Steve Dublanica's Blog, page 31

The Early Word

The first reviews are in for Keep the Change! Take a look!

"I'm not sure what the proper etiquette is for tipping authors, but we should all give a nice bonus to Steve Dublanica for writing such a funny and surprising book on this oft-overlooked part of everyday life"

A.J. Jacobs – Author of the New York Times Bestsellers The Year of Living Biblically and My Life as an Experiment. Thanks for the blurb A.J.!

Kirkus Reviews

September 1, 2010

The author of Waiter Rant (2008) follows up with this similarly energetic insider's look at tipping.

During his nine years as a waiter, Dublanica started an anonymous blog, waiterrant.net, which led to the publication of his eponymous bestseller. After revealing his identity—and crusading, in the style of an angry stand-up comic, against bad customers—he now turns his attention (and heckling) to bad tippers. By traveling around the country talking to workers in various service industries, from strippers to chauffeurs, he simultaneously educates himself and readers. Tipping, he qualifies upfront, is "an informal economy within a formal one," a charge that often feels superfluous. But the numbers speak for themselves. It's estimated, writes Dublanica, "that all the tipped workers in the United States pull down somewhere between $53.1 and 66.6 billion a year in gratuities." More than half of this goes to waiters, which is fitting considering that the word "tip" translates into "drink money" or something similar in at least ten languages. After discussing what you should leave for servers, Dublanica moves on to, among others, hotel doormen ("just about everything calls for a simple single or two"), coffee baristas ("a dollar a drink," an interview notes, "just like a bartender") and hair dressers and aestheticians ("everyone at a salon should get tipped 15-20 percent for the service they provide"). That same percentage, he's told by a Papa John's employee, should be tipped to delivery people: "Fifteen to twenty percent of the bill or the cost of a gallon of gas—whatever's higher." Workers in all sectors concur that the worst kind of people are "exact-changers"—i.e., those who proffer barely enough to cover the cost of what they're buying and say, "Keep the change." As in Waiter Rant, Dublanica makes a point of detailing the ways in which poorly tipped employees may seek revenge.

A hilariously uncensored etiquette diatribe.

Publisher's Weekly

September 13, 2010

The concept of gratuity is the subject of this second book from the unmasked author of Waiter Rant and, like his first, has its own lad-lit charms and contrivances. Opening with a broad and light cultural history of tipping, the book then delves briefly into the tip's primary restaurant industry role before moving on to its impact in lesser known and often neglected businesses by examining their gratuity-related transactions. There's enough raw, self-deprecating autobiography to keep the anthropological enterprise comic; in addition, the author steps in the shoes of those in various industries and discloses the hidden codes of parking valets, Starbucks "tip jars," and the beauty industry. Dublanica breaks down a dizzying variety of service-related exchanges along with the inner worlds of casino dealers and sex-trade workers (in fact, there's an awful lot about Vegas) and even provides a couple of tip-helpful appendixes

Booklist

November 1, 2010

Dublanica, Steve (Author) Nov 2010. 320 p. Ecco, hardcover, $24.99. (9780061787287). 395.5. For four years Dublanica authored the blog Waiter Rant, chronicling the frustrations of an anonymous waiter working in an upscale New York restaurant. In 2008 he went public with his bestselling book Waiter Rant, unmasking annoying foodies, bad tippers, and the bad behavior of restaurant staff. Gratuities were one of the hottest, most talked-about subjects of that book, so Dublanica ran with it. A short history of the custom reveals that tipping was a particularly European practice that we took to new heights in the U.S. Dublanica shines light on those awkward tipping situations that we all face at one time or another: tip the parking valet when he takes your car, delivers it, or both? How much and in what fashion do you tip your hotel maid? And what about "tip creep," those ubiquitous tip jars that are springing up in every coffee shop and fast-food restaurant these days? Dublanica offers tips on how to tip hairstylists, car-wash attendants, auto mechanics, deliverymen, and more, including the joint where tipping rules: the strip club. Valuable information is interspersed with amusing anecdotes and interviews. — David Siegfried

Sonic Boom

It's the week before my gallbladder operation and I want a few last hurrahs before my digestive system goes into hibernation. So my friend Ray I pull into a Sonic off Route 46.

"I've never been to one of these places before," I say.

