It's 10:38am. I'm on the road to Demorest. I've got the dirty laundry basket with me, my meds, my c pap machine, and the thing that I never forget, my laptop. The ride from Atlanta to Demorest, city to country, my apartment to girlfriend's house, is about an hour and fifteen minutes. My Ghetto PCS phone, as some nickname it, will work until I hit Gainseville, Ga. I often use this time, this stretch of highway to reach out and touch, via phone, friends who I don't often talk to while wound in the hustle and bustle of my ordinary day activities.

Nobody, I know will be available at 10:38; they will either be asleep or at work. Most of them will be asleep.

I pulled into the Caribou coffee house in Midtown before I hit the road. I needed beans and Java Lords was short on them, last night, when I stopped by there to score. I asked the guy behind the counter at Caribou which pound of coffee that he liked best; there were two choices, this morning. The young man said that he liked the Costa Rican, so I layed it on the counter, said thanks, and ordered a cappuccino. I like the Caribou cappuccinos; they put four shots of expreso in them. Starbucks only puts in two. Caribou has this system where you can get a card that attaches to your key chain and you can put money on it to use it for future coffee visits. Beyond that, you can set it up where, if you hit a certain level of cash on your card, they will automatically hit your credit card up and rejuvinate your coffee card. You can't put a tip on this card, though and I thought that I only had a twenty; the guy couldn't get into the register to break it, so that I could drop a one or two in the tip cup. He didn' have a key, so I routed through my wallet, found a five, and put it in the tip cup.

This earned me a big smile from the man who had just help me choose the coffee beans for my home, and from the guy working with him. The guy working with him said, "make his extra special!"

I don't relate this incident to you to share with you what a great man I am. I relate it to you to show you that tipped employees should be tipped well, if they do a good job, if they exhibit a good attitude. I used to bitch about all the big businesses that weren't paying their employees enough, while they raked in huge profits, and they expectes us, the customers, to pay their emmployees' salaries via tips. Have you ever know a poor restaurant owner? Why is it that they can't pay their waiters and waitresses a fair wage? Why must the server rely on the customer for their bread and butter.

Anyway, me bitching about how bad big corporations suck does absolutely no good for anyone. Putting an extra buck or two in the coffee cup at the coffee shop does.
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