As the usual story goes, I was a waitress once and have been in the service-related professions on and off for much of my working life. When someone deserves it, I dish the tips out for as much as I can afford. However, sometimes, things don’t always turn out as I intend.
There is a little taco shop close to where I formerly lived that I loved to visit. The food was authentic, yummy, spicy, and hard to beat. I attempted to not eat there more than a couple times a month because of the authenticity (i.e., lard). When I ate there, I usually showed my appreciation in the form of a 100%, or more, tip, when I could swing it.
That’s really not saying much since the food was scandalously inexpensive for the quality and taste.
My husband joined me every now and then; he was a big fan of their home-made tortilla chips and salsa. As we were walking home from the local pool after a hard, butt-kicking swim, we decided to stop and treat ourselves at this taco shop. I happened to have enough cash for food for both of us, a 100% tip, a trip next door for us to get a decent bottle of wine to enjoy later in the evening, and then some.
As we were chatting our way to the taco shop, we decided to keep it light and grill veggies for dinner when we got home, so I decided to only get a small, hold-me-over taco and my hubbie wanted some chips and salsa to enjoy at their outdoor patio. He walked away to go find a place for us to sit at the patio and left me to handle the ordering and tipping. Something I’m normally good at.
I ordered my taco. Then and there, I decided to be extra generous and dropped the remaining money into the tip jar, feeling good about being able to donate extra funds to the fine people at the restaurant for their awesome food and service. That computed to a nice tip! Yay!
I walked out to the patio to wait for the mouth-watering taco. My husband looked relaxed waiting for me to deliver his delicious chips and salsa, but then his forehead crinkled.
“So, are they going to bring my chips and salsa out later?”
“Oh, crap!”
That’s when it hit me. I had put the remainder of my change into the tip jar and forgot to order my hubbie’s chips and salsa! I eyeballed the tip jar. For a moment, I thought, well, would it really be that bad to reach in? Would the woman remember me, and did she even see me put those bills in there? Now what? Oh brother. I sauntered closer to the counter and I realized that I don’t think the woman who took my order saw me put the money in the tip jar. Crap.
That tip was now lost among all the other monetary forms of thank you notes: $1 and $5 bills, loose change, and so on. Do I try to tell her that I forgot to order my husband’s stuff and gave the tip jar all my money, and then ask to reach in and grab some back? Do I erase my little good deed with some lame-southern-California-girl’s excuse about how I really meant to order one more thing, but was feeling generous and dropped all my freaking cash in the jar? Yeah, right…
My mind started going nuts with all the possibilities. Did another customer see me put the big-ish tip in there? Would he stick up for me when I asked the woman at the register about it? Should I just grab the money when no one was looking? That was dumb—you’ll never be able to explain this away, what a goof ball. Just walk away and split your single, warm, steamy, flavor-packed taco with your man. Yeah, that will be fun.
Not.
I couldn’t think of anything worse. I felt ravaging and starved from swimming in the blazing sunshine and the resultant product from grilling when we got home was at least an hour away. Right then, that seemed an eternity.
I looked once more in the tip jar and decided to let things be.
I made my husband extra veggies that night and served them with chips and salsa.
He still laughs about it.