"You'll love it," Ray says as we pull into the lot. "The shakes are really good here."

Sonic is a throwback to those carhop restaurants from the Fifties. You park your car next to a kiosk, place your order over an intercom and then a guy or girl on roller-skates delivers your food. In the old days the carhops used to hang a tray on your car door. But Sonic has decided to forgo this tradition, probably because they don't want the liability headaches. I can't blame them. These days a simple dent costs a thousand bucks to fix at a body shop.

'Welcome to Sonic," a chirpy voice says over the intercom. "What would you like to order?" Ray and I order two Sonic Burgers, French fries, onion rings and two vanilla shakes. Clogged arteries here we come.

"You've been here before," I say to Ray. "What do you tip the carhop?"

"You're the expert," he says smugly. "You tell me."

Even though I just wrote a book about tipping I realize I don't know what to do. I don't beat myself up however – tipping is a vast and mysterious topic and I couldn't cover every contingency.

"I honestly don't know," I say. "Give me a minute."

Take-out delivery people told me that they want a fifteen to twenty percent tip or the cost of a gallon of gas – whichever's greater. But a Sonic waiter's on skates and travelling a hundred feet max. So that's out. They're also not taking the order so they're not like a traditional restaurant server. Tipping at fast food places is usually verboten, though not always, and Sonic is fast food. And they're not like buffet servers who deserve a tip as well. What to do? What to do? I crunch all my gratuity experience in my head.

"Ten percent," I finally say.

"You sure?" Ray asks. "On fast food?"

"There is a service element involved. And can you imagine skating in the rain or snow?"

"But it ain't raining now."

"Tipping in a place like this is optional," I say. "But I'd say these kids aren't making a lot so a tip would be nice."

"You're leaving the tip then," Ray says. "You're the tipping guru."

"Thanks a lot."

If you're a guru does that mean you get to have concubines? You know, like that guy from the Waco?"

"Please don't compare me to that guy."

"I can see you living in a compound with some groupies," Ray says. "You were in the seminary. You could pull it off. Found some kind of religion!"

"The tax-exempt status would be nice. But I think tipping falls short of the criteria for a religion."

"Gimme a break," Ray says. "If Scientologists say they're disembodied spirits from outer space why can't there be a tipping about religion?

"Give it a rest," I say. "I don't want to get sued."

The carhop arrives with our food. The bill is around twenty bucks so I give the girl three dollars. "Thank you, sir" she says brightly. "Appreciate it."

"No problem."

"That was more than ten percent," Ray says.

"The girl seemed to be struggling with her skates, poor thing."

We eat our food while listening to a ballgame on the radio. The food isn't bad. After Ray and I finish our meal we dump our wrappers and cups into the trash and drive away.

"That hit the spot," Ray says.

"Uh-huh," I say, rubbing my belly. Boy, I'm going to pay for this.

"Wait a minute," Ray says, wriggling in his seat. "Wait….."

"What?" I say. "Something the matter?" It's then that Ray releases a fart of epic proportions.

"Jesus Ray!" I say, lowering my car window. "What the hell?"

"That my friend was a Sonic Boom."

Hypochondria for Profit

I went to the doctor the other day for my post-op follow up. Everything is good, though my blood tests showed some little things that need to be investigated. Nothing serious mind you, just an overabundance of caution on the surgeon's part.

Of course, no one likes to hear that there's anything wrong with them, especially me. So when I got back to my car I found myself worrying about what might be going on in my body. When you get into your forties things start breaking. I've had three root canals, my gallbladder sucked out, high cholesterol that only responds to medication a bum knee, bad hearing and stronger and stronger eyeglass prescriptions. Of course all of this is fairly standard stuff as we age and people are dealing with far, far more serious problems. I had a friend who never made it out of his thirties. But what did that song say? People may have greater problems than you, but your problems are still your problems. So it behooves us to attend to our health and it's okay to have reasonable worries regarding our physical well being.

Reasonable worries.

A couple of months ago I noticed a strange vibration in my butt. So when I went for my annual physical I told my doctor about it and he told me he had the same thing from thirty years of carrying a beeper. Turns out my ass got used to my cell phone buzzing in my back pocket and missed it when it wasn't there. And after I stopped carrying my iPhone near my keister that phantom buzzing went away.

