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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Wed Feb 3, 2021, 08:52 AM Feb 2021

The Lousy Tippers of the Trump Administration


They were exhausting, impossible, stingy, and cruel, just like at their day jobs.

By MOE TKACIK

One chilly morning early in the Trump administration, a guy with an unnervingly unpleasant countenance sat down in my section, ordered a green tea, and immediately started interrogating me about the caviar. While diners will prod you all day about the terroir of a white Burgundy or West Coast oyster, they don’t ask too many questions about caviar, maybe because the people who order it tend to represent cultures and/or generations that don’t expect service workers to pass daily food knowledge quizzes. Also, usually they’re on dates.

This guy was with his almost equally off-putting brother, and he wanted to know exactly which bodies of water had produced the caviar and how precisely it had been extracted from its mother. I was ashamed to admit I had no idea, but then it turned out the chef, who could have given a TED Talk about any other ingredient on the menu, didn’t know either; his old boss had switched purveyors right before quitting the restaurant. For what seemed like 15 frenzied minutes but was probably five or six, we rifled through glossy brochures and battled glacial Wi-Fi speeds in search of answers.

“I am sorry to report my research has not been entirely conclusive,” I finally announced upon returning to the table. “But it looks as though the provenance of your Oscietra is”—and here I hesitated, having spent some formative years in an apartment overlooking a rather unappetizing river in said country—“China?” The brothers exchanged inscrutable glances, then ordered another 2 ounces. Then the manager on duty beckoned me over to look at a New York Times story he’d called up on the host-stand iPad.

“This is table 60,” he said. “Stephen Miller.”

more
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/trump-administration-tippers-fine-dining-dc.html
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The Lousy Tippers of the Trump Administration (Original Post) DonViejo Feb 2021 OP
Hope there was some extra mercury in that caviar Blue Owl Feb 2021 #1
Interesting read, but also exasperating. tanyev Feb 2021 #2
Rather interesting POV shrike3 Feb 2021 #3
Who is surprised by this? Gothmog Feb 2021 #4

tanyev

(42,360 posts)
2. Interesting read, but also exasperating.
Wed Feb 3, 2021, 11:08 AM
Feb 2021
The week of the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt, the hotel at which my husband works as a chef reopened its Starbucks for the first time in eight months to serve the hundreds of out-of-town Trumpers who’d checked in to “Stop the Steal.” The whole town had been in hibernation for the better part of a year, and the predominantly Ethiopian baristas were preparing to return to the unemployment rolls again at the end of the month. And despite the multitude of portentous red flags on the internet, no one at the hotel was prepared for what would happen if one of them asked a guest to please put on a mask before coming inside. “In 10 years of serving hundreds of customers a day, 52 weeks a year,” one of the baristas told my husband, eyes wide, “no one has ever … ” It didn’t need to be said; a front desk employee confirmed that the N-word had been repeatedly invoked. Terrible customer behavior was not news. But until the anti-maskers stormed my husband’s hotel, the true legacy of Donald Trump had not quite hit us.


shrike3

(3,283 posts)
3. Rather interesting POV
Wed Feb 3, 2021, 12:18 PM
Feb 2021

"As an unreformed Bernie Bro, I had been pretty confident people hated Donald Trump for essentially the same reason the Trumpers hated immigrants, bureaucrats, globalists, etc.: The ruling class had identified in him an easy stand-in for the legitimate fears and grievances of a populace it was not yet finished humiliating in the pursuit of profit."

Author didn't pay too close attention, I think.

"The Thursday after the election, I waited on a 12-top of jaded Clinton administration veterans who spent the whole lunch venting about the clueless incompetence of Hillaryland. They were neither shocked nor upset; they actually seemed a little relieved she’d lost, which was understandable but enraging. People like them had forced a broadly unpopular candidate upon the populace, a sizable swath of which would now spend the next four years in hell."

Yet Hillary won more primaries and more delegates. Go figure. Funny, I voted for Bernie in 2016. I didn't see the DNC at my polling place, ready to force me to vote for Hillary.
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