This Is Not Your Mess Hall

Sure you down home cool cats are used to moseying into the mess hall, bumping into the baseball player you hooked up with the night before and waving frantically to your sorority "sisters" at your table by the window before grabbing a tray and standing in line for the meal of the day. You may not be used to paying $8 at meal times, you may not be used to eating anything other than your do-it-yourself salad bar or the too-cool-for-school stir fry that the cafeteria people make right in front of you, but guess what, your not in Kansas anymore - food costs money, so does service.

You may not even say hi to the poor souls who give you your pizza and fries in the dining hall, but they are humans and you should, similarly, while you are pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw and going out to eat, don't forget that your servers are also humans. They happen to be humans who run their asses off to get you honey mustard and ranch dressing for your french fries, who circle your table to keep your drinks full, not because they like you but because they need money.

If they do a good job and are pleasant, you should tip them. Not with the quarters at the bottom of your bag, but with dollars, with 18 - 20% of the tab if they were good. If Daddy is paying your credit card anyway, what's the difference? If you only want to act like a big girl when you are in the office doing that grueling 8 hour shift we discussed, then don't go out to eat. Go hole up in your dorm and trade secrets with your new room mate with whom you will certainly be friends for the rest of your life.

And one more thing - water glasses are for drinking, not for drunkenly filling with ketchup, salt, gum, and wadded up napkins. This is a respectable city in which normal people function from day to day - get it together.