But before I went to the doctor I made the biggest mistake anyone having strange symptoms can do – I went on the Internet. Oh boy, when you listen to people without medical degrees squawking about their health woes in Internet forums you walk away convinced that you have some terrible disease that will put you in the grave within months. So I stopped doing that. Now when I have a concern I talk to a doctor – knowing full well they're not omnipotent gods.

Now people with actual disorders have on-line support groups and that's a great thing. And the Internet is also actually helping physicians solve our health problems. When I worked in hospitals I heard doctors say, "I have no idea what the hell is going on with this guy." So when they're stumped they can put their problem out on the web and gets some feedback from a doctor who's had the same issues and solved them. Very cool.

But as I tooled through some health websites today I noticed that almost all of them advertized some kind of supplement, quack treatment and, of course, drugs from the pharmaceutical industry. These guys aren't out to make you feel better. They're out to make a buck. And things aren't much better in the mainstream media. Everyday we hear about some kind of new illness making the rounds, health concerns regarding certain kinds of foods and constant reminders about our mortality. Then right after we hear about these things there's a friendly advertisement hawking drugs for better hardons, cholesterol lowering drugs, psychotropic medication, botox, sleeping pills, dry eyes, arthritis pain, irritable bowel syndrome, irregularity, breathing problems, stroke prevention, obesity and, my favorite, getting rid of toe nail fungus. And have you seen that advertisement where a hospital gurney follows a patient around while trumpeting some kind of drug? I'll bet the guys on Madison Ave would have turned that gurney into a coffin if given half the chance.

You don't have to be Einstein to figure out what's going on here. The media loves scaring the shit out of us because it scores ratings and it's no accident those Big Pharma ads come right after they're through scaring the shit out of us. If you ask me, the biggest mistake we ever made was letting these companies hawk their wares on television.

Of course there are people who do suffer from the above-mentioned problems and benefit from drugs. I take statin medications so my genetic predisposition to heart disease doesn't screw me up one day. But you'll almost never hear these ads asking you to find out WHY you're having these symptoms and how to manage them without drugs or make healthier choices. Out of legal obligation they just rattle off all the significant side effects these drugs can cause. One pill is known to sometimes induce nymphomania! (Maybe I could get behind that.) And there's a large segment of the population who see these ads and start pestering their doctor to give them these medications. Trust me, it drives a lot of MDs batshit. My doc's advice is always the same – lose weight, exercise, eat right and try not to worry so much. Stress, he always says, is the biggest killer.

But some people are absolutely in love with their illnesses. We all know people like this. All they talk about is their problems, doctors, symptoms and medication. Now don't get me wrong here, support groups are valuable – but sometimes too much is too much. For some people their illness defines them and that's sad. And let's face it, a lot of their nervous jabberings are attention seeking behavior. Just go to an Internet forum to see what I'm talking about. But despite what the people pulling the media strings might tell you, we're persons with lives to live. We have families, jobs, passions, hobbies and good causes to attend to. We are more than what afflicts us. And I've met a good number of people with real problems who refuse to let them slow them down. Have you seen those double amputees come back from Iraq and play basketball on their prosthetic legs? And we freak out over toenail fungus? Please.

One of the principal components of hypochondria is seeking constant reassurance that our bodies are not betraying us. And a good reason that we can be like this is that we don't have people, or well functioning people, that can provide healthy reassurance when anxiety about health or life itself strikes us. So we turn to doctors. But the best way to live a healthy life is not to be alone. We need family, friends and significant others to be healthy. We all need a life. And as I've gotten older I've discovered loneliness maims us terribly.

As my doctor said – stress kills. And stressing out about your health is a good way to wreck it. And I'm not talking out of my ass here; I've had to struggle with this issue myself. And the best cure for that will always be a gentle health regimen and people who surround us with love. Despite the fact that many good people develop drugs to improve the quality of our lives, don't kid yourself – Big Pharma isn't your friend. To them you're a profit center. Don't be that. Now have some ice cream and sex – at the same time if you can.

You're not dead yet.

A Tipping Afternoon

It's a crisp autumn afternoon and I'm in a car hunting for parking on the Upper West Side. Unfortunately, finding a spot in this neighborhood is like trying to find a virgin in a whorehouse. Luckily I'm not driving. I'm convalescing you know.

