blogging it real

I really liked this, which some folks may have missed because it's on the 'guest speaker' page over at public address. The same author has just made a worrying post about the state of science in New Zealand, concluding - I suspect - by pointing to the fundamental contradiction between appeals for more scientists in New Zealand and the lack of actual employment for them.

(Take a bow I Am Dunedin: even locals can't get over the absurd recruitment drive here ... the reason you won't have to worry about traffic when you relocate to Dunedin from Auckland is that you won't actually have a job to commute to. But they don't tell you that on the ads, eh?).

Anyway, back to tipping:

But now, there are 'tipping jars' everywhere. Some of them with passive-aggressive signs saying: 'Tipping is not illegal in New Zealand.' But what in God's name are we actually tipping them for? We're tipping them for doing their job, which we've already paid them for as part of our bill. Why should I pay them twice? Nobody pays me twice - and I can do things like solving differential equations, which is much harder than writing down what sort of coffee people want.

[...] in America you have to tip 15 per cent minimum for anything connected with food. And 15 per cent minimum actually means 20 per cent. So if you order a pizza over the phone, and then you go and collect it, you have to tip the pizza guy 20 per cent. That's just for picking up the pizza and handing it to you. The guy doesn't even speak, he just hands you the pizza and the bill! And guess what, if you go to a restaurant, and the service is really terrible, and the waiter treats you like you've got bird flu - are you allowed to NOT tip him? Nope. You're supposed to tip him exactly 15 per cent, so that when he looks at the bill afterwards, and does the maths, he'll get really offended because the amount is so exact. That's right, you punish him via mathematical accuracy!