Dear Luv Doc,
Ran into an old friend at Hotel Vegas last Saturday and she was telling me about her new job as a hostess at [an upscale restaurant]. She said she really likes working there because she is always busy and she works with nice people, but the money is not as good as she thought it would be. The restaurant she works does a lot of takeout, and she said that only about half the people tip when they get takeout, and the people who do tip don’t tip as much, even though putting together takeout order requires a lot of work on her part. Hearing this made me sad because we used to wait together at a less fancy restaurant a few years back and we did pretty good on tips. I would have expected her to make more money now, not less. Austin is supposed to be getting wealthier, but maybe it’s just getting cheap-assed? I thought everybody knows you’re supposed to tip for takeout, but maybe not? Where do you land on takeout tipping?
– Not Waiting Anymore
Damn it, I was all fired up about banging out a scathing 700-word treatise on the failures of capitalism and my dog started barking at the back door. That’s usually a solid sign she needs to do one or more of the following: 1) Pee 2) Drop a deuce 3) Vomit up her insanely expensive medicine, or 4) Hustle over to the fence to be humiliated by an annoying, chittering squirrel she will never catch. This time, however, I realized she was protesting the playlist of the unhoused person rolling down our street with a Bluetooth speaker hanging off his backpack. It was blaring out some unrecognizable – especially to my dog – pop hit that was not mixed for midrange clarity, therefore it sounded like a squeaky toy being stepped on by a large man wearing a soft pair of Crocs – rhythmically of course. The rhythm helped me identify it as music and not the distressed varmint in its death throes that was getting my dog in a lather. Anyway, it occurred to me that if that dude ever eats out, he’s probably encouraged to get takeout – especially if he rolls up with that torturously midrangey Bluetooth speaker squawking out dying varmint sounds.
There are some inherent flaws in the appallingly un-Christian economic system that we have created here in America.
As my mind was cooking up these marginally related thoughts, this one fell off the griddle: Why doesn’t that dude just get earbuds? There are some ridiculously cheap ones have amazing low end – certainly in comparison to what he’s currently rocking. But then I thought, maybe he has an iPhone – or maybe he doesn’t have patience to wade through the tedium of Wirecutter – or maybe he thinks if he gets earbuds, Bill Gates is going to set up shop in his prefrontal cortex. The most likely explanation, however, is the most depressing: That annoyingly midrangey Bluetooth speaker is announcing to the world: “I exist.”
If we’re all going to become multibillionaires as Jesus promised in the Constitution and the Ten Commandments, it’s important that we pretend that fellow with the annoyingly midrangey Bluetooth speaker doesn’t exist, because to believe otherwise is to acknowledge there are some inherent flaws in the appallingly un-Christian economic system that we have created here in America, where corporations and the superrich shelter their wealth from taxes, and pay off legislators to pad their pockets while cutting spending for those who need it the most.
And while yes, while it might feel fucking insanely annoying to have to tip service workers just so they can pay their rent, afford some needlessly overpriced health care, and maybe get their teeth cleaned every now and then … oh, and also so that Jeff Bezos can spend $50 million on his wedding and cruise around in his half-billion-dollar superyacht, I say tip generously. Tip like it’s your personal responsibility to fix the income gap. Tip like you’re trying to make sure you can sleep at night, but if you’re going to be angry about it, be angry at yourself for letting it come to this.
Listen to The Luv Doc Podcast about this week’s Luv Doc column!This article appears in August 8 • 2025.