"Is that a spot?" my friend Alicia says, pointing to an empty space up the street.

"If it's open it's illegal," I say cynically. "A hydrant or a driveway."

"Can you imagine having a garage in this neighborhood?"

"You'd have to be richer than God."

We drive up and down the streets to no avail. Riverside Drive is packed and all the side streets are jammed up. Some people are double-parked, waiting in their cars to snag a spot when one opens up.

"There!" Alicia says. "There's a guy getting into his car!"

Gunning the engine she zips up the street and turns on her blinker. But I already know it will be fruitless. No West Sider will give up a spot on a Sunday afternoon. As we wait the white haired owner of the car takes something out of his backseat, locks the car and walks away. I swear I can see a sadistic grin on his face.

"What an asshole," Alicia says. "He could've just waved us on."

"This is New York, babe."

We drive away and recommence our search, but I'm getting edgy. If you haven't guessed it by now, I have a psychological disorder when it comes to parking. I hate the competition for resources game this town make you play. I knew a girl in Harlem who searched for an hour to find a space and eventually ended up parking ten blocks from her apartment. Screw that.

"Why don't we just park in a garage?" I say.

"That's so expensive."

"The craft fair ends at five," I say, looking at my watch. "At the rate we're going we'll miss it."

"Just a little more time. We'll find something." Alicia is very frugal.

Eventually we find some empty pavement on 80th. But as we pull in I spy a sign that says no parking. I tell her so.

"Goddammit," Alicia says. "Oh wait, someone's pulling out behind us." She starts backing up but the minute the space frees up an SUV pulls in before it has a chance to get cold. Alicia unleashes a stream of obscenities. Now she's edgy. This parking thing's going to put a damper on an otherwise glorious Sunday afternoon.

"Garage," I say. "Now."

Alicia surrenders and we pull into a garage. The rates are highway robbery but we agree to split the cost. "How long you gonna stay?" the attendant asks.

"About three hours," Alicia says.

As the attendant's writing out the ticket I see a couple waiting for their car. "It's going to take a few minutes," another attendant tells them. "We've got to move some cars around."

I sigh. When you park in a New York lot you can end up waiting forever as the attendants Rubik Cube your car out of the basement. Knowing we'll take longer than three hours anyway I pull a five spot out of my wallet.

"Listen, man," I say handing the bill to the attendant. "I have no idea when we'll be back. Just keep the car handy. Okay?"

The attendant smiles broadly. "Yes, sir."

We leave the garage and go to the craft fair on Columbus Avenue. My friend has a thing for hats and when she starts kibitzing with a vendor selling a wide array of chapeaus I decide to get a cup of coffee. Now I'm not supposed to drink coffee post surgery, but a caffeine withdrawal headache has taken up residence behind my eyeballs. I've been medicating it with Mexican Coke (Not blow, just Coca-Cola made South of the Border. No corn syrup you know.) but now I want java. So I cross the street and dip into a coffee shop.

"Do you have soy milk?" I ask the barista sheepishly.

"Sure."

"One coffee with soy milk please," I say, hating myself. I can't have dairy so hippie milk it must be.

After I get my coffee I drop fifty cents into the tip jar. As I stir some sugar into my cup I look around the shop and see all the seats in the place have been annexed by people with laptops. That drives me nuts. Apparently it drives the owners of some coffee shops nuts too. Some places now won't provide Internet connections or even tables to sit at – just some stools by the counter. Just get your coffee and get the hell out. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I rarely ever hang out in Starbucks banging away on my MacBook. It makes me feel kind of foolish.

I walk out and rejoin my friend. She's a slow shopper so I just stand to the side and people watch. Some of the people walking the streets are bundled up for winter while others are clad in tee-shirts and shorts. The temperature is around fifty-five degrees and the wind is picking up, making it feel colder. As the lightly dressed people shiver I silently chide their wardrobe choice. Some people like to think summer's going to last forever. It won't. It never does.

After an hour Alicia's got a new hat and a pair of earrings. As we walk down Columbus Avenue I'm grateful I dressed for the weather – slacks, a black wool pullover and a black leather jacket. I'm not too cold and not too warm. I picked the right ensemble. I also think I look pretty nifty. Are the passing cars slowing down to admire my attire? It'd be pretty to think so.

