Molly Piper

With all the talk of the economic crisis/downturn/recession/slump (insert your adjective of preference here), many people are talking about wanting to save money.

Now many of you might already know this secret four-letter word, but for the rest of you, consider this a favor from me to you:

A-L-D-I

Say it with me now: “ALDI!”

Good job.

Yesterday I found that I had not a single can of beef broth in my cupboards, which was the only thing I lacked to make Abraham’s favorite spaghetti sauce recipe. We have an ALDI within walking distance of our house (another way to save money!), so I thought I’d hike it over there and pick up a couple cans.

Now, one thing that I consider an inconvenience about my ALDI is that they don’t take my debit card; I always have to pay with cash. And considering I never carry cash, I began the process of spare-change scrounging.

I was able to collect about two dollars off my dresser, so I stuffed that into my pocket thinking, “That should be enough for 2 cans, right? Then I’ll have one for next time.”

I get over to the store, find the broth, and check the price to make sure I have enough money. And much to my delight/shock… 39 cents. I think I did a triple take. Thirty-nine cents?! I was able to leave the store with $1.22 in my pocket!

This is good economics, people. At my regular grocery store, I would have paid at least twice that amount. I can’t say I’d buy all my groceries there, but for pantry stuffs, they can’t be beat.

To those of you without an ALDI in your neck of the woods during this time in our economy… God be with you.

Okay, I know so many people love Super Target (“Super T” as some of my girlfriends call it). And trust me, I do too. But I come away from every grocery-buying experience disappointed thinking, “Wow, they’re more expensive than my regular grocery store.”

So if we’re just talking about price, does anyone else find this to be true?

If it is true and you still shop there, that’s fine with me. I just want to know what other factors you weigh into your grocery-buying decision (well-organized stores, proximity to home, Starbucks inside, etc.).

I think I’ve already tipped my hand as to my deciding factor. ;-)

Last night we had dinner with some dear friends who don’t get to see very often. Part of the reason for our dinner was to say goodbye to another of our dear friends who heads to Louisville, Kentucky very soon for seminary. It was a good time together.

After dinner we walked to a local ice cream shop. Ice cream is probably my favorite dessert. There are so many good things out there (amazing cakes, pastries, pies, etc.) but really for me me it all comes back to ice cream.

Funny story about my frugal husband before I get to the point: We were deciding what to get in order to make all of the members of our little family happy. Abraham quickly calculates that if I just order a triple scoop waffle cone that it’ll be cheaper than all of us getting our own. “Just order a triple and ask for a cup and we’ll split it up,” he tells me quickly over his shoulder as he heads back to watch over our little guy. Needless to say, I was feeling totally embarrassed standing there for those couple minutes holding the biggest ice cream cone known to man.

Anyway, getting to the point. I’m finishing my cone when this really full crunch at the bottom happens. I take a second to ponder why it felt and tasted different than I was expecting. “Hey, did that cone just have a malted milk ball in the bottom?!?!”

The friends we were eating with were surprised that I’d never experienced that before. “It keeps it from dripping,” friend Phil explains. “It’s the old-school way.”

I was blown away. “I’m blogging it,” was my response. We tried for a few minutes to come up with a spiritual analogy for the malted milk ball at the bottom of the cone, but were quickly distracted by an energetic three-year-old.

Any takers?

So there was a TON of response to the tipping question—I was kind of stunned. I wasn’t expecting so many people to weigh in on the matter. I’m glad you did, but now it seems I have more options than I ever considered, so now it’s more confusing! Thanks a lot! :-)

I didn’t want to go too far into the story that happened to us, but I’ll reveal it now…

[Begin story].

We sat down in the outdoor area of the restaurant to eat, and the waiter came over and greeted us. He was not over-the-top friendly, which can be nice, but it can also be a warning that he’s really not into his job. On one hand, I don’t usually like when a waiter or waitress feels fake because they’re trying so hard to be “friendly,” but I also don’t want someone who’s aloof.

Abraham told me later that he could tell right from the beginning that this guy wasn’t going to be any good. I did not have the same premonition. (I don’t tend to be very intuitive.)

The food came out quickly enough, but the chips and salsa refills were a little slow. Not that big of a deal, I figured, since we were downing them like it was our job.

About halfway into the meal, I thought I’d like to have a lemonade. Abraham said he’d order it for me, but then as we looked around again and again, the man was nowhere to be found.

From time to time he’d pop back onto the patio and get something for another table but never made his way down to the end, where we were seated.

So we were endlessly trying to get this man’s attention. When we finally ordered it, it came quickly enough. We continued on with our meal, Abraham helping me ingest the lemonade at record speed (easy to do when you’re eating Mexican food).

We asked him for a refill, and he took the glass away to refill it. Then we didn’t see him for literally five minutes. Maybe more. It was a really long time. By this time we had eaten all of our food and were just waiting on the lemonade refill. It felt like we were sitting there forever.

Eventually he came back to our table, asking if we needed anything else. Abraham said, “We’re just waiting on the lemonade.” And he was kind of apologetic, but not really. So he hurried inside, and I thought, “Okay, it’s coming now.” But then he didn’t show up again for another five minutes at least. And this was not fresh-squeezed lemonade. All he had to do was go to the fountain and fill ‘er up.

So he finally brought the refill with no further apology. And we sat there and drank it, more out of obligation at that point than true desire for it.

[End story.]

I know it’s not the worst ever. It’s not like he brought the lemonade out and had his Band-Aided thumb in the glass or anything. But waiting that long for one refill? And there were plenty of other staff around that he could have handed the task off to.

Aaron posted a pretty long comment, including an article that was really helpful. Aaron is one of my oldest friends, and he, in a former life, was an excellent server and restaurant manager. I take what he says about customer service seriously, because he thinks about it all the time. He posted a link to the article on his blog, so feel free to read it if you get a chance.

