Karma

I just returned from my bank where I had to get change for our cash register and all the paper bills that they had were slick new ones. If you've ever handled paper money at all, you know that these things are a bear to count because they always want to stick together.

All these sticky bills reminded me of a customer some years ago, a Brit who brought three others to lunch, a guy who was not a very nice person, who was haughty, demanding, and condescending, just the kind of guy you want your daughter to date. NOT! Just the kind of person that the servers love to hate because they know that they will have to put up with a lot of grief for little to no tip.

After a few beers, his party of four had run up a lunch tab of nearly $100, $97.20 to be precise. At the conclusion of lunch, he put some cash in the bill presenter and left. We were too busy to count the cash as he left saying "keep the change," almost always a sure sign of a lousy tip. We weren't in a hurry to count the cash anyway as we didn't want to get irritated over the lousy tip that we were certain was coming.

After all the lunch customers left, the server asked me to guess how much tip the guy left and I guessed $105 for the total, or $7.80 in tip. She shook her head and said, "much lower" while handing me the bill presenter which contained a crisp $100 bill. It was about 20 minutes later as I fished the bill out of the presenter that something felt funny about it. And surely you have guessed by now that it was not a single hundred, but two glued ever so tightly together.

And folks, that's a big lesson in karma.