Dignitaries still should tip

As a waitress at a popular restaurant in Oakland, I have… Dignitaries still should tip

As a waitress at a popular restaurant in Oakland, I have waited on many high-level University figures. I have since ceased to be eager to do so, having found that being a public figure is not necessarily synonymous with generosity, nor even decency, where tips are concerned.

This has come as quite a surprise to me. These are men and women who move in high circles. It is probable that they are familiar with the conventional – and even the more obscure – social graces.

One such social grace is the standard 15 percent tip to which waiters and waitresses are accustomed. This tip is meant to supplement our hourly wages, which are significantly less than minimum wage. When I, having done no perceivable wrong to a table of Pitt “dignitaries,” receive less than this 15 percent, I feel slighted both as a student and as a human being.

Of course, as a human being, I merely suffer from the typical service industry, automated-food-and-beverage-delivery-system complex. As a student – and to be a young waitress in Oakland is to almost necessarily be a student – I feel that some interest in my well-being is due to me by the figureheads of my academic institution. My fellow servers and I are often the names that will be heralded as the token Marshall Scholars, or Mellon Fellows, or whatever other accolades Pitt cites to add to its “Public Ivy League” credibility.

When University figureheads seemingly have no interest in acknowledging your presence as a student until you distinguish yourself and show up on the press-conference radar, or arrive in the graduation herd, it becomes rather difficult to want to acknowledge their own presence as figureheads of your University.

I, for one, will never shake the hand that tipped me $2 on a $25 check.

Wynne Lanros

Junior, Philosophy

An open letter to the “nice girls”

It is Sunday night, and I’ve just returned from Gullifty’s, where I enjoyed an enormous chocolate brownie. Just as any red-blooded college student would do, I immediately check Instant Messenger for any messages left for me. Next, of course, I sift through the endless garbage e-mails looking for anything relevant to my life.

As I wear out my delete key, something catches my eye. I stare and stare at this particular e-mail from a random porn site. The e-mail has no pictures of naked women doing unmentionable things.

It consists of one perfectly centered link. “Girls Back in College and Drunk Already.” I sit in silence and wonder why so many guys are attracted to the typical college party girl. And, more importantly, do the “other” girls at school know that there are guys who respect and appreciate them?

So I decided to write them all a letter.

I know you are out there because I have been lucky enough to meet a few of you. You are the girls who I will never see on a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD or in The Pitt News police blotter. You are the girls who wouldn’t dream of sleeping with me after just meeting at a party. While you may enjoy the occasional rum and coke, you have never been the absurd girl in a denim mini-skirt doing a keg stand. You probably get intensely irritated every time you overhear a conversation that begins “I was so trashed last night…” You refuse to be represented by stereotypes.

For these reasons, and so many more, I wish I could spend an evening with each and every one of you. I assure you that guys like me still exist and we’re looking for you.

John Hancock

Junior, Computer Engineering