Sunday brunch, tipping, unlimited mimosas (NYC)

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A German acquaintance wrote to me about my New Rules regarding tipping in Europe and it suggested to my mind to share last Sunday's episode in NYC:

By the way, Happy Fourth of July. Woo-hoo! So a friend and I met for a late Sunday brunch last week. It was, incidentally, NYC's homosexual celebration day (Pride, they call it. Go figure). I didn't run into any of the circus until after eating so my appetite was still intact. The cafe my friend originally suggested was, to our surprise, completely closed and emptied out ---talk about a New York minute!--- so we settled two doors down at Bar-B-Q, a macho sounding diner-esque eatery on the fringe of chi-chi Chelsea where nothing is diner and nothing but blatino hustlers are macho.

I had eaten here before because they used to offer mojitos. Mojitos were no longer on the menu but, for Sunday brunch, one could have either mimosas, bloody marys or some other drink I can't recall in unlimited quantities for the duration of 60 minutes. Fast forward to the end of the meal: the bill of fare.

Brunch prix fixe was $13.95. Our bill was thirty dollars solid. We each only had a twenty-dollar note. I thought to leave a $10 tip was outrageous and my friend, who has adopted NY as his permanent residence, offered little in the way of argument. Is that not too much? I said. Yeah maybe, he answered. So it was settled: we'd leave a $5 dollar tip and split the other five for train fare. Well! 

This pretty boy motherfucker waiter, probably a homo jock, looked at us and said, the motherfucker actually said, "Wow. I, like, served you, what, six or seven mimosas?" And I said, "Yes thank you for reminding me. Five dollars please."

So homeboy pulls out this WAD of money from under his apron and flips pass ten- and twenty-dollar bills ---billssss...plural--- to peel us off an Abe Lincoln; he, the waiter, has more money than the two of us and I, me, had to sleep in Central Park just days earlier and THIS GAY BAIT MOTHERFUCKER had the nerve to turn up his nose at five dollars? Five free dollars?! If I had been dining alone I would have told him, Thank ye very little and fuck you very much, and not left a goddamn thing. Imagine! "Unlimited" mimosas means five...six, seven, eight...nine...twenty. And it's not as if we were boorish diners snapping our fingers at the aspiring actor or griping about this or that.

That's NYC for you where free money is even insulting. They expect gratitude for doing their jobs. Assholes, rich pigs, wannabes, and queers...and most times it is hard to tell the difference betwixt the four; but they're all ungrateful, pretentious, barely English speaking, me-centric, individuals. Nigga please.