Rant of the Day

In keeping with a a theme created in class, I will have my rant of the day. So I went out to dinner on Friday night with some classmates. I was misled as to the night's events. Figuring that it would be a smaller gathering I agreed to go. I also thought it would be a small Chinese restaurant. Nope, completely opposite of what I had anticipated, and I hate surprises like that--I'm really not very spontaneous. What I thought was to be a small dinner in fact ended up being a dinner at a "classier" restaurant on the 51st floor of the Manulife Centre with a party of 15+ in tow. Now what I don't get was that the restaurant's menu was pizza...pizza and more pizza. And of course some pastas as well. For a restaurant that can flaunt having an amazing view, the food sure sucked. I got gnocchi because I wasn't about to spend $15 on a gourmet pizza. Come on, if I wanted pizza I'd defrost the free Delicioso pizza I got from Dundas Square. At least gnocchi isn't something that you can get any time. The problem with gnocchi is that if it's done poorly it can tast awful-ie chewy, but if it's done right, it tastes amazing! OK for $15, I'd take the risk. So it wasn't the best decision. It tasted very generic, the sauce did. The gnocchi was slightly denser than I like. Needless to say I got very bored of eating it, and even though the bowl was the size of a half pint, I still didn't finish it.

Then somebody remarked, oh there are no non-asians here. I must admit, I also thought the same thing in my head. It's still a totally weird concept to me (with the exception of the badminton team) because of the friends I had in high school 99.99% of them were non-asian. But actually hearing that comment is one of my pet peeves. Duh, if you hang out and seek other asians, you will inevitably be hanging around with them no? It's not intuitive, it's a fact. My pet peeve isn't that asians hang around other asians, it's that when they do, they point it out like it's some weird anomaly. (*I don't hang around these people all that much*)

Anyhoo, at the end of the night, we all had to pay our bill. Oh here's another funny thing...at the beginning of the night, we got drink menus. $10 for a cocktail, $8 for a large bottle of water. The funny part was watching the waitresses try to get orders for drinks from a bunch of low-tolerance, slightly frugal people. So being a "classy" restaurant, the bill came as one communal bill. It was over $350 plus taxes. Then in all the commotion of people suddenly realizing that they will have to pay cash and have to add properly, someone shouts out, "you have to add 30%." Then someone agreeing, "yeah, trust the Finance guy." Just because somebody did their degree in finance doesn't give them a right to tell people how to spend their money or how to etiquettely and socially act. (*I don't like this guy--he once told me on another social occasion that I'm too quiet and that I need to improve my presence--WTF he had never even talked to me before then*) If I'm not mistaken, you pay for your food according to the quality of the food, and the service. Somebody ordered some sushi and it only came with 3 pieces. He said it wasn't very good and ended up eating the other half of my gnocchi that I didn't finish. If you're paying tip, you're displaying to the restaurant and the chefs the integrity of service that they offer. As one popular chef said, "I don't need a review to tell me how good my food is, I can see the plates as they come back into the kitchen."

Anyhow, back to the paying situation. So although the bill included gratuity, somebody insisted that we pay 30%. So my meal was $15 plus $4 for a drink. Since everybody agreed to pay 30%, I stuck pretty close to it. So that's roughly $25 for my meal. Once all of the cash was totalled, someone notices that we were $30 under what we intended to pay. So someone suggests everybody pay another $2 to make up the difference. I sensed a lot of ambivalence towards this idea. We managed to make it to $10 short of "our goal" and there was some guilting tactics that ensued but to no avail. Finally I and another girl put in another $5 just to get them to shut up about it. Obviously people didn't want to pay 30% and they were just too chicken to say anything. Then you think you have the right to tell them to feel bad about it? Gratuity was already 17%. Which means that even if you didn't like a single morsel of the food, they are still being tipped so to speak. What bothers me most is that I paid a total of 50% tip while I didn't see the guy who made such a big deal out of tipping, chip in any more than the next person.

Right we're all going to be doctors and we will have more than enough to pay 30% tip in the future, but the fact is that it is still a personal choice whether or not you choose to tip and how you want to spend your money. Next time, I'm not putting in any more money. Enough with keeping the peace.

I ate 2 pieces of toast and peanut butter at midnight to quell the hunger pains.