I might spend too much time online reading blogs. Upon reading that sentence I realize that anytime spent reading blogs might be too much time. It’s just that from what I notice everything is like Seinfeld now. It’s all about nothing and then there’s a twist which may or may not be special. Let me give you an example.
My car died on me two days ago.
I called CAA and read the intro to the Invisible Man while I waited for the tow-truck driver. Every year Radio buys me a CAA card and every year I max out the number of calls.
The driver came and tried the ignition, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t even tried to restart it when it initially conked out, but it wouldn’t start so I was saved in a way.
The driver and I rolled the car back a little so he could hoist it up onto the flat bed. In the truck on the drive home I thought about the tip.
I thought of five bucks as a joke, I knew I would give him more.
I’ve known guys who work in cars and they always tipped well, 20-50$, they expected good service and a certain amount of discretion about where the cars come from and where they go, so a tip of less than 20$ would be like not tipping a waitress in a bar. It’s just not done. Especially after hitting on her shamelessly and being all drunk and happy handed
A pager client once told me that drivers hate to get stuck with the CAA truck, usually they belong to companies that do regular towing and have one truck that’s a CAA truck and responds to calls. He said the first time he got the dreaded truck people were tipping him 5, 10, 20 dollars and he got the last laugh.
It seems when people are forced to go into their pockets to spend 120$ on a tow truck they are less likely to tip. It’s a losing day already (what with the car problems) so the bill is just more of a loss.
As we were driving he started smoking and didn’t ask permission I expected him to. I would’ve said “yes of course, it’s your truck” so it didn’t bother me, but he put down my window and left his up (damn electric windows). Any smoker, the second hand kind or the kind taking a more direct route to heart disease, cancer and hell, knows that, that draws all that smoke from his cigarette, passed me and out my window. Five dollars, or even nothing, all of a sudden seemed acceptable.
The driver closed my window and opened his own, we were back at 10$, also he didn’t say anything the rest of the way, we were at 15$ now.
I was home.
Once he lowered the car he didn’t ask me for a signature though, just waved good-bye. I stopped him before he left.
I imagine there was either a policy change at CAA or, more likely, my brother splurged on the Gold Service since the driver had towed the car about 40 klicks and hadn’t charged a dime extra.
His tip was 20$.
He smiled for the first time in 45 minutes, maybe for the first time all day. I imagine most of the time people’s losing days become his own so he wasn’t used to a guy who wasn’t having one, a losing day that is.
I got to reread the introduction to the Invisible Man. I knew mine was a winning day so he would win with me.