After strolling along Central Park West and gawking the Dakota I feel a nagging tug in my intestines. Oh boy. I have to go. And post gallbladder surgery, when you have to go it's epic. Since the Time Warner Center has the finest public toilet in all of Manhattan I go to the second floor to sit on the throne in style. After a quite a bit of time I emerge and Alicia and I go into Borders to look around. My second book's coming out soon and I'll be giving a talk here on November 4th at 7pm. (Mark the date.) so I look for a sign advertising that fact. There are none. Oh well.

After we leave the Time Warner Center we try and find a restaurant with a cuisine my digestive system can handle. So we decide on sushi and I order light – tuna sashimi and miso. Alicia has crab legs as an appetizer and a big bowl of seafood soup with udon noodles and shrimp tempura. Though I don't say anything, I'm jealous. After we eat I tack a fifteen percent tip onto the bill and drop the other five percent into the sushi chef's jar. A guy I know who sells fish to sushi joints told me that's the way you should leave a gratuity in a sushi restaurant. He lived in Japan and is married to a Japanese woman so I figure he's right.

"Thank you, sir!" the chef exclaims. His tip jar looks pretty empty. No wonder he's happy.

Our West Side jaunt complete, we head back to the garage to get the car. Even though we spent five hours tooling around and the fee is usurious, our car comes out in under a minute. Five bucks well spent. I slip the attendant another dollar "Thanks man," he says.

"How much did you pass out in tips today?' Alicia asks as she navigates down Riverside Drive.

I do some arithmetic in my head. Six dollars at the garage, fifty cents at the coffee shop and fifteen at the sushi place. "Twenty-one dollars and fifty cents," I say.

"That's a lot," she says.

"That's why you can't go to the city all the time," I say. "This town sucks money out of you."

"I spent a hundred on a hat."

"My point exactly," I say. "But we didn't have to wait for our car."

As we head back to my apartment I think about how tips make life easier – they grease the wheels of commerce and buy a little preferential treatment. But New York is the kind of city that milks tips out of you. I don't think I've ever been in the Big Apple without tipping someone something. We live in recessionary times and not everyone can do that all the time. Come to think I can't do it all the time. But as I look at the cars packed like sardines along Riverside Drive I smile to myself. If we didn't go into that garage we'd still be looking for a spot.

And I'd have gone psychotic.

Nice Versus Decent

I'm leaving a hibachi place in Paramus, NJ when I see a Mercedes SUV swing into a handicapped spot. Two well-dressed parents with three equally bespoke children walk out of the car and into the restaurant. The adults are slim and in shape and none of the children have a disability as far as I can see. After they're out of sight I walk over to their truck and see a blue handicap placard hanging from the rear view mirror. Now I'm pissed.

"Did you see that?" I say to my friend. "They're all fine but they parked in a handicapped spot."

"Bastards."

"That drives me insane."

"They probably have the handicapped thing for when they drive around an elderly parent. "

"But the parent isn't with them now."

"Maybe we should key their car," my friend says with a grin.

"Would serve them right," I say. "But it's not worth the bother."

"Probably video cameras watching anyway."

Now before you freak out over me contemplating vandalizing a car, you have to understand the utter hatred I have for people who misuse handicapped parking. When I was thirty I lived in a small neighborhood where parking was scare. The reason for the paucity of automotive berths was because all the homes on my street were two families with grown children. So every driveway was filled with three or four cars. One had six. Because my apartment didn't have dedicated parking I had to find a space on the street. But since the area was so congested I usually ended parking two or three blocks away. I could have dealt with that – if my neighbors weren't such shits.

Five homes on my block had handicapped parking spaces in front of them. And in the four years I lived among them I never saw anyone with a handicap get into those cars. The bottom line is these residents always wanted to have a parking space in front of their homes so they fraudulently applied for a handicapped spot. I suspect somebody paid someone off at city hall. And if you think I'm being cynical the mayor of that town was indicted for corruption and the city government was almost taken over by the state.

