Dear Blog Readers,
We have become the kind of blogger we never wanted to be — the kind who has a "read our blog" button on our website but the newest post is months old. We blame Facebook for this — it's so much easier to write something there and we seem to have more followers there than we did here on the blog. Still, we can't quite bring ourselves to give it up altogether yet — so instead, we're posting this little note to explain our lack of current entries. Please do check out our facebook page, we think it's fun, if not quite as long form.
sincerely, the Joie de Blogger.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Kids These Days


I pulled a piece of paper out of my front yard the other day when I went out to get the newspaper in the morning - it was too big to ignore.  That would be exhibit A - above. We've had some beautiful weather this week, and it's school vacation week so it wasn't hard to figure out that some neighborhood kids had been taking advantage of the 80 degree weather to make a little money - after all, a time honored American tradition - the lemonade stand.  50 cents seemed like a reasonable price as well - but what was that little blurry note beneath the price?  I looked closer.  It said "we take tips."   Now I'm sure that grownups who patronize lemonade stands run by the younger set often do leave the whole dollar, or some extra change.  But I found it kind of odd that the sign was not so subtly asking for them.  Kind of reminds me of the day I noticed a tip jar in a fish store. The only service provided was the regular stuff of retail - you enter, ask for a pound of salmon, they give it to you, you leave.  The idea of asking for tips for that seemed - kind of greedy to me.  I can't imagine having a tip jar at Joie de Vivre, though people  very occasionally have tried to slip us an extra dollar as a thanks for gift wrapping - a dollar we always refuse. Anyway, these were just kids .. . .  but I found it an interesting indicator of how pervasive the "give me extra money" sentiment has become!  and full disclosure, I find the whole tipping thing, outside of restaurants, to be kind of confusing!


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