Category: 
[Before I go any further, I need to give credit to a friend from West Lafayette who gave me the idea that was put into action here...]
Today’s likely to be one of the last nice-weather days this year in Indiana, so I decided to take a walk downtown to eat (about 6 blocks).
On the way there, I walked under the Union Station viaduct on Meridian, where I passed a panhandler (who often seems to camp there during business lunch hours), about a block away from the restaurant (a nice Irish pub). Once in the pub (which was pretty busy), we got a Pretty Young Thing as our waitress. After she took our order, we overheard PYT telling the guys at the next table about how tired she was from partying the night before, though she wished she could have gone with her roommates up to Chicago for the celebration.
After the meal, we got our checks, which I paid in (close to) exact change, jotting a note to her to the effect of:
“In honor of your new president, I’ve decided to ’spread the wealth around’, and I’m giving the $2 tip to a homeless guy down the street.”
True to my word, the guy with the ‘will work for food’ sign got the $2 about 5 minutes later…
Maybe when PYT gets out of college and joins the workforce, she’ll be a bit less cavalier about voting to hand other people’s money away. Even if not, perhaps there is a silver lining to be had in the coming years…
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Outstanding. Simply outstanding. So glad I stopped by.
[...] be interested in reading (especially if you are a fan of president-elect Obama). He called it: Spreading the Wealth Around. In fact, you should stop by and give Chris a read, I think you will like his [...]
I don’t have any wisdom, I’m just a mother-in-law – and a Repulican at that. But I think I’ll try the “spreading” idea, but probably not on a “minimum wage” waitress. I’ll go for the homeless guy on the street and just tell him that I’m giving his handout to the “minimun wage” waitress.
Wow. The word that comes to mind to describe that probably wouldn’t be appreciated on this blog.
Thanks, Zach…
(After all, if you’re OK with folks taking other people’s money to distribute it as they see fit, you ought to be alright with it happening to you, as well…)
At least you efficiently got the $2 to the person you said it was for. You could have kept $1.70 as administrative costs…..
Very clever! I would try that here, but we don’t tip in Australia.
Excellent point, Lana! Maybe I should run for office, based on my background in Six Sigma and efficiency…
I think you’d be great in office, but somehow I don’t think you could blow enough sunshine up people’s pantleg to get elected!
wow Chris L,
not like you at all, at least what I know of your persona from the internet. Some very strong feelings here. Is the President-Elect your president too? Why did you not give the waitress “PYT” the 2 dollar tip and then advise her to “trickle it down” to the panhandler outside on her way home?
Do you think she got the lesson you were trying to teach her; did she come away from it thinking “yeah, I better watch who I vote for next time, it just cost me two dollars”
Because that’s not what she seems to want for the country, I’d guess, based on her vote.
Much of what fuels the “spread the wealth around” mentality is class-warfare, where politicians pit group A (”the common man”) vs. group B (”the rich” – where “rich” is pretty flexible). So, compared to the guy under the viaduct, PYT would fit the definition of “rich”. To give her the choice to “trickle it down” would be against her principles (of stealing from the rich to give to the poor (and to make the poor dependent on the government)… )
I don’t know… in four years, she’ll hopefully be a bit wiser, even if she doesn’t remember the two dollars she “gave” to the homeless guy…
The end does not justify the means and in this case I doubt you will even achieve your desired end with this minimum wage worker, who relies on tips to supplement her income. If your end is to win a heart and mind to your political point of view, then I think you have most likely failed. It would be interesting to find out her reaction to your note.
If I placed myself in her position (and I have done minimum wage jobs before) I will see you as someone who was upset that your preferred candidate did not win the election and is a grumpy loser, a kind of vengeful little deity trying to punish those who saw things another way. There is a lesson in there for young waiters though, which is no matter what you do, speak in low tones and make sure the customers do not hear your political views or how you voted.
This young lady moves in circles where Obama’s message- no matter how abstract, devoid of substance or even deceptive you perceive it to be, resonated for some reason. And if your note to her is her first close encounter with a representative of the other side, I expect that this is one person your side of the political divide has lost forever- whether you succeeded in teaching her a lesson or not.