2747 Better

Sunday, January 17, 2010

From "A Chorus Line":
I thought about committing suicide, but in Buffalo, suicide is redundant.

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I felt a lot better when I woke this morning, just a tired feeling remaining between my shoulder blades and in my arms and legs. As the sun is going down, however, the coldness is coming back, and the heavy feeling in my middle. Whatever it is, probably a virus, my body seems to be fighting it well.

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I get the Mensa Bulletin every month - a 46-page glossy magazine - and I almost never open it. It usually goes straight into the recycle bag. There's rarely anything of interest in it, and frankly, much of the writing, from people who seem to think they're fascinating, is annoying. The fiction is especially bad.

Yesterday, for some reason, as I was about to discard it, I flipped it open, directly to an article on handling problem members, and it just so happened that the specific problem on that page was people who can't seem to figure out how much their portion of the restaurant bill comes to, often stiffing the host.

Serendipity.

So I read it.

The author recommends handing out envelopes at the table. As each person orders, they are to write what they ordered and the price on the outside of the envelope. At the end of the meal, they total it up, multiply by the tax plus tip, put the money in the envelope, and pass it to the table host. That makes it easy to check that all items on the bill are claimed and paid for.

You know, I don't think that would go over too well with the Meetup groups. It sounds good, but the very people who cause the problem would think it silly, and be insulted that they're being treated like children, and probably forget to write down the wine and dessert anyway. Consider that one of the problem women said loudly, when the money was short by quite a bit, and it turned out she was the one who was short, "Don't you hate people who pull out calculators at the table?"

As usual for Mensa, logically sensible, but socially unworkable.
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