I've never been a fan of tipping. Partly because of the inconvenience of it, and partly because of the awkwardness of it. The inconvenience is fairly straight-forward: at restaurants and other such venues, you must temporarily turn into Rain Man in order to perform the necessary calculations to determine the proper tip amount. If you…
Some friends ask you to go out to dinner with them. It'll be fun, right? Well, if you're like me then it will unleash a living hell of anxiety in your brain. I've been to one or two large dinners in my life, and most of the time they are less than enjoyable experiences. Why?…
Perhaps nothing solidifies your status as a lower middle class American quite like being a connoisseur of chain restaurants. They have something of a reputation for mediocre-quality food that is lacking in imagination in an overstimulating environment that represents decades of market research and corporate optimization. But, you know, they aren't all that bad. I, for…