A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Is 30% enough?

By Jimmy Johnson

Honk if you’ve ever done this. This classic A&J from 1997 was lifted verbatim from reality, a rarity. I was dining with friends at a restaurant in Bay St. Louis, and we had a terrible waitress. She was sweet as she could be, but it was obvious she’d little experience or training in her work. As she apologized profusely and scurried off toward the kitchen to correct yet another faux pas, we turned to one another and had the exact same exchange as Janis and Arlo above, right down to delivering the “punchline” in unison. “Janis and Arlo.” Sounds odd, doesn’t it?

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42 responses to “Is 30% enough?”

  1. MontanaPhil Avatar
    MontanaPhil

    Passed by your stomping grounds in Pass Christian yesterday, on the way to Orange Beach. Nice to be on the beach again.

  2. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    In a previous life, I spent some time in food service management (summer jobs). When I get an obvious noob as a server, my tendency is to briefly explain my background and then council him/her on how to improve their service as I would have one of my employees…and then to not stiff them on the tip, to encourage them.

    It’s been a few years (pre-Katina), but Bay Saint Louis did have some good eateries back in the day. And Orange Beach was always fun.

    1. Sideburns Avatar

      Same here, Ghost. I’ve never given a noob a great tip for poor service, but I have given them good, but gentle advice on how to do better.

  3. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    I told the story from about a year ago, skipping the tip at a nice restaurant, but then taking that tip and giving it to a hard working waitress at a Coney Island who compensated my burger because it came out late. I wasn’t sure on the tip amount and decided to give her the $30 that I would have given the other restaurant. It made me feel good as she is a single mom working 70 hours a week.

    Yesterday I had the dishwasher installed at my house. I have installed at least 2 or 3, but the plumbing at this house was slightly different and I did not want to chance messing up. The guy that came to the door was hooked up to oxygen while his two young workers did the install. He told me that he was a cancer survivor who received hospice care, but for some reason didn’t die. His crew did a good job, but the cost was $100 more than I had expected. I might have challenged another plumber, but considering his circumstances, I decided just to pay the bill. Challenging the bill probably wouldn’t have lowered it anyway.

  4. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    This is THAT day – I was in line getting booster shots (Army) when we heard.

    2 Tipping stories
    I a coffee joint in NYC late night/early morning friend & I were giving waitress a (bantering)
    hard time – she gave back just as good – Coffee & Pie came to 50 cents each we gave $2 each
    (When that was 2 hrs labor for us and more for her)

    Skip forward a few years and a group of us from college went to a nice restaurant. The service was so bad
    we left 2 cents – leaving no doubt that we were not skipping out on the tip.

  5. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    This has nothing to do with the date or tipping, but I absolutely thought of the expression in such a way, and thought it was novel enough to bring up here.

    https://www.gocomics.com/floandfriends/2019/11/22

  6. cxp Avatar
    cxp

    insert “never” before “thought”

  7. TruckerRon Avatar

    Clive Staples Lewis (aka C.S. Lewis) also died on that day in 1963, as did one of my least favorite favorite writers, Aldous Huxley.
     
    From Wikipedia:
    Media coverage of Lewis’s death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis’s collapse), as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft’s book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church.

  8. jh42 Avatar
    jh42

    In some parts of the world, tipping is discouraged, and leaving a tip is considered an insult – it effectively says “they must not pay you well enough to care about your job.”

  9. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    TruckerRon, in 1977 Groucho Marx and Elvis Presley died the same week. Groucho was almost completely lost in the media frenzy over Elvis.

    I was only in the third grade when President Kennedy was killed, so I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. I remember being sent home from school in the early afternoon, and the funeral procession being televised, but not grasping why this was so serious.

  10. emb Avatar
    emb

    JJ: Thanks for today’s commemorative cartoon. Peace, emb

  11. R Avatar
    R

    Thanks for today’s cartoon. Will always remember . . .

