Cents
Today I made several purchases of items. The first purchase was for laundry and dry cleaning but that was done via credit card. But later in the day I bought a Chipotle Barbeque Burger from Veggie Grill and some Tomato Basil soup. The soup was very good by the way. I imagined that it was going to be bright red and runny. But in fact the soup was a reddish-pink color with some brown specks. It had tiny tomato bits in it. The soup made my meal much more filling, and satisfying. But I didn’t have exact change for the two items, so I ended up giving the cashier fifteen dollars. I ended up getting some bills and some change. Sounds like a normal day in a monetary based society right? WRONG. I could have stopped there and said, “Ok, I made some purchases today. I’m goona stop now.” But no, I now had coins in my pocket. And when I have coins, by golly am I going to spend them. If I don’t spend my coins by the end of the day, I end up putting them in this bowl on my shelf. And if any more coinage goes into that bowl, then a black hole is going to form in my room. (Probably because of the tremendous amount of mass in such a confined area)
So when I went to Jack in the Box I ordered a medium drink. After tax it was two dollars and one cent. But here was my problem: I had change, but no pennies. So I decided to break a nickel. Now I had even more coins in my pocket. This whole situation was getting out of hand. I ended buying a Chocolate Overload Cake a little later. But that was $1.95 and I didn’t have THAT much change, so I ended up getting another nickel.
After writer’s group at Jack in the Box I went to the Peet’s Coffee and Tea and ordered a single shot medium whole milk latte. Finally I had a place to put my change, the tip jar. I used a quarter to pay for the fifteen cents of the $3.15 charge for my drink. Then I put the rest of the coins I had in the tip jar. That’s when I realized that money has very little to do with the currency or purchasing power. Money is movement. I want to sway with the system. So what if dollar bills are dirty and bacteria filled because of how many times they are exchanged from hand to hand. I like giving people paper and then watching them do things for me. That’s amazing. A cashless society, as efficient as it may purport to be, lacks the visceral beauty of cash and coins. I’ve worked at a few coffee shops in my life, and you know what? Even though dollar tips were preferred, I always appreciated coin tips as well. Anything was better than nothing.
What’s going to happen to tipping at coffee shops when there is no coins or cash? I’m a little worried about this. Barista’s have it tough enough when people use things like Starbucks cards or gift cards in order to pay for their coffee. It is really easy to forget to tip when you hand someone a card to swipe. Taking out the cash after swiping the card is another step. And in our streamlined society, that extra step doesn’t always make the cut. But baristas need those tips, bad. Most baristas get between $25 – $70 per week in tips, depending on the location and type of coffee shop. That may not seem like much money compared to a restaurant server, but baristas need and use it all the same. So if we do switch to a cashless society, then baristas are going to get the short end of the stick.
Cash also is cool when hanging out with friends. I always carry some cash because I think splitting multiple debit cards over a meal is just silly. But if I am at a super expensive restaurant then that’s different.
I just took a couple minute break to look at my PentyOfFish.com profile which you can view by clicking HERE, and I noticed that I am getting a lot more women to look at my profile. I was wondering why and then I realized I made a couple changes lately. The big change was in my headline. You see, I tried several different headlines and not all of them were getting ladies to look at my profile as often as I preferred. I like to get at least one new girl to look at my profile per day or else I feel like I failed. So what I did was I decided to use my brain and actually use what I’ve learned from blogging and analyzing statistics. So I looked at my current profile headline and it said, “I like waffles.” And that wasn’t working. I ended up trying several other headlines that didn’t get me many profile views so I just put in a placeholder while I slept on it which was, “zzz.” Then it hit me. I started actually looking at the “My Matches” section and reading the headlines of the ladies. A lot of them were really interesting, instead of talking about themselves, a large percentage of the women simply stated what they wanted in a man, or what they were “looking” for. I took a mental note of what the more popular female headline desires were. The most popular ones I found with girls that seemed compatible with me was, “Looking for a good man,” and, “Searching for a good hearted man,” (and “hearted” isn’t even a word because it is coming up under spell check as I type right now) and my personal favorite, “Looking for a real man.”
After careful consideration, calculation, and contemplation I changed my plentyoffish.com headline from “zzz” to “Good Hearted Man.” And what I observed was that I am getting multiple ladies per day checking out my profile. I guess you got to give people what they want. I am a good hearted man. What is interesting is that even though I am getting many more profile views now. Not a single one of these women had in their headlines, “Looking for a good hearted man.” In fact, the best looking lady so far simply has the word, “orange” as her profile headline. And I find this intriguing. I’m considering messaging her. But I am having trouble deciding on how title the subject field for the message. Should I title the subject with a complimentary color or a different type of citrus fruit? Whatever, she says that her profession is “boring stuff” and from my experience that usually means the lady is a trained assassin. Not going to risk it.
-Tyler
