On social interaction

[firecat]

Part of this is from a comment in leback's journal.

http://jorm.livejournal.com/94477.html says that everyone is socially retarded, and proceeds with a list of behavior rules that we all should follow. I agree with many of the behavior rules.

But he lost me when he wrote "Everyone is on the Short Bus of Social Interaction to some degree or another." It's one thing to say "I hold extremely high ideals for social behavior, and no one measures up to my ideals." It's another thing to say that everyone is retarded. The latter does not take responsibility for your own attitudes. Besides, it makes no sense.

Jorm's rules that I agree with:
1) When someone gives you a compliment, the correct response is "Thank you."
2) When you ask someone for advice, and they give it to you, the correct response is "Thank you."
3) When someone offers to buy you a drink, the correct response is "Thank you."
5) You do not always have to be right, even in your own field, even when you are.
6) Further, you do not always have to be right.
7) Few people wish to hear about your level 17 Paladin.
9) If you make plans with someone, and then must cancel, let them know.
10) If you decline every invitation from someone, they will eventually stop sending you invites.
11) Be aware that what you do impacts other people.
13) When in a conversation, listen to your friend instead of simply waiting for your turn to speak.
16) No one wants to be disliked. Everyone wants to make friends.
(I know a few exceptions to this, but I think it's true as a general rule.)
17) When you yell at a customer service representative, you are being an asshole.
20) Terse replies do not foster communication.

Jorm's rules and other statements I don't agree with:

4) When someone offers to buy you a drink, and you must decline, do so with grace and thanks.
I agree with this, but he goes on to say that you have to give an excuse. I don't think so—just plain "No thank you" is fine.

8) Don't make excuses for being a social retard. This just makes you look more socially retarded because it says, effectively, that you do not believe yourself to be bound by the polite rules of society.
There is a difference between a reason and an excuse. With reasons, you take responsibility for your actions; with excuses you do not. "I was drunk," "I have OCD," "I have low-grade Asperger's" - these can be used in either vein.
No one will tell you when you are doing it wrong, so it's better not to bring up a reason or excuse.

There is a difference between a reason and an excuse where apologies are concerned, but when and how to apologize is a lot more complicated than "it's better not to bring up a reason or excuse." Whether you bring up other facts about you is context-dependent. It's incorrect to interpret every such disclosure of such facts as communicating "I am not bound by the polite rules."

12) Everyone wants to be the center of attention. You do not have to be.
No, everyone does not want to be the center of attention. Some of us are just fine with having a little attention paid to us, and some of us don't ever like to be the center of attention.

14) If you are angry with someone, or they have hurt you, and they seem oblivious to this fact, you must tell them.
...Only if you want them to know you are angry. Sometimes it's not important that they know.

15) Don't be "that guy" who sits in a corner and doesn't talk to anybody. You know exactly what I'm talking about, too. Maybe you're at a party and you really only know one person there. Maybe you're in a bad mood. Whatever.
When you do this - sit in a corner - you exude a passive aggressive hostility. What you're saying is that you are waiting for someone else to come and talk to you - that you are too important to make the first social move. Well, guess what? You're not.
Speaking as a corner-sitter -- It's certainly true that a lot of people won't approach me if I sit in a corner, and maybe some of them will be thinking "that person thinks they're too important to make the first move." Others might be thinking "That person looks happy and comfortable," or "That person might not know anyone here," or any number of things. The only time I am responsible for managing the stories that other people make up about me is when I want something from those people that I'm not getting.

18) Be a good customer.
I certainly agree with this, but he goes on to say "Calculating an exact tip makes you an asshole." What the fuck? When you do tip math, you look like you are unwilling to give them a tip. Again with the making up stories about other people, only this one makes even less sense than the one about sitting in a corner. If you are calculating a tip, that means you're going to give a tip, because otherwise why calculate it? And if you're going to give a tip, under what twisted logic does that mean you don't want to give a tip?

I've never been a waiter though. If you're a waiter and you agree with him, let me know. It doesn't matter to me because I do the tip calculation in my head.

If you have a coffee shop or restaurant you are a regular at, drop a hundred bucks in the tip jar at Christmastime
I'm all for tipping well, but in my world, not everyone has a few hundred bucks lying around that they don't need.

Comments

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

18 - I have been a waiter. If a customer worked out my tip to the exact penny and left that, I assumed that it was to make sure I didn't get a penny more than absolutely necessary. I thought of it as cheap.

[firecat]

Thanks for the datapoint!

[brooksmoses.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Is that true even if it's a relatively high percentage, and was done on a credit-card receipt rather than counting out coins? I can see that with counting coins, since that's actually a significant extra bother....

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

If it were a high percentage, I would think the customer was a weirdo. Why would someone want to leave precisely (say) 25%, to the penny?

[leback.livejournal.com]

I think for a lot of people, the question would be, why *not*? The process seems to go something like this:

(1) My waitress was really awesome.
(2) I should leave a better-than-usual tip.
(3) 25% sounds good.
(4) 25% of $31.36...divide by four, so that's...$7.84.
(5) Write down $7.84, add, sign, leave.

That said, I usually round to some easier-to-handle amount, because I figure it's likely to be more convenient for the server (e.g., if they're grabbing cash from the drawer, no sense making them count small change), but it's an extra step, one that doesn't often seem to occur to the people I'm with. I guess one might find the math easier if one rounded first, but I'm pretty used to crunching numbers in my head, so I probably wouldn't think of doing so.

