One of my husband’s favorite sayings on any vacation excursion is that “he’s going bankrupt $10 at a time.” In a Disney park, I can count on this sentence in a continuous loop.
On a trip to Disneyland, while I was buying a couple of $5 churros from a Haunted Mansion cart, my husband’s failing joke got so bad that I threatened to put his “favorite” phrase on a shirt. That way he could wear the shirt and save us having to hear his holiday refrain over and over again. His response was, “Here’s another $10.”
Now, I’m ashamed to tease my husband because right now I feel like I’d actually wear a shirt that says, “I’m failing $10 at a time.” That’s because it seems like being constantly scammed out of commissions and requests for tips at places like drive-thru windows is the new normal.
The last thing that bothered me is AMC Theaters’ announcement that the company will have “sight seating.” Event History is code for shelling out more money for the best seats.
It’s bad enough that airlines do this, but now having to pay extra to not have a neck strain while watching beloved Kansas City movie star Paul Rudd in “Ant-Man and the Wasp” is extremely galling.
I understand the movie industry is in trouble, but I don’t know if charging more money for “favorite” seats is the way to get more butts in those seats. Here’s an idea: How about keeping the bathrooms cleaner.
Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that because I might have given movie companies another paid idea: “favorite” toilets. For a mere dollar more per ticket, you get access to a bathroom with toilet paper, floors that look like they’ve been cleaned in the last 21 days, and trash cans that don’t overflow.
Honestly, I’d pay that fee because I once walked out of a theater and across the parking lot to use a fast-casual restaurant restroom rather than submit to the theater ladies’ room. Sure, I missed out on a good 10 minutes of the movie, but it was worth it. I think the pandemic has shown that Americans will make unlimited sacrifices for toilet paper.
I will say that at least AMC is charging you for something that is actually tangible: a place that isn’t crap. The same can’t be said for the egregious practice of tipping at drive-thru spots. When I was first asked if I would like to tip for Diet Coke at a drive-thru, I actually thought the woman taking my money was joking. But no, there it was on the card scanner: various suggested tip amounts for services rendered for a $1.09 purchase.
This scared me a bit because I’m a tipper. Having worked in the customer service industry, I believe in tipping, but tipping whole at a drive-thru was messing with my tipping mojo.
Agitated, I rounded up the amount to $2 and walked away in confusion. So confused, in fact, I pulled into a parking lot to process my feelings. I also started googling and learned about tip creeping, tipflation, and tip fatigue.
I was definitely experiencing all of the above.
My “tip from afar” moment came when I was “asked” to tip a cashier at a retail store for the act of charging my credit card for a blouse purchase. That’s when I decided not to feel guilty about not tipping in certain situations and to really accept the idea of wearing that fail shirt.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at [email protected], on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.
