To Insure Promptness (TIPs)

My granddaughter, Kaitlin, commented on the fact that people neglect to leave tips in a coffee shop when the price of their coffee goes up. Unfortunately, people don't usually realize that the workers make minimum salaries and rely on tips to make enough money to live on. How well I remember when tips made a great difference in my life.

For a couple of years, as I attended Boston University, I drove a taxi evenings in New Bedford, Massachusetts. At the time, you were paid a very low percentage of the money you took in from riders. Some nights, when you only had a couple of riders, take home pay might be as low as $1. If the riders did not tip you, that was all you made for 6 hours of your time.

At the same time, my wife worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, and had to put a crossover toe-hold on the owner every week to get him to pay her the minimum amount that he was obligated to pay. Her main income was from tips.. and she was a great waitress and made enough on tips to cover for the small amount that I made.

There were several reasons why I didn't make much in tips. One was that I was a sucker for a sob story. Many of the people I took in the cab were very poor, so they couldn't leave much if anything for a tip. And because I didn't complain when they stifted me, they always wanted me to take them for their trips. Also, I had a number of blind and disabled clients who did not have much money.

Another reason for low tips was that I would take the famous lady named "Fish Mary" in my cab. Nobody else would, because she was a "lumper". If you want to know what that is, check out my earlier blogs. Just be content to know that a "lumper" smells like dead and dying fish. Whenever she left my cab, I had to be side-lined for an hour to let the cab air out.

Another reason for low tips was because of cut-throating. We honest drivers were preyed upon by the old-timers, who would give money gifts to the dispatchers so they sent jobs their way. One of the dispatchers was a drunk and got a bottle of gin every night to take home with him from one of these old-timers.

However, even though I did not earn much money at this job, I did have lots and lots of interesting experiences. I got to see a side of my home town that very few people get to see. (And some church-goers would be very surprised to see who was doing what to whom.)

When I was driving my cab, another Vaughan was also driving. He was called "the dirty Vaughan"; I was called "the clean Vaughan". I could never figure out if he was related to me or not. I hope not, because he sure was a scroungy guy.

Driving cab in New Bedford was rather dangerous because many customers were rugged fishermen who had just come in after three weeks on the ocean. They were paid a share of the income from the catch and sometimes this pay was astronomical for a town of New Bedford's size. The wives of the fishermen usually stayed tuned to the fisherman's news on the radio so they could tell when their husbands' boats came in. Then they would stick their kids in strollers and hustle down to the barroom area near the docks and lay in wait for their husbands so that they could get some of that money before they blew it all on drinks.

The cab drivers would get the drunken fishermen to drive from bar to bar.. you can guess what often happened then. But, if they had any of their senses left they would give you pretty good tips. Sometimes they had no money left. It was useless to try to get them to pay when they were dead drunk and beligerent.

But I survived all that. And now, I do try to tip when deserved.. but not when the server is nasty. One has to be careful these days when some restaurants add an 18 or 20% tip automatically to the bill. I always wonder if the server gets that.

Usually this add-on is done for large parties. However, one of the local IHOP restaurants started adding 20% to all bills.. most of their clientele was senior citizens.. customers began to go to other restaurants instead.

The bottom line: Businesses that have servers who are able to get tips, usually pay their servers very little. If the customers do not tip the servers, they are not able to make a living wage. Besides that, they have to pay income tax on their tips!

So... go and tip some more!

Back to my Blog after a long delay.

Well, I just got back from a trip to the funerals of two relatives, where I was reminded of the fleetness and uncertainty of life. I was asked to say a few words and read some poems at each funeral and I took that as a great honor. Let me recap a few of the subjects that I tried to talk about.

My Aunt was 95 years old and had lived a long and interesting life. I first remember her flipping upside down in a cartwheel at a clambake. She loved to do cartwheels. She also loved to sing, having been in a singing program in the early thirties with my mother on the radio. She also always sang in the choir at the First Baptist Church. She taught herself to play a pump organ and would often serenade her neighbors at 3 am with old time hymns, sung at a bit of loudness. But the neighbors never complained, at least not to her face.

She had a wonderful way to tell her age as she got older. She would reverse the numbers. When she was 91, she said that she was 19. At 92, she was 29... and so on. At her passing, she was only 59 (and I am 57.)

She also always had a smile and a cheerful outlook. She liked to say: "Things look swell, when you use Prell!" (Old-timers will remember Prell.) I often use the phrase as well now, when I feel a bit depressed.. and it cheers me up.

In 1948 (!) when I graduated from Junior High School, all the boys were asked to wear suits for the graduation ceremony. I was a poor kid. I didn't own a suit, or anything that looked like a suit. I did work at several jobs, but I had to contribute to the family and n
ot much was left for frivolities (like fancy clothing). My Aunt found out about this, came over to where I live, handed me a Sears Roebuck charge account card and told me to pick out a suit and pay her back at one dollar a week. I did pay her back, but she would not have cared if I had not.

I will miss my Aunt greatly.

The second funeral was for my sister's partner of 23 years. A real nice guy who helped my sister care for our mother for many years. Meanwhile he worked at least two jobs while getting up early every morning to care for up to 24 horses on his property in the country.

One of the jobs he had was as a "Lumper" for 30 years! For those of you who don't know what a Lumper is.. picture a man (or in one case a woman..) putting on a rubber suit, hip high boots, long gloves and an oversized fisherman's rain hat. Picture this man grabbing a long heavy shovel as he jumps into the stinky hold of a large fishing boat where he meets with tons of fish, eels, lobsters, crabs, and whatever else you can think of, in addition to tons of ice keeping the catch from spoiling. Then picture this same man shoveling everything out of the boat hold. This has got to be the toughest job in the world.

This was a MAN!

He was only in his sixties when he passed away and he will be sorely missed by my sister and all of the hundreds of his friends who attended his funeral.

So.. the world lost two wonderful persons last week. But of course, they will stay alive in our memories for the rest of our lives.