For those of you who don’t know, I was a bartender (a bar manager to be exact, I don’t want to short change myself – haha… a pun). I once had a customer who constantly reminded everyone that Cash is King! And who could argue with him? Money talks and bullshit walks – it’s the (sometimes sad) fact of the world.
I wanted to test this theory, however. How do people really feel about money? So, I conducted my own secret cash experiment. It sure made my Wednesday day shift flow better and gave me a giggle. Oh, it’s the little things that make me happy.
As a bartender/server, the main source of income is tips (shout out to all my fellow hard working, multitasking, patient bartenders and servers out there!). Yes, we do get a sufficient amount of credit card tips, but most of our tips are cash. Because, you know, Cash is King.
One day in the early afternoon, I had a customer who ordered a beer and lunch then, of course, paid. It’s the normal process. I gave him his change, but in his change pile was a dirty, ripped dollar bill. It had obviously seen better days. When the customer left, I noticed that included in his tip he left me this dirty dollar bill. And that’s when my little experiment began.
Because I’m awesome, I knew when a customer was ready to depart and leave me a tip. So for the remaining of my shift (about 5 hours), I planned to purposely give that dollar bill out as change. This challenge and investigation excited me more than I’d like to admit, but it kept me occupied.
Every time a new customer came in and sat at my bar, a rush of adrenaline flowed through my body to see if they left me this shitty dollar.
And wouldn’t you know, like clockwork, they did. Time and time again every single customer gave me back that bill. And time and time again when I retrieved my tips, I giggled to myself that my assumptions of the human race were correct with money. They didn’t want that dirty, ragged dollar bill. Every man from clean cut to rough around the edges gave that damn bill back to me. I say “man” not to be all gender encompassing, but because I hardly had any women enter my bar before five o’clock (regardless of that “five o’clock somewhere” rule).
It was a stupid experiment that I made a big deal out of, but you know what? It was super fun and I will always remember that day.
At the end of my shift, I gathered all of my unorganized ones and fives and began to consolidate them into larger bills. As I was counting, I came across that filthy bill in question, and with a smile on my face, I traded it in. Because let’s face it, I didn’t want that bill either. If Cash is King, my King needs to look pretty and based on my experiment; everyone wants their Kings to be pretty.
Have fun with life any way you can – sometimes you just need to be a little more creative in the ways you have fun! And that my fellow Journey Embracer, is you skipping through this Journey Called Life.