Gye Greene's Thoughts

Gye Greene's Thoughts (w/ apologies to The Smithereens and their similarly-titled album!)

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Positive practical jokes

The problem with practical jokes is that, at the heart of them, they're mean: they make people feel bad.

Instead, I prefer what I call ''positive practical jokes''. I suppose they're ''random acts of kindness'' by a different name.


Two examples, from my recent trip to Seattle:


1) After seeing my quasi-niece's band, Guitar Cousin, his step-daughter, her son and myself stopped off at IHOP. First, near the end of the meal I excused myself to use the restroom. But on the way there I stopped off at the front desk and paid the check. (Bwah-ha...) And then, when we left the table, I covered the tip. In Australia, we don't tip (because waitstaff get paid an actual decent wage) -- so I'm out of practice. The total bill was forty-five bucks. I left a twenty dollar tip. Heh. :)


2) Because a big snowstorm was predicted, I took the airport shuttle the night before my flight, rather than the day of. I went from my parent's place to the hotel near the airport. I was the only one on that run, so my dad slipped me some cash as I boarded and suggested that I tip the guy ten bucks he just took me directly to the hotel. (This would be faster for me than getting dropped off at the airport, then taking the hotel shuttle to the hotel.)

I had a nice conversation with the driver. He seemed to be my dad's age, or slightly older -- but unlike my dad, who is comfortably retired, this guy is still working. And during our conversation, this guy mentioned his own father, but not a spouse, partner, or kids -- so I had a feeling that he was still working because he was still saving up for retirement, rather than having had a dual-income household, or having kids to support him.

He also mentioned, at one point, that his passengers from the previous run had failed to tip him -- even though he'd been driving in a snowstorm.

So, when we reached our destination, I tipped him my dad's ten bucks -- and then tipped him an additional ten bucks, saying ''This is on behalf of those other people that **should've** tipped you.''


So, yeah: positive practical jokes. That kinda thing.


--GG

Labels: ,

1 Comments:

At February 07, 2012 8:49 PM, Blogger Bose said...

Very funny! Thanks so much for the share!@bose
Front Desk Executive Job Duties

 

Post a Comment

<< Home