London. Real quick, just now me and a friend were finishing dinner. I flag the waiter over to pay my tab. In London, like much of Europe, they use these portable credit card machines, but in London, like in most places in Europe, Tipping is exceptional not standard, so there is no line on the receipt to add a tip after it’s printed. I tell the waiter, “Add six pounds tip for your self”.
“You do it.” He said.
I didn’t really understand, but once he ran my card, he handed me the machine,
and said, “You can approve the charge here. And add the tip if you want.”
Fine, cool. So I hit the green button, okaying the base
charge, I go to the next screen, selecting, Yes
I’d like to leave a tip, and I start to enter the amount. It’s like one of
those old calculators, where each digit you enter moves the decimal place to
the right, (starting with 6 cents, then you add a zero to make sixty and so
on).
Well I got to .60
cents, and for some reason the waiter snatched the machine out of my hand… I
guess I was taking to long or something. Cause he snatched it up, looked at the
screen.
“I wasn’t done… I
need to finish”.
“I’ll finish” he
said.
“No I mean the
amount isn’t right.” And I try to take the machine back, I get it just in my
hands and ready to add the final zero, and he snatches it back.
He completes the
transaction, prints my receipt. He looks at it carefully, “Did you mean to
leave sixty cents tip?” he asks.
“No,” I said. “I
meant to leave you six pounds, but you snatched the machine out of my hand
before I could finish, and you wouldn’t listen to me that the amount was wrong.”
He looks at me like
suggesting I could leave cash, I look at him like there is no way in the world
I was going to do that.
“Sorry dude. But now
I guess you know the value of a decimal point.”
(and of not
snatching shit out of my hands, I thought.)
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