HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-01-31, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2013. PAGE 5.
You planning to spend any time in
Vietnam or Thailand? Here’s a hint:
don’t take travellers’ cheques. They
are next to worthless. In fact, unless you’re
looking for kindling to start a fire they are
worthless.
I spent an entire morning in Ho Chi Minh
city last year going from bank to hotel to
money changer trying to cash an American
Express traveller’s cheque for $100. They
treated me like I was trying to palm off some
satanic manifesto about the perfidies of Uncle
Ho. Peeved, I unfolded my emergency $50
U.S. bill that I kept hidden behind my driver’s
licence and handed it to the teller at the last
bank I tried. The teller took it suspiciously,
squinted at it, then handed it back with a shake
of her head.
What? They don’t take American currency?
When I persisted, she pointed to a check mark
someone had made with a ball point pen right
next to President Grant’s portrait.
“Not take,” she said firmly. “Dirty money.”
Turns out that Asian banks – the ones I tried
to deal with anyway – will only accept bills
that are as unsullied and pristine as an Anne
Murray lullaby. Corner missing? Sorry.
Greasy, grimy or all crumpled up from being
jammed in your sock? Too bad.
Weird. I’ve exchanged bills in Canadian
banks that were so battered and mangled
you couldn’t tell if the lady on the front
was Queen Elizabeth or Granny Clampett.
As long as the serial numbers were
intact, those bills were accepted without
question.
But...perhaps not so weird. Scientists have
been putting currency under the microscope
recently and it turns out that our money really
is dirty. Sometimes spectacularly so.
In a study published in the Southern Medical
Journal experts pulled 68 U.S one-dollar bills
out of public circulation and tested them for
contamination. Ninety-four per cent of them
failed to pass the test. True, most of them were
merely crawling with ‘friendly’ bacteria not
dangerous to human health, but nearly 10 per
cent harboured potentially fatal pathogens
including pneumonia, staphylococcus and the
fecal bacteria E. Coli.
And then there’s the cocaine factor. In 2009
a study conducted by the University of
Massachusetts tested over 200 bills of various
denominations collected from 18 U.S. cities.
Ninety per cent of them showed traces of
cocaine. Clearly, the ability of money to serve
as a delivery system for unwanted substances
is beyond doubt.
Makes sense when you think about it. Paper
money sees a lot of life as it gets passed
around through the sweaty hands of taxi
drivers, bartenders, convenience store
operators...who knows who’s handled the
money in your wallet? Who can tell if some of
those bills you accept from the nice lady at the
flower shop have been seeing active duty as a
straw up some coke-head’s nose or as a
gratuity stuffed down a stripper’s G string?
Mind you the odds in favour of money being
clean (well, clean-ish) are better here in
Canada. We don’t have scuzzy one-dollar – or
even two-dollar – bills in circulation anymore.
We’ve replaced them with cold metal loonies
and toonies which are much less hospitable to
bacteria and viruses.
As for paper money, we’ve gotten rid of that
too. Our new bills are made of polymer not
paper and cotton. Not only are they harder to
counterfeit; they’re much more difficult to
contaminate. Plastic is a poor host for those
microscopic nasty critters that thrive on old-
fashioned currency.
Mind you, those new Canadian bills may not
be totally bug-free. A bank teller in Kelowna
claims she’s heard of an instance where
several new $100 bills left in a car on a
sweltering August afternoon melted and fused
together.
Try cashing a blob of polymer at any bank –
Vietnamese or Canadian.
Dirty money. Gives a whole new
interpretation to the term ‘money laundering’.
Mark Twain and an acquaintance were once
shooting the breeze and the topic turned to a
very rich man they both knew.
“Of course,” the acquaintance sniffed, “his
money is tainted.”
“Yep,” said Twain. “T’ain’t yours and t’aint
mine.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Watching your money melt
Last week’s fire at MDL Doors in
Brussels was another reminder that
despite best laid plans, disaster can
strike when you’re least expecting it.
The cause of the fire won’t be known for
months, maybe longer, but in the wake of the
fire it was the community spirit that makes me
proud to be connected to this community.
Starting with the firefighters, within minutes
of the first dispatch call, there were dozens of
community volunteers on the scene willing to
put their lives in danger to help save the lives
and the property of their neighbours and one of
the community’s largest employers.
It’s tough to remember sometimes, but every
firefighter in Huron County is a volunteer, so
when they’re sleeping in a warm home with
their families at 2:30 a.m. the last thing a
normal person would want to do is jump out of
bed and go out into the cold and face danger.
Volunteer firefighters, however, are not
normal people. They are a special breed of
people who do one of the world’s most
dangerous jobs without significant
compensation.
Firefighters remained on the scene from just
after 2:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. that evening. That
makes for a long day in an intense
environment.
Secondly, in the immediate aftermath of the
blaze that levelled the building, there was the
complete selflessness of community members
and municipal employees to make themselves
available for anything the people at MDL
Doors might need.
Huron East’s Chief Administrative Officer
Brad Knight and Economic Development
Officer Jan Hawley were at the ready early
Wednesday morning offering any help that the
municipality could provide, including a quick
move for the business over to the Brussels
Business and Cultural Centre so that they
might attempt to continue to provide
uninterrupted service to customers while the
tragedy of the fire was in the process of being
sorted out.
