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0 pointsBrian_K_White3y ago0 comments

Once when I was a kid, too young to have any sense, I wanted to make some money shovelling snow. I didn't realize yet that you need to make an sgreement with your customer before doing the work. This was a small town in upstate new york so even the strangers were not really strangers. As a kid you don't really see any adult as being all that different from your parents or teachers.

So dippy me just starts shovelling the sidewalk in front of one of the shops on main street, a good chunk of storefront between the shop and the street that hadn't been done when the others had been.

It took a good hour or more, and I cleaned it all up good, no haphazard slack job. Then the owner comes out when it's all done and gives me 2 quarters. This is about '77 to '79, that's 1978 to be clear not 1878...

I go home and my dad asks how I did and I tell him, and he said first, you should have asked if he wanted his sidewalk shovelled first, and agreed on a price before doing it, so in that sense you can't complain because you did that to yourself. However seperately, you should have given him the 50 cents back and said no thank you sir. if this is all you can spare, then you obviously must need it more than me. And refuse to take the 50 cents and even refuse to take anything even if he then offers more. You were wrong to just start doing something without being told to, but he should be ashamed to do that.

That is what's wrong with a $5 gift. Or an uttery thoughtless gift. Keep it. You obviously need it more than me.

It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness than plain money, but a tiny token money value with no other aspect to make it more about being funny or something, is itself a message.

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smsm423y ago

I don't think it's the same situation. Not accepting 50 cents for shoveling establishes the price for this work - i.e. creates situation where there's "paid work" - which costs more than $0.50 and "free/charity work" which costs nothing. With gifts, it's neither - you don't work for gifts, you work for the salary. The gifts are extra - unless there's something in the contract, or they are culturally expected - e.g. in Israel, it is customary for every company of decent size to give out gifts on certain holidays, and if it's not done, it's considered a cultural faux pas. Shitty gift could in this situation be considered as trying to change the cultural norm and thus one could push back by refusing them, for example - thus signaling that the cultural duty of gift-giving remains un-fullfilled. But in the US, I don't think there's any cultural custom like that?

> It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness

I guess I just don't think people giving me money for free is an affront to my dignity. In fact, I am willing to accept monetary donations of any size (well, maybe above $1, otherwise it's too much trouble to bother) - as long as they are not accompanied with any reciprocal expectation from me. As I said, if there are expectation or cultural norm, that's different business.

magic_hamster3y ago

50 cents' origin story.

watwut3y ago

The dad solution is to be passive aggressive and trying to humiliate store owner who did not had interest in you shoveling his place regularly?

Brian_K_WhiteOP3y ago

Did you miss the part where we're talking about a 7 or 8 year old dipshit kid and an adult?

That store owner absolutely deserved to be humiliated. It doesn't matter the tiniest little bit about the kid didn't make an agreement first. I suppose you will now call the unsolicited shovelling vandalism and the store owner actually should have called the cops?

Do you not have any sense of perspective or context?

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