My godfather, a Catholic priest, never liked the word handicapped. "What is this golf?" he'd cry. "They're cripples! Jesus called them cripples! What's wrong with that word?" And you can be sure he didn't like the term "differently-abled" either. Now Ted was born in the 1930's and was a child of his age so don't be to hard on him. If he was around today I think he would have had no problem with the words "disabled" or "disability." But he knew language was a powerful thing and that people would exploit the word "handicapped" at the expense of the needy. And for him "cripple" meant someone who really, really needed that parking spot.

But what counts as a disability in our day and age? I have known and worked with seriously disabled people during my lifetime – people who had lost limbs from accidents, disease and war. These people needed handicapped spots. And you know what? I knew a guy who was in a wheelchair who never used them. "Those are for people who can't get around," he said. He was one tough cookie. Handicapped spots are for the frail elderly, people with serious medical conditions, and those with major ambulation problems. They're not for five healthy people to get a good parking spot on a Friday night.

I have no reason to doubt that the owner of that Mercedes got a handicapped placard because someone he drives around needs it – an old parent, disabled child – whatever. But when that person's not in the car you can't use the spot! And the last time I checked that's the law.

I know people will get pissed when they read this, probably because they have or know someone who struggles with a disability that's not immediately obvious. I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt – but not to two healthy parents who use cynically use their handicap sticker to score a good parking spot. And what's the lesson they're teaching their children? That you should take whatever you can get? That the rules don't apply to you?

Now I'm sure if I talked to those parents they'd be as nice as pie. Fuck nice. Nice is overrated. Nice is very often a lie. We've all been stabbed in the back, exploited, and robbed by people who look "nice." Con artists are often "nice." Nice is easy. Decency is hard. Over the years I've run into people who weren't exactly nice but were decent. Even though they appeared unpleasant at first they would do the right thing, very often at expense to themselves. Nice and decent are light years apart. Nice is just smiling and showing a minimum of social graces. Sure it helps make life go a bit smoother, but decency would do far, far more. How many times have we run into a nice person who was monstrous underneath? What did Shakespeare say? "One may smile and smile and be a villain?" Watch out for those people.

A short while ago an eighteen-year-old boy committed suicide because his roommate and another student video streamed him having a sexual encounter with another man in his dorm room. I'm sure the neighbors and friends of those two voyeurs would describe them as "nice" kids. Maybe they are – but they sure as hell aren't decent. A person with a moral sense would have never have done such a thing. Those kids had no such sense. Now I don't think they could have known that boy would kill himself, but that's not the point. They should have never have done what they did in the first place. But somewhere they learned that everything's on the table to be exploited, the rules don't apply to you, get what you can, everything's for the taking and who cares who gets hurt? Someone taught them that.

Parents and caregivers are the ones who instill a moral code. We teach children to do the right thing by example and, as every parent has told me, their children watch them like hawks. We all falter and screw up, myself included, but some parents will blame the fact they are unable to provide such lessons because they have three jobs, latch-key kids and are fighting against media influences too powerful to counter. That's a cop out. All the moral lessons I learned occurred in seconds – a Scoutmaster telling me to not pick on the weak, my mom chastising me when I had done wrong, my Dad telling me to open a door for an old lady and my godfather's tenderness with the sick, dying and confused. I can roll up all those lessons about human decency into two hours worth of time. Morality is taught in moments – not in textbooks.

The parents in that SUV had such a moment. And they failed.

Still Here

I'm laying an operating table thinking about death.

Now I'm just getting my gallbladder taken out. It's a same day procedure and by nightfall I'll be home sipping low fat soup and zoned out on Percocet. Or will I? My godfather went in for a routine hip replacement and never woke up. As l look at the large circular lamp above my head I realize that my life is now in the hands of total strangers. If there were a tip jar in this place I'd stuff a hundred bucks into it. But there isn't. And as I wait to go under I start thinking the big thoughts.

Most people, well, everybody actually, wonders what will happen after they die. Billions of people believe in an afterlife; that they'll go to Heaven, be reincarnated, enter into another plane of existence or become one with the Force. But others believe there's nothing left after our brains flicker out – just utter oblivion. If you've ever been under general anesthesia you might have had a taste of what that oblivion could be like. One minute you're there and then you're not. You've ceased to be. There are no dreams, no thought and no sentience. Which is fine by me because I don't want to remember some guy snaking a camera through my carbon dioxide inflated abdomen.