What is the method by which non-weird people compute tips?

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

here via wordweaverlynn, I have the weird-people math gig for tips where I estimate the 20 or 25%, then make it march so the end dollar amount is a round number.

In this, possibly in this alone, I am a math geek.
in other ways, I am other kinds of geek.

=)

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

I don't guarantee I'm not weird.

I estimate, round to nearest dollar, add a dollar or two if that makes dividing by people easier. What you were doing is easy for you, so it seems to me like a good way for to do do it.

I'm not using weird to mean bad. I'm using it to mean odd.

A story that would fit better with another comment, since you're talking about tipping generously, but that might illustrate what I find odd about being too precise:
I went to dinner with a bunch of friends before a play a few weeks ago. When we got the bill, it was close enough to $20 each that I didn't see a point in working it out exactly. A friend's husband pulled out his calculator and said, "but everyone put in $1.30 too much. The tip is too high." There were a lot of us, arriving at different times. Our server had worked hard. We still had to get to the theatre. I said, "I don't need change, and I would like to get to the play on time." He decided not to press it. If he had wanted to stay for his change, I would not have stopped him; however, I was not going to risk missing the beginning of my friend's play, her first time in a lead Shakespearean role, because of $1.30. Also, I don't see leaving a generous tip as a bad thing, even if the service wasn't exceptional, unless the waiter was hostile or abusive.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I've been out with people who do the sort of thing your friend's husband did. I find it a bit irritating when it's delivered in that fashion. (I don't have a similar problem with someone's counting up the pot and saying "There's plenty here, if anyone wanted change back" -- I've been in groups where most people will initially throw in several dollars extra, just to make sure we don't come up short -- but it's a rare circumstance in which "too high" seems like an appropriate sentiment.) And certainly, I can imagine someone's breaking out the calculator precisely *because* they're too stingy to want to round anything off. Meanwhile, though, akosut often uses one just because arithmetic is not his friend even when simplified. (He also points out that he sometimes comes up with ultra-precise numbers simply because a lot of restaurants that we go to have credit card machines that compute suggested tips based on common percentages and print them on the slip.)

Anyway, I appreciate the clarification regarding the meaning of "weird" -- I don't mind being considered odd, certainly, as long as the other person isn't also thinking less of me for it. :-)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I don't know any non-weird people (I'm only half joking on that), but I round up from 20% of the tab to either an even dollar amount or a number that will make the total-with-tip an even dollar amount, depending on my mood.

[jenk.livejournal.com]

I usually round to some easier-to-handle amount, because I figure it's likely to be more convenient for the server

See, I really suck. I round up to make the total bill an even dollar amount, so as to make the math easier for *me*.

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

IAWTC. I do 20% and round up to the nearest dollar. Leaving a precise, to-the-penny tip = I am giving a tip because I am fulfilling an expected obligation not because I actually believe in giving a tip.

[firecat]

Do you round up the total or the tip?

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

The tip - I leave even-dollar amounts for the tip.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

To the exact penny of what?

I regularly tip whatever amount will make my bill a round number, rarely less than 18-20% depending on what kind of place it is. If my bill is $20.38, and the service is good, I'll tip $4.62 and make it a round $25.00. That's a 22.6% tip. Are you saying that I should leave either $4 (which would still be a healthy tip) or $5 (this is on my credit card, might I note) because figuring out pennies in between is "cheap?"

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

Nope. That's exactly the opposite of what I meant! (Sometimes I wonder how I communicate at all.)

I was talking about counting out exact change (in cash) to leave as a tip so that it would be precisely 15% 0r 18% or whatever the patron thought was the minimum permitted, or leaving exactly a 15% or 18% tip, to the penny, on the credit card.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I've been known to do that, in cases where the service was so bad that I'm grudgingly leaving a tip at all, only because I figure one bad meal shouldn't keep a person from earning their living. I've never not left a tip, (unless things were so bad that I had to call for management, and the problems were definitely on the server's side of the equation, not the kitchen) though there have been times I've desperately, desperately wanted to.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I talk to the manager before I leave a low tip. Sometimes it's not something the server could change, and sometimes the manager can make up for the problem.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

To be more clear, I speak specifically of bad attitudes, inappropriate comments, visibly standing around talking to other patrons/other staff while my party's needs go unmet, that kind of thing.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I had an interesting thing happen with tipping recently. A couple weeks ago, I went to a Red Robin (fast casual, mostly burgers) and as I came in, within my hearing, a female waiter was shaking her head and then the male waiter said "I'll take her if you don't want to." That made me wonder how most middle-aged disabled women who come in alone tip. But my grandmother managed hotels and restaurants and I know how to tip. As I was leaving, I heard him telling her "Look! See what you didn't get?"

I can see her not wanting to serve (heh, wrote sever first) someone she thought would be cheap, but for them to discuss it in my hearing was very rude.

[firecat]

I agree that they were rude and I hope she learned her lesson.

If I'm eating alone at a sit-down restaurant, I tip extra since I'm taking up a whole table but only ordering one meal.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I've been places where I tipped more individually than an entire table did.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

When I do a calculation it's to make sure I dn't undertip. I feel mortified when I realize I've undertipped because I flubbed my math.