How rude is that? It's up to you.

Grimy casinos are hardly the last bastion of mannerly behavior, but even in the sketchiest card rooms basic etiquette and fairness rules exist that any player would be ashamed to break.  (Or, I should say almost any player.)

One of these is tipping the dealer.  It is understood that 80-90% of a dealer's income is expected to come from tips.  (They're paid almost nothing by the house -- kind of like restaurant wait-staff.)  So, players normally toss a dollar chip or two to the dealer when they win a pot (and sometimes more when the pot is very large).

Since the dealers essentially work for the players, only the most uncouth loser would make a practice of never tipping.  But, that behavior's apparently not too low for Poker Poseur -- a smug, twenty-something hipster doofus who plays at my local casino.

"I'm missing a dollar! I had put it out for my bet, but I think that dealer thought it was a tip!" PP griped loudly after raking a pot of more than $300. The dealer who dealt PP's big hand had just changed shifts -- and now PP apparently wanted the new dealer to give him a dollar of her own!

It's highly unusual for a dealer to mistake a bet for a tip. It seemed to me it could only happen if PP forgot to tip her, as anyone would normally do after winning such a big hand; then the dealer might have assumed his dollar bet was a tip. "Hmmm, had you already tipped her?" I asked him, expecting him to reply, "I can't remember," or "I think so." But, instead he shocked everyone at the table by barking, "NO! I am not here to make the dealers money, I'm here to make money myself.  I DON'T tip!"

Now, accidentally overlooking the tip after stacking a big pile of chips is understandable.  But, a policy of never tipping?  Outrageous.  Seeing the injured look on the new dealer's face, I asked PP, "Did you know that the dealers rely on tips for their income? Most of what they earn is tips." 

"I don't care!" ranted PP.  "It's not my responsibility to pay the dealers."

"Actually, it is," I protested.  "The fact is, they don't earn money if we don't tip them. It's just like waitstaff in restaurants."

PP lit up like a Roman candle. "I don't tip in restaurants, either," he laughed haughtily."It's not my responsibility to pay the staff.  Besides, I'm a vegetarian -- they make it hard for me to order something I want, so I don't think they deserve a tip."

By now half the table was shouting PP down, but to me it just seemed pointless.  Clueless PP didn't even seem to get that waiters don't set restaurant menus.  But I had to laugh at the irony of Mr. Progressive Vegetarian's pretentious commitment to "kindness to earth and animals" -- which apparently doesn't extend to mammals of his own species!

How Rude Is That?

Heard of a "proportional response"?*  Well, apparently Justin Bieber hasn't, because his retaliation against an overzealous teenage fan who hacked his way to Bieber's phone number looks kind of like the Internet-age equivalent of using a musket to kill an ant. 

Furious (understandably!) that the fan had violated his privacy by hacking his way to getting in touch, Bieber responded by tweeting the fan's phone number to his 4.5MM fans, saying, "call or text me at this number."  Now the fan has received nearly 30,000 texts -- and counting.

The problem is, beyond the annoyance factor, these texts may cost the fan thousands of dollars in cell charges.  Whether this could represent a hardship to the teen's family is unclear.

The (presumably chastened) hacker posted a video showing the onslaught of texts hitting his iPhone: 

How Rude Is That?

*The act of responding to an act of warlike aggression with an action that does approximately the same amount of damage -- an approach to the ethics of warfare was made famous in an episode of "The West Wing" a few years back.)

When I picked my toddler up from daycare last night, I got a rude surprise.  Emma came running to me joyfully, as usual, when I showed up at the door. But I noticed that the blanket she normally clutches was missing. 

"Where's Emma's blankie?" I asked Jodie, a youthful worker at the center.  "Oh, I took it away from her," she replied. Confused, I asked her why she would do that.  "She's just too old for it," came her slightly condescending reply.  "Don't you agree?  And she seems to be doing fine without it."

"Actually, I don't agree," I replied.  "If I thought she was too old for it, I would have taken it away myself.  She's only two after all; I carried a blankie until I was nearly four."

I expected Jodie to apologize, or at the very least defer to my wishes as Emma's parent. But, instead she replied, "Well, someone should definitely have taken your blanket away then!"

How Rude Is That?

Anyone who's traveled by air lately knows that it's a rudeness-loaded experience.  Unhelpful, bureacratic and rigid ticketing staff. Impatient and bossy flight attendants.  Ill-mannered and intrusive security personnel.  Inconsiderate and entitled fellow passengers.  In short, there's plenty of blame to go around for the indignities and unpleasantness of modern air travel.

We think, though, that a certain kind of traveler -- who believes the rules are for everyone else -- takes the cake for the biggest contribution to the degradation of an experience that used to be kind of exciting and reasonably comfortable.

They shove their oversize bags into bins 20 rows in front of their seats. (Who cares if there's no space left for the people in those seats?  I've got things to do after the flight, dude!).  They get up during take-off or turbulence, bumping into everyone and knocking over drinks. (Oops, my bad!) They use up the entire bin, instead of putting something under the seat in front of them.  They drop their seat back into your lap without warning. They scream at the flight attendant for another (unnecessary) drink. They get up and shove everyone else out of the way once the plane lands -- regardless of whether the flight attendants have given them the word that it's safe to get up.

That's why we're entirely not surprised that a JetBlue flight attendant had enough of one such passenger's behavior -- and went a little bonkers.  Did Steven Slater overreact?  Of course.  But it's not surprising that being ignored, hit in the head, and called an obscene name while simply trying to do your job could push a person over the edge if they're already part-way there.

[Read the original story at New York Times -- click here.]