The McKenzies' Blog…

There is a story in the news today about how Starbucks has been ordered to repay $100m US it stole from it’s employee’s tip jars.  This is a practice that’s done by companies around the world.  Basically, all the tips that staff get in the course of doing their jobs all go into a collective pot then at some point (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever) the money is the “divided” between all staff members, including the management/supervisors.  I have 2 problems with this practice, 1) the management/supervisors shouldn’t get any share of an employee’s tips, unless it’s given to them by the employee’s; 2) the idea of pooling all the tips and dividing it “equally” between all staff members isn’t fair to those that truly earned those tips verses the slackers that did nothing to earn anything.

The story in the press can be read here:

   BBC News – Starbucks must pay $100m in tips

   CNN News – Starbucks ordered to pay $100m in back tips

This sort of practice goes on all the time here in the UK and it’s disgusting and despicable to say the least.  Years ago when I use to work as a busboy in restaurants I use to make very good tips, all given to me by the waitstaff for helping them out.  The waitstaff would tip the cooks, busboys and bar staff based on how much they help they gave them in doing their jobs.  This is a fair system.

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Today we went to Parkside Pools today with the girls.   Everyone had a great time.

You can see more pics by popping into the gallery .. there is also a video from the pool as well in there, you can see Lisa swimming under water, she’s actually quite good.  Just need to get her a snorkel and mask. The video is a bit of a mix of very short video clips taken in the pool.. sorry.  I just couldn’t be arsed to to do a proper mixing of it all to make it look better   Maybe later haha

One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the Pastor of a small church found a pink envelope containing $1,000. It happened again the next week!

The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw an elderly woman put the distinctive pink envelope on the plate. This went on for weeks until the pastor, overcome by
curiosity, approached her.

“Ma’am, I couldn’t help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the collection plate,” he stated.

“Why yes,” she replied, “every week my son sends me money and I give some of it to the church.”

The pastor replied, “That’s wonderful. But $1000 is a lot, are you sure you can afford this? How much does he send you?”

The elderly woman answered, “$10,000 a week.”

The pastor was amazed. “Your son is very successful; what does he do for a living?”

“He is a veterinarian,” she answered.

“That’s an honourable profession, but I had no idea they made that much money,” the pastor said. “Where does he practice?”

The woman answered proudly, “In Nevada. He has two cat houses, one in Las Vegas, and one in Reno.’

I won’t make jokes a habit on the site, but it’s rather amusing…