Sooooooo, let me just get straight to the point, ops i mean let me get 'right' to the point. I usually do not cook at home. I usually go out to eat at restaurants. I usually do not cook at home and go out eating at restaurants with friends and sometimes with my significant other (who happens to be a waiter).....
There are a lot great things about dating a waiter, like knowing what to order on the menu, knowing cool tucked away places to dine at, knowing how much tip to always leave, the exact change. But like everything else in life there is a down side, like knowing what's actually in the food, knowing what the grading in the window really means, simple things like that is whatever to me, but then facts like the next one I'm about to write really bothers me and at times gets me overtly upset. I guess i've known for a while that many still judge people by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character (which is the opposite of MLK's dream). I was a bit naive to the fact that yes this is true even in the restaurants.
Growing up, I had my share of being able to dine out a nice places, and at local places. It wasn't too strange for my family to dine out at a restaurant on the beaches of California, or have a brunch at the Hometown buffet. My favorite was the brunch's at Ports O' Call in San Padro, California. We would go there only a few times in the year, it was one of those places that you could spend all day enjoying, rather you choose to dine inside or out side where you set over the water (where we mostly dined) and viewed the ferry's go by, and at times there would be live jazz music playing. I loved this place, the food was so delicious the lobsters, crab, omelette's, potatoes, soups, deserts, the fresh fruit, everything at the restaurant was made fresh and prepared fresh! Oh, did i mention no mater how long you stayed there, they would bring champagne to your table, bottles after bottles, and no, not the cheap bottles but the kind that if you placed a pineapple or a piece of watermelon inside your class for about a minute and when you finally took the last sip of your drink your whole body shivered. It was a nice place, and the waiters where very generous and at the end of the day we would leave our waiter with a generous thank you, and nothing we left was under $60 bucks. It would be a lie to say that my family taught me to always tip, what they taught me was to tip when the service was good. And by good I mean when the waiter is polite, friendly, and welcoming, I guess all three of those mean kinda the same thing.
Fast forward a couple of years living away from my biological family, and I'm where i'm at right now. Dining life with my friends I call family. Many of us have different perspective of tipping, when to, when not to, some of us its always a do, some of us its a whatever if i have it i have it if i don't then i don't, but thats cool, we are all different. So back to the dating a waiter part.... with my belief of tipping when i felt welcomed , doesn't always seem to fly. in the eyes of the waiter i guess i need to always tip, no.matter.what. to the waiter just bringing the food, is enough for the tip. Yes, I understand that bring food is a generous things and deserves an sincere 'thank you". But a tip just for that, i don't think so, i mean I'm already paying for you to bring the food, the tip is extra. Or at least i thought. But i guess I'm wrong.
Fast forward a couple of years living away from my biological family, and I'm where i'm at right now. Dining life with my friends I call family. Many of us have different perspective of tipping, when to, when not to, some of us its always a do, some of us its a whatever if i have it i have it if i don't then i don't, but thats cool, we are all different. So back to the dating a waiter part.... with my belief of tipping when i felt welcomed , doesn't always seem to fly. in the eyes of the waiter i guess i need to always tip, no.matter.what. to the waiter just bringing the food, is enough for the tip. Yes, I understand that bring food is a generous things and deserves an sincere 'thank you". But a tip just for that, i don't think so, i mean I'm already paying for you to bring the food, the tip is extra. Or at least i thought. But i guess I'm wrong.
I do not know how many times I've sat down and waited, and waited, and at times waited some more, just to get asked if i wanted a drink. Sometimes, just a few times I've walked out, but the times i stayed, i made it my business to be extra nice even if the waiter wasn't so chipper, and i made it my business to tip, generously...want to know why? because I'm Black.
Yes i use to call it a TBB, which means "Tipping because Black", I knew that many waiters didn't care to wait on black folk, because in their eyes Black folk don't tip. And in my old world i tipped because i knew they thought that, i didn't tip because i got great service but because i felt i had to.. well sorry folks but those days are over. I'm no long TBB-ing it. I hate doing things because I'm black, why tip when i got bad service??? Am i wrong? I mean i was raised to treat people the way I wanted to be treated, and always say thank you, and acknowledge the good in people, not the bad.
I guess my question is, 'Tipping, is it a option?"
~Openly Chaz
