Delayed Response

On Wednesday a waitress at a St. Louis area Applebee's restaurant was stiffed by the pastor of a church on the Illinois side of Mississippi River. The waitress posted an image of what the stiffer wrote on the bill:

Now as an atheist I would be tempted to say, "I exist, God doesn't." Or I could say, "I worked, God didn't."

On Wednesday I started to write a rant on the subject for my blog but I was not happy with the text and decided that more thought on the subject was necessary. Here's what I wrote:

When I was a delivery driver for Pizza Hut I used to dread orders from hardcore Democrats and union members, a status usually indicated by a sign on the front lawn of a sticker on the front door. These people would never tip. The worst case of abuse I experienced was from an African-American man wearing a t-shirt with the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the place of Che Guevara, I waited standing in a cold thundershower while this person counted out the exact amount of the transaction down to the penny with no tip added. And I had to stand there like a good delivery driver and smile. Why does this clearly abusive behavior occur? The theory I held at the time was that the person believed that their ideological status exempted them from treating working people decently.

To put it another way it appeared that the illusion of moral supremacy allowed these people to behave in an apparently despicable manner.

As of Friday the waitress was fired for violating corporate policy.