Coffee Jerks Don't Deserve Tips Because We're Just COGS in the MACHINE, Man

I have a real post fermenting in here somewhere, but until then I just have a tiny little baby rant.

I'm working a lunch shift this semester for the first time in maybe ever. I always used to avoid the lunch shifts, because the geographic monopoly we conveniently hold on campus leads to us getting wrecked in the afternoons. I've always had a bad feel on anything before 5pm, but it looks like I was wrong - we're busy, but the busy periods are short bursts with long breaks in between, so I have time to restock and get myself back together before another comes.

The lunch shifts are also the only shifts that make any kind of tips. Now, you have to realize that the first three years I worked at Trinity I probably made less than $5 in tips, gross. I averaged about 10 cents a shift. The lunches can get up to $1-$2/shift, because real adults come in and they have to pay with money, rather than the untipwithable DukeCard. But here's what gets me.

The vast majority of professors will come in and order a small coffee to go with the lunch they bring from home. That's fine - I wouldn't pay money for the food we serve, either. So a small coffee with employee discount comes to $1.24. Invariably, I will smile, kowtow, hand them their steaming hot coffee, take a dollar bill and a quarter from their hand, give them back their penny - and watch as they tuck it parsimoniously into their wallets. The tip jar is less than six inches from where all this is happening.

A penny. And they will then have the audacity to smile widely at me and wish me a good afternoon before they scurry off.

See, this is why I'm rethinking the prospect of going into academia. Professors suck.

Actually, I lied. Professors aren't the worst. Grad students are the worst. Grad students not only don't tip, but they steal from the tip jar. True story. They're all a bunch of self-important, over-educated hypocrites.