The single greatest gaslighter you know can’t possibly hold a candle to corporations. We have been gaslit, from every conceivable angle, since the day we were born. So much so that it’s hard to tell where the truth is and where the gaslight begins.
Back in the 1990’s, corporations chastised and belittled the American people because our garbage was polluting the oceans and killing sea creatures. We were shown pictures of sea turtles being strangled by plastic soda rings and told that we need to be better because we are killing the turtles. The audacity of the corporate goons to pit that blame on us. We didn’t even know that our trash was getting thrown into the ocean. We all assumed that the trash companies knew what they were doing and had a recycling process for all of our waste.
Alas, we felt bad and beat ourselves up and started separating our trash. And then we started learning that our hairspray was killing the earth and we should have known better than to use it. But, we didn’t know what was happening. We, like idiots, just assumed that if the FDA approved a product, that meant it was safe to use. However, corporations knew about the risks of aerosol for decades. The FDA knew about it as well and never told us. But we were the only ones with the finger pointed at us.
Now we have another epidemic of gaslighting by corporations: tipping. The argument for keeping tipping culture alive was that restaurants had to stay competitive by charging very little for their dishes. This meant wait-staff had to be paid less than minimum wage. Therefore it became customary to tip your wait-staff 10-20% when you ate at a restaurant. And then restaurants said that since they were big contributors to the service a person received, the wait-staff could no longer keep their entire tips and had to split them with the business. And now, even places that pay above minimum wage are insisting that they and their staff receive tips.
This comes on the heels of these same corporations fighting like hell to keep minimum wage as low as physically possible. The unions knew they couldn’t win a fight for raising wages, so they fought for tips. And we as the people, the consumers, are being left to foot the bill. It’s insane to me how hard people will try to accomplish a task (in this case, better take-home money for workers) by doing everything except what would work. Namely, voting for better representatives in government.
I’m tired of being told that when government regulation fails me, it’s on me to pick up the slack. I’m tired of being told that when corporations do something immoral, I should make up for it. I know I ask this a lot, but do we really have no threshold for how much shit we let them shovel on us? We allowed polititions and community figure-heads to convince us that every amount of socialism is evil and yet, we perform socialist tasks just to accomplish the same goals.
We don’t want our money pooled together in taxes to pay off medical debts, so we pool our money together as donations to pay off medical debts. We don’t want the prices to raise for food or drinks to help pay wait-staff and service workers a living wage, so we pay lower prices and then pay even more to give them a living wage. How stupid are we?
But it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. They already did it and people love their coffee so much that they won’t give it up for a week to make a statement. We all already know how messed up the politicians are in this country, but we would rather keep voting them in so that we can avoid change. Even while we continue to spiral downhill, we’re at least avoiding change.
How do we solve this? You won’t like the answer. Don’t tip. Literally, don’t tip anyone. The only reason the staff puts up with this is because they know they might get good tips if they keep trying. It doesn’t matter to them if they are hurting themselves in the longrun. But if we all just stopped tipping, they wouldn’t be able to make enough money and would be forced to find a new job. Without enough staff to run their restaurants, the businesses would be forced to pay employees better wages.
Am I simply suggesting that you attend a restaurant, giving the corporation money and screwing the staff over? No. A big part of not tipping is learning how to get off your ass and cook a meal at home. It would be awesome to eat out, but until the corporations start paying their staff better, don’t give them any money. But if you do have to give them money for whatever reason, don’t tip. It sucks being the asshole. Nobody likes the guy who stubbornly says they refuse to tip out of principle, but when it’s for the overall greater good, it’s kind of necessary.
If you don’t like the thought of going out to eat and not tipping your wait-staff, then by all means, tip them. Give them as big of a tip as you can afford. But when November comes around, vote for someone who is actually going to make change. If you decide not to vote for someone who would force corporations to pay their workers a livable ($22 per hour) minimum wage, then I want you to recognize that you are a bigger pile of shit than anyone who has ever not tipped out of principle.
Galvanic Ink 