The Questioning Librarian

A night sky in Wyoming. Photograph by Eric Hines. I never tire of the view during my walk. When I have time, I head up into the development above the apartment where I live, where the relatively wealthy of the area live in what might be called a gated community without the gate. On the upper street, you can look out across the entire valley. The view is something I cannot imagine ever getting tired of, seeing the little town where I work from above, looking out at the seemingly endless hills stretching out into the distance. I often think of how these hills, part of the Appalachian Mountains, are impossibly ancient. The mountains were pushed up before the first dinosaurs started to walk the earth, rising when there were still trilobites crawling on ancient seabeds over 480 million years ago. They were there when the first fish walked onto land, standing as life radiated out from the seas. They saw the rise and extinction of the early reptiles, dinosaurs, the enormous mammals of ...

I hate the practice of tipping. Don't get me wrong, I tip every time I eat out, and I try to tip generously. I mostly eat alone when I do eat out, so I appreciate the friendly service I generally receive. But I find the idea of tipping the server as a normal part of their pay to be demeaning to them and nothing short of a swindle for the customer. The debate over tipping can be acrimonious at times, and I can quite understand. Waiters and waitresses have plenty of stories about being stiffed by the customer after they work hard to ensure that the customer's time eating out is a pleasant experience, and anyone who has eaten out has an inevitable story about a bad experience with a server. But that's precisely the point. Food servers of all stripes work hard, let's be clear about that. They don't deserve the uncertainty that comes with a tipped minimum wage, and they certainly don't deserve to depend on the good graces of the customer for a large part of th...