  12. Lynne Wilburn Avatar
    Lynne Wilburn

    Thank you for today’s cartoon…deep in November it is nice to remember…I was young and then I wasn’t anymore. Keep the faith until they killed Bobby and then just gave up. But thanks for reminding me of when things were hopeful.

  13. emb Avatar
    emb

    It’s worth remembering which “they” killed Bobby. Peace,

  14. Allan Leese Avatar
    Allan Leese

    Thank you for the 11/23 strip. I didn’t even hear it mentioned on any of the news channel’s today. 56 years the country stopped for 5 days…… left a wife and 2 children. So sad, I detest democrats, but no one deserves to have died in that manner. or any manner at that age.
    NEVER FORGET

  15. RicardoZes Avatar

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  16. emb Avatar
    emb

    Detest? We supposedly don’t do politics here. Peace,

    1. Smithee Avatar
      Smithee

      Does this opinion also reflect on your own comment from last evening, a couple lines up?

      One man pulled a trigger at the Ambassador Hotel. Who do you call “they”? Arab, Christian, Lutheran, Rosicrucian or supporter of Palestine?

      In this case I would say Sirhan did a detestable deed. But I would also say giving significance to an unnamed “they” is a political statement. Only one that lacks the strength of definition.

    1. Jimmy Johnson Avatar

      Thanks for the link, Mark! I was watching Saturday when Aurea kicked things off with her pregame flight. It was obvious the young lady has some work to do. Ideally, War Eagle will swoop around the stadium a time or two before descending on its reward, a chunk of meat proffered by its trainer. Once she was released, I noticed Aurea dived directly on the meat. Freshman mistake. As Coach says after every game, “We’ll get better.”

  17. emb Avatar
    emb

    Mark, Neat video. Peace,

    1. TruckerRon Avatar

      Thanks, Mark. That was “sweet” of you. 😉

  18. Llee Avatar
    Llee

    Sounds like compassion, JJ. Sounds like you and Village have and share it. 🙂 That’s yet another reason I like coming here.

  19. Tom (formerly) from the front range. Avatar
    Tom (formerly) from the front range.

    MinTT, thanks for the info, albeit sad, about Gaham Wilson.

    In my youth I bought Playboy just for his cartoons.

    Two come immediately to mind:
    1: Plumbing store showroom, woman sitting on commode. Salesman, “Madam!, those are for display only!”

    2: Looking out right side of (U.S.) passenger car at outside mirror which has engraved, “Objects in mirror are larger than they appear”. Typical Wilson monster takes up the whole mirror image.

    1. Mark in TTown Avatar
      Mark in TTown

      Tom, his Playboy cartoons were where I first remember seeing his work. I also loved the Nuts comic strip he did for the National Lampoon magazine. One of my favorites from Playboy was where you see the woman walking a child with a harness and lead on him, being confronted at a corner with what appears to be a toddler werewolf with a harness and chain with its handler out of sight around the corner. http://www.fantagraphics.com/gahan-wilson-fifty-years-of-playboy-cartoons/

  20. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    In our hardware store we had to have acrylic covers so commodes would not get used.

    Smithee – Since we are not supposed to use He, She or It — they are all “They”

  21. Tom (formerly) from the front range. Avatar
    Tom (formerly) from the front range.

    Upon further review, the correct caption to item two is, “Objects in mirror are CLOSER than they appear” which makes for a much funnier image.

    Dang, I wish we had the ability to edit our posts.

  22. emb Avatar
    emb

    OB & Smithee,
    I’m happy with the gender-neutral “they” [some regard that as political], but that was not my point. If we know the ID of a culprit, whatever their politics, we should ID them. “They” didn’t commit the Holocaust; pick one: Germans, Nazis, Hitler. Likewise, they didn’t kill Jesus, Pilate or Romans did [only Romans could legally execute in Roman Palestine]. They didn’t commit 9/11, Al Q did. They didn’t order millions of Russians shot in the ’30s, Stalin did. They didn’t intern West Coast Japanese American citizens, FDR [one of my “detested” heroes] did. Another, HST, did in Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
    Peace?