As the anesthesiologist put the mask over my face a line from Hamlet floats into my drug soaked brain. "The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will." I don't know what will happen if I shuffle off my mortal coil today. I just don't. Now some people will tell you this is the perfect time to get right with God. But I've always thought last minute conversions were lame – like hitting the brakes when you see a cop. You do it because you're scared of your insurance rates going up, not because you want to do the right thing. Do people honestly believe that an all-knowing Deity isn't going to be hip to their bullshit? So if St. Peter is on the other side of this ride I'll just have to face him with all that I've been and done. And let me tell you, it's a mixed bag.

But there is a possibility that I'll just cease to be. That there'll be no seeing Grandma, my childhood pet, talking with Moses and Einstein, peering into the heart of supernovas and watching Hitler scrubbing toilets. And if there's nothing afterwards I won't be around to get upset about it. But you know what? The thought of not being around does upset me.

"Okay," the anesthesiologist says. "We're going to start."

A while back I watched someone die. And ever since that day I've wondered whose face would be the last I'd see. Suddenly I realize I don't want it to be a doctor or a nurse. So I close my eyes and think of a face. It's a nice face. And whether oblivion or Elysium lies ahead of me, that's the last thing I want to see before I go.

"See you later," I say to no one in particular. Then the world goes black.

The next thing I know I feel like my stomach's been worked over by Mike Tyson and there's a terrible pain in my right shoulder.

"Arrgghhh" I say. "Arrgghhh."

"Are you in any pain Mr. Dublanica?" a female voice says.

"Arrgghhh! Arrgghhh!"

"We'll give you something for it." Whatever it is, it isn't enough.

I try to open my eyes but can't. Some gizmo's squeezing my calves. Maybe it's a blood pressure cuff. On both legs? Huh? Blood clots. It must be something to prevent blood clots. That's what it is. Even with my brain scrambled like an egg I can still think things though. And then it hits me. I'm alive. No St. Peter. No oblivion. I'll get to have that soup and Percocet. Yeah I know, the odds of my biting the big burrito were small but they were there. And despite the pain in my gut I realize I'm very happy.

After an hour I'm wheeled out of the surgery bay. And that face I thought of races up and plants a kiss on my cheek.

"How are you feeling?" she asks. I smile

I'm still here. I'm still here. I'm still here.

Wherever I Go

I'm at the cigar shop I patronize when a customer nicknamed Doc asks me a question.

"Say I'm in a restaurant and the owner's serving me." Doc asks. "Do I tip him?'

"It depends," I say.

"On what?"

"If no waiters are working but there's busboys I'd still leave a tip."

"'Cause the busboys get some of it."

"Right."

"But if there's no busboys?"

"Then I'd say no."

"Well listen to this," Doc says. "I'm eating lunch in a place, no waiters, busboys, nothing. The owner served me. And after I paid up she had...

Drifting Chaos

I'm standing by the bar at Roots Steakhouse in Summit, New Jersey waiting for a table. Being a gentlemen I let my date have the only available stool. I've already drunk two margaritas so I'm now working on a bottle of Perrier. It's all about pacing yourself.

As I listen to the rattle and hum of a restaurant on a busy Saturday night I look at the patrons around me having a good time. Roots is an expensive place – but then again so are the customers. Most of the guys here are wearing...

Under Attack

Hey everybody. If you've been trying to visit WaiterRant  you've noticed that Google has listed my site as "dangerous" and containing malware. As of today the issue has been addressed with a WordPress upgrade and security fixes – so the site is safe. However, it will take Google a day or two to take my site off their blacklist. The last thing I want is my site to be a distribution hub for porn and Viagra – especially when I'm not getting any of that stuff for free!

Back in a few days. Thanks ...

Serendipity

I'm eating a ritzy brunch on the outdoor patio of a ritzy restaurant in a ritzy town. The cars gliding down the ritzy street are all new and expensive and the ladies at the next table are wearing ritzy shoes that cost more than what regular folks make in a month. Even my Eggs Benedict are ritzy. I don't know whether to feel ritzy myself or economically inadequate to the point of suicide.

"How's your food?" my date, a classy brunette, asks.

"Expensive," I mumble through a piece of egg sodden ...