2440 Director's Cut

A couple of tag ends today.  Leftovers from other ideas I wrote about but couldn't squeeze into earlier essays because time was too short.  Mental clips from the editing room floor.

Yep, this is America Ya Gotta Love it, the director's cut.

One of the ideas had to do with an essay I did recently on tipping.  How we tend to tip more at coffee bars because a real 18% tip for a $2.29 drink is just 41 cents and that seems a little cheapskatey. 

But the other thing about tipping in a coffee bar is they have conditioned us to tip before we actually get the drink.  Which I think is odd.  Because a tip should be conditional. 

I was brought up to believe a tip was an extra reward for exceptional service, not an obligation to pay because an employer chose to make his employees exist on slave wages. 

There's another director's cut.  Slave wages.  Meant to mean really low wages.  But, of course, slaves make no wages at all.  Because they are, um, slaves.

Anyhow, if you pay the tip first it's more demeaning to both parties.  Demeaning to the payer because he's forced to fork over whether his coffee drink has a perfect leafy thing poured into his foam or not.  And demeaning to the barista because it's more like a bribe, or even worse, like the coin paid to the organ grinder monkey to make him dance.

Another cut.  Recently I mentioned a weird ingredient listed in Starbuck's coconut milk: "Coconut water concentrate."  How does one concentrate water?  Somehow make water less watery?  If they meant less of the coconut part, why not say coconut solids? 

Perhaps the coconut water concentrate contains shards of ice.

Cutting indeed.  

America, ya gotta love it.