Lewis Provides a Compelling Reason

Lewis provides a compelling reason against tipping in that people who provide services will expect gratuities, and when these gratuities are not given or are granted in a manner that is below their expectation, the quality of the given service will decline. Rather than focusing on providing as qualitative a service as possible, the service given will depend on the level of the tip and -- I might add - not only is this dangerous in terms of the already prevalent class distinctions in America (that the rich will receive better service than the poor), but the desired level of the tips will arise until the situation may reach absurd proportions.

Lewis provides one part of the picture. We have to see the other side of the counter. Presumably, Lewis, the self-indulgent customer who goes into Starbucks for his coffee and pays a cab to take him on his trips, ignores the man behind the cup or the woman behind the wheel and is indifferent -- because unaware of -- her reality.

I have read what it feels like to hold that cup and to receive a tip!

I have read what it feels like from a 14-year-old girl whose parents sold her sole winter coat to buy themselves drugs and who often had no food to eat because her mother had AIDS and her father was an alcoholic. Unable, since too young and uneducated to procure for herself a job, she was turned away from gas stations when she attempted to gain money through servicing the cars.

One day, dizzy from hunger she passed a supermarket and saw the youngsters packing paid groceries in bags, and near each youngster was a bowl that she noticed, here and there, customers dripped a coin into. The youngsters seemed to be her age, or if not, at least as tall as she. So she stood on tippy-toes to make she appear older, surreptitiously squeezed in between one of the youngsters, picked up a bowl and started packing. She relates her hopes how each approaching customer picked up the bag desperately hoping for a peek of that customer in her face, maybe a smile and best of all, at least, a coin that would show the customer's gratitude.

There was one incident that stuck in my mind: a woman approached. Stacey was sure she would receive no tips. The woman was accompanied by squeezing, squalling children, and the woman herself appeared harassed and tiered. This was a long day for Stacey. She had been standing all the time on her feet -- for more than six hours, and had been tipped by only six people. She was hungry; she had not eaten that morning and there was barely enough in her pocket to buy her the food she so desperately wanted. She prayed: please let the woman look at me. Please let her give me something. Anything. Just let it be something. The woman hauled on by her kids, took the bags and left. Moments later she came back, looked into Stacey's face, and reaching into her packet gave her a full dollar. "Poor child" she said and left.

Stacey had bread that day.

Lewis provides one side of the story: the privileged customer. This essay provides the other side of the story: the man behind the cup; the child behind the bowl; the woman behind the wheel. Taking them into consideration, we may pronounce tipping to be a worthy custom. It diminishes, to a miniscule extent, the great divide between rich and poor in our nation and gives those, who otherwise would have naught, at least some food for another day.

In the "consequences of carnage as entertainment," John Ellis provides a reasoned argument for his assumption that media, particularly and specifically television, results in an increase in violence, in general, and on school campuses in particular. Television serves up a routine diet of violence, and kids, reared on this offering, see little harm in imitating. After all, they then become national heroes. The media interviews them, people utter their names, and others, in turn, may wish to imitate them. They become more talked about than do doctors who search for cures for cancer.

Ellis repeats a complaint that is popular with contemporary adults. The fact is, however, that correlation or association between TV and violence has never been conclusively resolved even though countless studies exist on the subject, and even were a positive correlation or association to exist, correlation does not indicate causation.

X, for instance, who kills her colleagues in a certain school may be suffering from depression. It may be the illness that has caused him to take the shot. Y who killed her patents may have been cruelly abused by them day after day until, at the end of her tether, she drew out her gun. Z who stabbed his teacher may have been sexually abused by that same teacher who then intimidated him from revealing. The shame, the embarrassment, the humiliation caused him o take revenge. All of these individuals -- x, y. And z may have been on a daily diet of TV, but TV was incidental to the reason for their acts.