Regularly run into oncoming traffic as if you have had enough of this cruel world

As always, in my attempts to really get into a local culture, I tried to emulate the Egyptians as much as I could while living there this year. One problem though is that there are pretty much no traffic lights in major cities in Egypt; especially for the purposes of pedestrian crossings.

As such, your only option to get where you need to go is to run across five or more lanes of very rapidly approaching traffic to cross the road. At first you are as scared as hell, but then you get used to it.

Now, I’m in Germany which is as far as you can get from this idea as possible! German pedestrians will patiently wait at a red man traffic light even when there are literally no cars within sight. My first time in Germany, I got used to this and blended in. This time though, Egypt has gotten into my brain too much and I jaywalk all the time. I almost feel the urge to run into traffic when cars are zooming by, even though I’d only have to wait a few seconds and walk a few more metres for a pedestrian crossing.

It’s weird and I hope I shake this feeling soon before I get run over!

7. Unnecessarily drop money all over the place

One of the weirdest customs I’ve come across by far is in North America (both the US and Canada), where many waiters and waitresses are paid by customers rather than their boss (ridiculous, I know!)

They have this weird concept called “tipping”, where (and yes, I’m serious about this!!) you punish a waiter/waitress if the food that they didn’t prepare isn’t to your satisfaction, or if the restaurant they don’t own is busy and slowed down by no fault of their own. You also punish them if you happen to be in a bad mood that day, or if you are not earning enough money to be feeling generous enough to be spreading more around. Basically, you punish them by reducing the wage they rely on, for absolutely any reason you can think of, especially if it is not within their control.

This essentially means that their ability to earn a living is controlled more by dumb luck than anything else. To “punish” them, what you do is… pay something close to what is actually printed on your bill and requested that you pay. (Are you with me so far?) If, however, the waiter performs their task within your satisfaction, then you reward them with 15% of what your bill will be. If they carried the plates from the kitchen to your table extra skilfully, then you make it 20%!

I know, it makes no sense whatsoever – even though the effort of their work is the same, if you order the least expensive meal on the menu, they will earn less because the 15-20% is applied to what you ordered, even though they personally didn’t prepare it or pay for the ingredients. To make things more confusing, this “tipping” insanity is applied to some but not all of those who provide you with some kind of service. To pizza delivery, but not garbage collectors, to taximen, but not bus drivers.

I have been given vast explanations about why this is necessary, none of which make any sense to me compared to the waiter/waitress/pizza-delivery-boy just earning a normal salary like everyone else. They sometimes resort to sob stories about those waiters’ lives, ignoring how this same logic can equally be applied to teachers, nurses and many other very hard workers who (for whatever twist of logic) are not tipped and may not earn well.

But the fact of the matter is that this backwards system is not the waiters’ fault, and I don’t like punishing people for events outside of their control, so I always leave 15-20% extra. Rather than formally process this money though, the custom is to leave it on the table in plain view and walk away, as if the money is just more filth to be cleaned up, with your crumbs and dirty forks. And yes, I’m not making this up!

I got so used to this odd custom from living over 18 months in the US and Canada, that I can’t shake it, and to this day I leave money on tables in Europe and Asia even though they get paid a standard wage by their boss in most places. I’ve been programmed to be “a good tipper”, even though I complain more than anyone about how idiotic a concept it is.

Once, a waitress in Taiwan chased me down the street and said that I just left a heap of NT$ on the table! She asked me why I would do that when I already paid for my meal, and I honestly told her that I had no idea.. it was a force of habit! It’s like an annoying twitch for me now! An expensive (and unnecessary in most places outside of North America) annoying twitch…

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 719