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To you, disgruntled restaurant employee, I have much to say.I feel your pain. It's a thankless job. I have worked at some truly heinous establishments, both here in Columbus at "upscale" restaurants around Easton and downtown, and at several well-known places in downtown Chicago. You run about like a maniac, your thighs chafing, sweat dripping down the crack of your ass, the grease in the air mingling with your perspiration to give your face what my former co-worker Erik calls "The Shimmer." Your hair smells like a strange mixture of french fries and spinach artichoke dip. Your boss is too coked out to care that your last table left without paying and expects you to cover the bill out of your tips, unless you want to blow him and/or wear nothing but your server apron while he snorts blow off your tits as you whisper restaurant lingo like "on the fly" and "86" into his ear in the sluttiest voice you can muster.I feel your pain.And I understand the lure of the restaurant job. Short, flexible hours and, in comparison to say, a job in retail, a reasonable wage. The ability to receive the phone bill in the mail, realize you can't pay it, and be able to rectify that situation immediately by simply calling up a co-worker and offering to work for them. The ability to get the night off at a moment's notice so you can study for that exam or take care of that sick child or dispose of that decomposing corpse. Free food, oftentimes free alcohol, even more oftentimes free drugs, and still MORE oftentimes free sex with willing co-workers. Ahhh, the joy of the on-the-go blowjob in dry storage--and while we're on the subject, I'd like to give a shout-out to Ryan L., who gave me one of the best rolls in the hay I've ever had against the cold, hard steel of the liquor cage while a table of 14 hags from the Red Hat Society became increasingly incensed about the tardiness of their coffee refills.I understand.But here's the thing. The shitty tipping procedures of the Average Joe will NEVER change. Ever. You are never going to finally "educate" the populace about the importance of fair tipping. Those who get it, get it. Those who don't, don't, and they never will. The one notable exception to this is if they begin fucking someone who is or has been a waiter/waitress. I have found that the only servers successful at changing the tipping procedures of another citizen are the ones who are, in fact, fucking that citizen. The one exception to THIS rule is my mother, who I have simply berated enough times for abusing waitstaff that she is frightened into submission and simply hurls her entire wallet at our server as she crumples into a heap beneath the table, rocking back and forth and sucking her thumb. But these are EXCEPTIONS. This is not a civil rights struggle. This is not a situation where you need to keep hollering and raising hell until you are heard and society is changed. We shall NOT overcome, I assure you. So it's best that you get off of your soapbox and save your breath.You will never convince groups of co-workers to put everything on 1 check or make them understand it takes 10 times as long to cash out a table of 10 than if those 10 people just throw in their own fair share (including tip) into a pile when the check comes. People will never understand that!Instead, do like I did: take the energy you use bitching about it and get a different job. And you know what? I fucking HATE my job. Selling insurance is akin to...well, to hydrating my contact lenses with hydrochloric acid or shaving my nutsack with a dull, rusty garden implement. But you know what? I have money, and plenty of it, I have time to work on my writing and my other super hero skills, and best of all, I don't have to worry about complete strangers ass-raping me and leaving me on the side of the freeway to bleed to death in order to save a dollar on their fucking hamburger by punishing me because I burned my fucking fingers off on a plate in the kitchen and hence took an extra 30 seconds to refill their Diet Coke and bring them that side of ranch that will inevitably make their genitals, at long last, COMPLETELY disappear beneath a mound of abdominal fat.Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I am free at last.Get out. Go back to school. Go to a temp agency. Work in a factory. Sell crack. Whatever. Just get out.Because it it ain't gonna change. You are never going to get these non-tipping neanderthals to see the light.Get out before it's too late and you finally snap and blow the fucking head off that asshole who makes you redo his steak three times and then wants a refund, or before you bludgeon that manager to death with a pepper grinder.GET OUT.