🚀 go-pugleaf

Len Tower brings up an excellent point when he notes:

> I find that if a crowd tips well the first time they are at Bar,
> they are remembered and treated well in the future.  Fact of life.

Which reminds me of the fact that on the Starship Opryland, the 
waitresses at the Jack Daniels' Saloon were LOATH to serve the
outdoors Usenix crowd after the first night.  Stories of freeform
ordering without any payment and random ordering (e.g. a table of 
people would have one person order, with everyone else passing,
then a second person would order when the first persons' drink
arrived, then the third... and so on) were rampant, and I noticed
that by the third night of us being there the manager spent most
of the evening in the doorway watching the outdoor group.  We
also heard tales of people completely skipping any tip at all, and
indeed of large bar tabs not even being completely paid for, let
alone tips at all.

How do I know this?  Because my friends and I did exactly what Len
suggested and made friends with one of the waitresses.  We tipped
generously, were understanding of her delays and harried attitude,
and even conned her into sharing a round of shots with us! :-)  [*]
By the Thursday night, she was reserving a table for us, even when
we split for half an hour to walk around, and was getting us food
from the kitchen for free too.  I don't think that it was so much
that we were an incredible group (though, of course, we were! :-)
but that the rest of the Usenix crowd were so damn unpleasant to 
serve.

The water pistols and other juvenile activities didn't help either,
but that's just basic Usenix, I guess...

						-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California

taylor@limbo.intuitive.com    or   {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor

[*] it's worth noting that she could have been fired on the spot for
    drinking while working, and that she *needed* a drink at that point
    in the evening.