the sweat drops gathering at the bottom of your neck, cause you know it's comming. It ruins the mood and empties your wallet. It erases all chances of a rasberry sorbet ice cream cone after your meal. It is something unaviodable, and something angering.

Why, why would it make sense to pay extra for service which I am technically already paying for by paying double for my meal? You don't see cashiers at the store being payed tips, and I have never seen the airport staff putting out a tip jar for checking someone onto a fight. Never once have I seen a sales associate recieving 15%directly from the customer after pushing them endlessly into pourchasing that overpriced laptop they don't really need.
So why is it I ask, that the waiting staff a restaurant is privilaged to recieve a whole 10-15% or more for bringing by a few plates of food and dishing out the chef specials? It almost sounds like a true conspiracy of whoever first opened a restaurant. That person must have been standing in front of his first unique business thinking: how do I spice it up while saving an extra buck? And then: "Eureka!" he thought of something absolutely genuis. He could easily slave the wait staff by having them serve the customers at no cost to him! And to make sure that the waiters did not turn on him after a while for this ridiculous deal, he made sure to program their minds to think that the customers are the true villains here. Genius!

Well, let me tell you something, I am not down on the deal. I find the fact that the customer, who litterally flushed at least twice the price of what the meal truly costs down the toilet, has to pay the waiter an additional charge on top of that is ludacris. This makes absolutely no valid sense.
The waiter's place of employment is more then responsible for the waiter's pay.

And, if you don't in fact empty out your wallet you are glared at by the entire staff of the restuarant for the rest of your days.

Once, I went to a a sushi restaurant, which let's say, was named Wave. Located in the gay community, Wave was a hyped up place, yet unrefined due to a poor coverup interior job and dimmed lights. However, it had a nice atmoshepere of a smaller house quicky redesigned to fit the groove. Looking around, one could see that it was a "couple" place, or a "date" place. I had gone there with a friend that night, to check out what it had to offer. We sat down at a table, and had a 20 minute conversation after which we started looking around, noting the time it was taking for anyone to come by. Finally at a long last appeared a slightly shorter, slim looking guy with blonde highlights. Very un 'Abercrombie and Fitch', and closer to raggedy - washed out type. We asked about recommendations and such, which we ordered - his recommendation. Not 5 minutes later (rather short amount of time - strange) our food was brought out. My plate was a asian mustard type salad, which tasted awefully salty. AWEfully salty. I asked for an exchange, and started skimming through the menu again. The waiter - raggedy looking blond - came over, and actually sat down across from me, at our table. Yeah.

The blonde proceeded to offer something much less salty, as if that was normal. You, know people, just love salt in their mouth. Next, was an infused type of seaweed salad with spices, and apparently, sugar. Not that I knew that when he offered it. So, the two main ingredients of this restaurant appared to be salt and sugar. I also forgot to mention that when the wonderful waiter first took away my plate he did so with great annoyance, as if I just made him cancel his long awaited trip to the Bahamas. After my sugary "goodness" was also returned, there began the true wrath. Not from me, mind you, from the wait staff.

Another unknown guy dropped by our table and began discussing "the facts of life". By this point I was completely flagbastered. I mean here are these people, working for the restaurant trying to convince me, that their food was in fact fine, I was at fault. Right at that time, my second dish went crashing down in the sink of the kitchen area behind me hidden around the corner not far from my table. I could actually hear the glass breaking. At this point I was fed up. Getting up, we actually payed from my "salad" and left. Lo and behold that was not the last encounter with the Wave staff. The raggedy blonde quickly ran out of the restaurant, and started walking after us! No joke! Apparently he thought that we were very rude to him, and he felt that he was privilaged to a higher tip! I was amazed. Never have I seen this comming. I felt like a guest of one of those overdrammtized reality shows. You, know, the one where they work extra hard for the cammeras.
As the blonde goes over all his points of why we behaved poorly as a customer of his, all I could think of was that someone was playing a horrible joke on me.
If only that was the punch line.