Paying for the bus home

So I guess Jenners is a little swanky, a little up market for most people, some tourists come into the cafe...I watch their faces and notice that as their eyes scan over the prices their expression, indicative of a hopeful pit-stop, suddenly vanishes and they decide to find "a nice pub instead". However there are the few people brave and brash enough to spend £3.25 on a large Cappuccino (we do make them pretty damn fine too I will add!) and £2.50 on a scone the size of the old £5 coin my dad has hidden away in his coin collection, or for those of you less familiar with vintage rare coins, the size of a 'mini' American doughnut. As I hand them their 5p change and they stick it into their tweed jacket pocket or hurry it away into their Prada purse, they don't care about the explicit tip jar (shaped like an elephant) in front of them, or the eager to please young server behind the bar. I finished my 9 hour shift today with a total of 8p tip, almost, and I must stress ALMOST, a penny an hour! I decided to look up tipping online, since at minimum wage, I really rely on my tips for my bus fare to and from work. I even tip taxi drivers or hairdressers myself, I usually stick to around 10% even if I do spend £50 on a hairstyle, I think people deserve tip for doing a good job! But since most of the people that shop at Jenners can afford a few grand for a new Persian rug, it might come as a shock to know that hardly any of them ever tip, in fact most of us on the cafe get our tips from the regulars, the old couples that come in everyday and spend their pension on a cup of tea and sit hand in hand together listening to the Sinatra music. It's a little like the parable of the widow woman who goes to church and gives only 2p (culturally adapted) to the collection and gets sneered at by the rich man who donates a whole £1 to the collection bag. But the morale of the story is that the woman is a better person because she gives all she has...she gives out of her poverty and not her abundance...so weird how you see modern biblical stories in everyday life sometimes, or I guess try to see them so as to keep yourself going and make it a little better for yourself. In America there's this thing where you don't get a say in the amount or even choice of gratuity - it's 'mandatory'...Wiki says that "Some economists have argued that tipping is economically inefficient, and suggested that mandatory gratuity might solve some of this issue"..."The BBC has reported that some find the practice bothersome; particularly those who are not aware that the tipping is used to subsidize the sub-standard pay at the workplace"....I even heard of TGI Fridays arresting and chasing people down the streets when they refused to pay the mandatory gratuity, but I'm not sure if forcing people to pay is the answer - especially if the service isn't what they expect it to be (I am a customer as well as a server!)...Plus it makes people resent the tip instead of it being a good deed that also makes the tipper feel better...choice makes it so that appreciation and kindness and I guess, sympathy can still exist in the world...Maybe tomorrow I will make it to a round number...10p would be nice!

An Ode to 22

With the realization that the month of May is now looming closely to the scene I had a scary thought, that in less than two months I would turn 23, an age that I cannot possibly yet accept as I still have not entirely accepted that I've been 22 for almost a whole year! I know it's just a number and as I transcend the boundary between the two numbers nothing will change me as a person, but I still didn't like it, for me it represented everything I comparatively hadn't done or hadn't got yet; a career, a family, a serious boyfriend, money...in many ways my life profile read something like a high school drop-out's would, apart from the fact that I had a useless education. Being 22 had been hard, it was the age I graduated from school and ultimately and against my own will, became a part of the grown up world of employment, debt and singleton living. It was the age I got my first dog, my first full-time job, my first council tax bill...but was that it? So what now? I thought plans would fall into place and my graduate life would be like a movie where the geeky girl finally blossoms and gets the handsome guy, the dream job and the life-long lesson...but so far I've done none of that. I suppose instead of bottling these questions up, I hope that other people my age are feeling the same way and asking some of the same questions about their own direction in life. If so then perhaps reading that someone else is in the same rocky boat would be comforting...or maybe I'm just thinking too much!
For all the non-Edinburgians out there (yes I made up that word!) it has been very windy in Edinburgh for a while. In fact I think I'm getting used to the perpetual forceful winds blowing the dry ends of my hair against my numb face like razors! Bob Dylan said that the answer is in the wind,blowing in the wind, and if that were true then there would be a lot of unseen nebulous answers around here. In literature windy weather often means a vast change is approaching, maybe a storm...but who knows because at this age life is so unpredictable. Now more than ever I really miss knowing what I'll be doing next year, or even next week...Septembers full of new beginnings; school, friends, teachers...July, the beginning of a forever summer - the best times of your life. But it is still April, I still have time...