The mercy/justice tension is always there if you’re thinking about the undeserved favor that we as Christians have received from God, but that we still live striving for holiness in all we do.

I also understand the argument for the underlying issue/personal matter, but honestly know that if I let my personal problems affect my job, I would be in major trouble and not be rewarded for my performance. If doctors do it, it’s a lawsuit; if designers do it, they don’t get paid for their work; if teachers do it, their students fail and they are let out of their contract. Why is the standard different for servers?

I think the suggestion to talk to a manager when service is bad or good is definitely something we should do more often.

Sometimes I try to put it into a global perspective and remind myself just how privileged we are to sit down in a restaurant with tons of options for meals on the menu and money in our wallets to pay for it, unlike most of the world. However, what does that mean when we actually do live in America and there are different standards for service provision here?

Thanks for all the thoughts, readers. You’ve got me totally bamboozled.

On a recent eating out venture, we had a pretty bad waiter. We really try to be very gracious and generous to waiters and waitresses in general, knowing full well that both of us would be terrible at that job.

But seriously, this guy was not good.

Which left us in a sticky situation—should we give him a bad tip? If so, what is that communicating? Is he going to assume that we’re just stingy or will he honestly try to evaluate himself to figure out what he’d done wrong?

Should a bad tip come with an explanation? Should there be bad tips? Just curious about what you all would do.

So far we’ve survived the heat!

Here’s a picture of the mist machines all over the place.

We’ve had some pretty good food here. We went to a burger joint on the strip, and I thought this one would amuse a few people:

This was some of the best chips and salsa I’ve ever had.

And this is the view from our room. There’s a little balcony to sit on, but you can only bear it in the morning. It’s 7pm and it’s still 108 degrees, so there’s not a lot of outside time unless it’s in the pool.

In my most recent post in the “How to Help Your Grieving Friend” series, we discussed tips and suggestions for bringing meals.

I added a little section at the bottom of that post so that people can more easily access the great ideas that came from other readers. Thank you everyone for your input and participation!

(Read the updated post.)

How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 10

When we lost Felicity, we had a lot of meal help from friends and family. I learned a few things from the people serving me about how to serve others—with food.

1. BRING MEALS!

It is essential, really. Bringing meals is a profound ministry to the hurting. Your friend’s mind is otherwise engaged and simply cannot sequence the steps for making a meal.

2. Organize the meals so she doesn’t have to.

Ideally, one person (not the griever) is coordinating meals immediately after the loss. If the grieving person has to coordinate what days they’re going to get a meal, who it’s coming from, what time it’s arriving, etc., that’s just as much work as trying to make meals herself. If there is no meal coordinator, volunteer!

3. Stagger the times that you bring meals.

Depending on the size of the family, meals may only be necessary every other day or even every third day. Because of leftovers, one meal often provides for two days of eating.

4. Bring a frozen meal.

As many of you know after a death, there’s often no shortage of food. A frozen meal can be set aside for when it’s most convenient. You can even organize your small group to bring a whole batch of frozen meals if they have an extra freezer (make sure first!). These come in handy a couple months down the road when the organized meals are over, and a particularly hard day/week comes.

5. Make sure everyone doesn’t bring the same thing.

Soup and lasagna are the most common meals to bring because they taste so good, they’re the easiest to make, and they travel well. But make sure they haven’t received a bunch of those already (talk to the meal organizer about that).

6. Should I stay or should I go? Yes.

When you bring a meal, feel the situation out for whether or not you should linger. They might want you to stick around and talk, but if you think not, it’s perfectly acceptable to drop it off and get going.

7. Don’t count on commiserating.

You’re bringing a meal because of their loss, but they might not want to feel that loss with you right then. Just before dinner might not be a good time for “a moment.”

8. Deliver dinner in dishes you don’t need back.

Always provide a meal in containers that don’t need to be returned to you. Having to keep track of 9×13′s and serving bowls is too much work. It requires the organizational effort that we’re trying to avoid.

9. Tell them not to thank you.

Make sure they know that you don’t need a thank you note. You can even go as far as telling them that you’ll actually be bothered if they take the time to write you a note.

10. It’s never too late to bring a meal.

Most of you probably don’t know anyone who lost a loved one so recently that meals are still being organized for them. But you do probably know someone who endured a loss six, seven, twelve months ago. I can almost guarantee that if you called and asked to bring dinner this week, you’d bless their oven mitts off. It’s never too late.

Maybe some of you have been meal organizers or have had meals brought to you–what things have you found helpful? Any other tips you want to share?

(Read other posts in this series.)

Addendum, added 5/15/2008

Many of the comments from this post were so helpful and practical that I just had to put them at the end here so that other readers could more easily access them. So here we go:

• Gift cards!
• Take them out to eat (McDonald’s can be a fine option if young kids are involved).
• The meal coordinator should alert those bringing meals about any dietary restrictions, allergies, and food preferences.
• Meal coordinators should give a reminder phone call
• If you don’t have the means or availability to make a whole meal, bring something else, like some tea or a small plate of cookies. It’s about letting them know you’re thinking of them.
• Take a shipment of paper products and plastic utensils over to them so that clean-up is mindless too.

And one of my favorite quotes came from jamsco, who said, “Meals are a gift from God through the human giver.”  Perfect!

Does anyone else ever feel that totally irrational nervousness when you have to open a can of those refrigerated cinnamon rolls or biscuits? As I’m peeling off the paper, I feel like my heart rate goes up about 100 beats/minute, even though I know that they never actually make a huge sound or explode violently. Why do I still feel so afraid?

Another example is when someone is going to pop a balloon. I know it’s not going to be that loud, but I still get nervous.