Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleebrog
I'm pretty sure he is asking if the people you worked for belonged to any specific ethnic group that is known to be stingy/carrying over practices from a foreign country, even if the story itself took place in the United States.
I see, I misunderstood. This family is English, and they actually pride themselves on being descendants of the the Mayflower pilgrims. I was told about it right away in my interview (I forgot how he worked it in but boy was he proud of it), and they had some book about it in the office which had their family name in it.
I actually have what I consider to be an even more outrageous story than the ones I already posted. I am enjoying this thread and mentioned it to a neighbor, nice guy in his mid fifties about. He told me a story that is disgustingly stingy.
When he was 14 years old his father worked for an extremely wealthy family, as an all around handyman/gardener/landscaper/driver. His father got hurt and had no benefits and wasn't getting any pay and the family was broke. The patriarch of the family was throwing a party in his waterfront mansion for "anyone who was anyone", doctors, attorneys, politicians, wealthy business owners.
The man offered my then 14 year old neighbor a job at the party helping out with setting up tables and chairs, carrying trays and clearing tables, all around clean up stuff and parking/valeting cars. It was July and it was very hot that day, and this man had rented a tux for him to wear. This kid got there around 11am to start with set up and worked until almost midnight. The deal was that he would be paid $1.50 an hour.
He worked his ass off all day in the heat, serving, cleaning, parking cars. He was not offered any food all day, and ended up asking if he could have something. He was given some potato salad and told to hurry to eat it, that was it. He ended up retrieving quite a few cars, people starting leaving around 830 so for a little over 3 hours he was getting tipped for his valet service.
He couldn't believe his luck, everyone was handing him at least a dollar, a couple of people gave him 2 and one guy gave him a five dollar bill. When it was almost midnight the guests were pretty much gone, and the man holding the party offered my neighbor a ride home since he lived a few miles away.
As Bill waited for the ride, he excitedly took his wad of cash out of his pocket and counted it. He could'nt believe he had made $38. He started totalling how much it would be after he got paid for the hours worked. The man asked what he was doing and he replied he was counting tips, at which point the man said "let me see them". Bill handed the money over, and the man counted it and annouced "$38".
He then said, okay, let's see, you got here at 11am, worked almost until midnight, but took a break to eat....... you know what, I am just goint to pay you for the full 13 hours. He then proceeded to count $20 out of the tips and take $18 back for himself, and put it in his pocket. He paid him with his own tips, and actually kept almost half for himself. He said it should come to $19.50, but keep the $20.
My neighbor couldn't believe this was happening, he had already totalled the money in his head and coulndn't wait to go home and show his family how much he had earned and give it to them. Not only was this man not going to pay him, he took money back. He said something like, "don't I get to keep the tips" to which the man replied that the deal was $1.50 an hour, and that is what he was being paid. He went home and told his father, who felt badly but said there was nothing he could do, if he tried to argue with him about it he would be fired.