While some may have questioned the
purchase of the former Brussels Public School
building and its re-purposing as a business
incubator, the gamble seems to have paid off in
spades, at least in this particular situation.
Within hours Tuckersmith Communications
was on the scene connecting the business to the
internet and enabling employees to get the
word out to customers and try to insert some
resemblance of stability to a very unstable
situation.
Third, there is the story told by Brussels
correspondent Betty Graber-Watson, who said
that within hours of people hearing the news of
the devastating fire, many in the community
(some from as far away as Auburn) began
cooking, knowing that area firefighters would
be away from their families or anything
resembling a square meal for well over 12
hours.
Wives of many of the firefighters at the scene
were soon given the gift of crockpots full of
food from strangers and community members
who were just eager to help out as the
community’s bravest battled the flames. It was
then up to the wives to get the food to the
firefighters any way they could and the
extreme situation forced them to get creative.
It is that beautiful community spirit that
helps those who are down because your
neighbours know you would do the same for
them if they were down. And despite the
problems that rural Ontario may be facing, it is
that beauty in community that makes people
want to spend their lives here.
A warm community
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Since I moved out of Blyth and began
commuting to work, I’ve started eating
lunch out a lot more often.
Whether that means visiting a local
restaurant, sitting down and relaxing
with a friend or a coworker or whether it
means getting some takeout to eat at my desk
while reading my newsfeeds is beside the
point of this editorial, which is “included
gratuities.”
A gratuity is, by definition, an additional
reward given for good results, typically in the
form of currency.
I’ve also started buying a lot of coffee with
all the driving I’ve been doing, not that I
need it, but it’s just kind of a common thing;
drive, get a coffee. With the resistance I’ve
built up to caffeine, it’s more of a habit than a
need.
Anyway, whether it’s the Tim Hortons drive-
thru or whether I’m sitting down to a
$50 per plate dinner, I always try to tip. Sure,
the amount varies based on where I am and
what I expect and what I get, but I always
try to leave a tip because it’s the nice thing to
do.
I remember, in my wild youth, working
at a pizzeria in Seaforth, and the very few tips
we did get were like gold. We pooled them,
and when we did see those rare tips, which
only ever came on Fridays and Saturdays
when it was myself, a slightly older male
classmate of mine and a slightly older sister
of a friend of mine, it was usually the sister
that was working the counter when they came
in... but I guess that’s a topic for another
column.
I do, however, remember one night when
Kent (the older guy) and myself were working
and a Quebecois truck driver came into the
restaurant. He tipped us fairly big, giving us $5
for what couldn’t’ve been more than $10
worth of food.
There was a bit of a language barrier, so we
thought maybe he misunderstood the price, we
tried to give it to him as change and he told us
it was for us for being polite and working hard.
That kind of stuck with me.
So now that Ashleigh and I are looking
at wedding venues and caterers and all
those other wonderful, completely serene
topics that have to do with our in-the-
distant-future nuptials, I have to say I’ve been
a little disappointed to see the words
“prices are subject to 13 per cent HST and a 17
per cent gratuity” on most, if not all of the
caterers or all-in-one packages we’ve looked
at.
I’ve got a big problem with that.
It’s not that the waiters and chefs won’t
deserve it, it’s not that the food is going to be
bad, it’s the principle of what I grew up
believing: If you do a good job, you will be
rewarded.
I guess a scene in Austin Powers:
Goldmember kind of encapsulates how I feel
about gratuities.
The scene where a Japanese business man
explains to Dr. Evil that, in Japan, when a
company performs adequately or admirably,
they are typically given a bonus.
That made sense to me.
Sure, the Japanese man gets killed and
devoured by sharks with freakin’ lasers on
their heads, but the sentiment of his last words
rang true with me.
If you do the work, and do it well, you’re
entitled to compensation. If you do the work
and do it very well, a gratuity may be in order.
However, I don’t think a blanket gratuity can
be requested, much less expected, before the
work takes place.
I would have no problem putting aside 17
per cent of the cost of a caterer to provide to
them in lieu of individual tips at the tables at
my wedding, but it certainly wouldn’t be
handed to them if they did a poor job.
I also have to feel bad for the waiters and
chefs who do their job well and who then have
to share their gratuity with that one guy that
exists in every business of 20 or more who gets
away with doing little or no work, or worse
doing bad work.
Unfortunately, despite my feelings on the
matter, that gratuity thing seems to be non-
negotiable and it is also appearing at more and
more locations.
One in particular that bothered me was,
when I was away at school, the Brantford
Casino.
I don’t know who’s great idea this was,
but the main dormitory on my ‘campus’
(and you’ll understand the quotes if you’ve
ever been there) had most of its rooms looking
out onto the casino. I never needed a night
light.
I had one roommate who gambled on
occasion, however the rest of us also made our
way over there fairly often for the inexpensive,
high-quality meals.
That often resulted in at least eight of us at a
table (between my four roommates and their
significant others and friends). Add on some of
our hockey teammates, and one night we hit
the magic number of 10, which, according to
the restaurant’s policy, meant we had to pay an
included gratuity.
Here comes the screwy part; the one time we
ran into this, we all ordered the international
buffet, which was featuring Mexican food that
night.
So we did all the work, and still had to pay a
tip to basically have our water refilled.
Like I said, I probably would’ve tipped the
waitress anyway, but being forced to
pay a gratuity, especially on a buffet, is just
wrong.
Included gratuity and other oxymorons
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den