In the high school days when I was beginning to manage my own money, a friend and I went for pizza. Our bill came to fifteen dollars; feeling very grown-up and independent, I paid for it with a twenty, and got a five-dollar bill in change. (Change! My heart be still!) The only thing left to do was figure the tip–unfortunately, my problem-solving skills weren’t up to par that day, and I never thought of going to the register to get the five broken down. And so, I left the waitress a five dollar tip.
When I proudly told my mom what I had done, she said, “Tera, you left the waitress five dollars??”
“It’s not that much money,” I said naively.
“For a fifteen-dollar meal, it is,” said Mom, who used to work as a waitress herself. She told me that, with tippers like me, she’d consider going back into waitressing.
-Tera Kirk