Tag Archives: moral

1% Banker Left A 1% Tip and Idiotic Advice for Waitress

Posted by in Money • 12 Comments

I just read this story about a jerk 1% banker and was totally blown away.

For those who don’t want to click over, basically this banker went to a restaurant, ordered $133.54 worth of food, ate it, and paid. Except that instead of paying a normal tip of 15%, he left a tip of just $1.33, just 1% of his bill! Kind of a jerk move. But to top it off, he circled the tip and left a tip of his own: “GET A REAL JOB.”

RUUUUUUUDE!

None of this makes any sense to me. Has he not eaten at a restaurant before? Did he not know what to expect? When I go out to eat, I know that someone will be serving me food and I know that that is their job and they probably earn a living based on tips. Does he ever leave a tip? Is not leaving a tip his way of saying that being a waitress sucks so you should find a “real job,” which I’m sure is easier said than done?

The guy is clearly a huge jerk, but I don’t think he’s even thought through what he wrote.

If everyone had his mindset that being a waitress isn’t a real job, and if everyone got real jobs, who would serve his food? Who would shine his shoes? The world clearly revolves around this guy, but if everyone is like him, how will people continue to serve him? Also, what would the world be like with so many jerks walking around? Doesn’t sound like a pleasant place to be.

I applaud the banker’s coworker to snapping the photo and putting it on his blog, Future Ex Banker, which has since been taken down. But now that it’s such a popular story, he’s probably going to be outed, and maybe his blog title will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is this Being Frugal, Cheap or Stealing?

Posted by in Money, Money Stories • 10 Comments

We’ve looked at some other questionable behavior and now I’d like to get some feedback about a situation where I tried to pay for something but accidentally got my money back. How far do I have to go to give ‘found money’ back?

I bought glasses recently through an online promotion (I only had to pay for shipping and handling), which came out to $11.29 for a pair I really liked. Pretty sweet, right??

Well, I picked out the glasses, went to the checkout page, and tried paying by PayPal, but got an error. Hoping it was a one-time occurrence, I tried again, but again had no luck. So I tried doing it via credit card, but was given no indication that the transaction went through. I got no email confirmations, but I did get a PayPal confirmation indicating that I had been charged.

I called, emailed, and sent a Facebook message to the company, hoping that they could help me solve my problem. They said to email the PayPal transactions to them and they would have them reversed, and to try again.

So I forwarded the PayPal emails and tried again. Nope! I forwarded that too, and called once more to get it settled. The customer service representative told me to email her that last transaction to her as well, so I did. She also was able to put my order through over the phone and charged my credit card $11.29.

Two days later, I was refunded my PayPal payments, but they accidentally refunded an extra $11.29 (probably because I freaked out and gave my information to all the avenues, hoping that someone would answer), meaning that instead of paying $11.29 for my glasses, I got them for free.

What should I do? Keep the money? Try and find a way to give it back?

I can’t simply refund their refund, so it would take some effort on my part. Is it worth it? Do they even deserve a ‘refund’ after hijacking my account for a few days? Or do I owe them because I simply don’t deserve it for free?

But what if it takes me an hour?

Readers, How long do I have to spend trying to give them their money? At a certain point it won’t make sense, but where is that point?

Are You Moral?

Posted by in Money • 2 Comments

In college, students will do just about anything for money. Many kids try online gambling, donate blood, or participate in medical studies with potentially harmful side effects. When kids are in need of money, they are willing to go to great lengths to make money (even if that means using morally questionable techniques. Here are two short stories about how I was able to abuse the system in order to stay frugal as a college kid.

6% = ??

When my roommates and I moved into our new apartment, we needed lots of new furniture. So we headed over to IKEA, where we found everything we were looking for. As we headed over to the checkout, we noticed a sign offering a coupon for your next purchase worth 3% of today’s purchases if we used a debit card. Plus, if we waited a week before redeeming it, that coupon would double. Not bad, but for the $300 worth of kitchen supplies, it came out to only $18. Worth taking a separate trip? Probably not.

But then we came up with our grand scheme. Why not buy $5,000 in merchandise, get the coupon (for $300!), return all the merchandise, and keep the coupon?! It was a perfect plan, so we went around the store looking for the most expensive item that we could fit in our cart. We found comforters for $300 each, piled them into our cart, and headed back over to checkout. The plan worked perfectly. We had no problem returning the comforters just seconds after purchasing them, and we had ourselves a nice little coupon.

The next week, we headed back over to IKEA to pick up our kitchen supplies, bought our $300 in merchandise using the coupon, and suddenly we had a kitchen full of beautiful pots and pans without costing us a penny. We were proud of our catch, but did we do the right thing?

Free BBQ Sauce

At our local supermarket, my roommate found barbeque sauce for a dollar. Each bottle came with a coupon for 35 cents off a bottle, plus a special offer doubling the coupon, plus a manufacturer’s coupon for a dollar back with the purchase of two bottles. He quickly realized that for two bottles, we would actually make 40 cents ($2-$0.7-$0.7-$1). He brought me back later in the day and we bought about 60 bottles of barbeque sauce, for free!

Better yet, we came out with $12 in coupons to use on our next purchase of anything in the store. Needless to say, lunch and dinner that day were free (actually as college kids, it was more like a week’s worth of pasta and sauce). Illegal? No. But did we abuse the system to get ourselves over $70 in free food? (If anyone needs any barbeque sauce, I’d be happy to give you some of ours.)

Since starting work, I’ve made a pledge to get what I deserve, but not take advantage of other people. I’d like to think that I’ve grown, but maybe now that I have a job, I won’t compromise my moral integrity in return for a few dollars. If I lost my job and was tight on cash, would I revert back to my frugal college ways?