My beloved son was going to take his girlfriend out on Valentine’s Day for dinner. Since he’s new to this, I warned him that restaurants tend to rip people off on Valentine’s Day, since, well……………they can. He took her out to a nice place that recommended, and between the two of them, his bill was about $412. (I will note that they are not drinking age, so it wasn’t because of wine or cocktails). He didn’t ask me to do so, but I was very puzzled at the high figure, so I got in touch with the restaurant to get the invoice. The first portion of it was – – how shall we say this? – – not particularly informative.
But the lower part told the tale. They charged them a fixed $150 per person for the meal. A sparking water to share was $9. Then there’s $28.20 to go to the governor of California to waste on stuff like high-speed trains that will never get done. And, even though the restaurant seating them a hour late, they had no compunction about giving themselves a generous 20% tip.
The real kicker, though, was the Living Wage, which was 5% they blithely added on, just because. Why not 10%? Or 50%? Or 1,000%? I mean, if people are going to just MAKE STUFF UP when they bill people, how about go to town?
Insane.
