Back in January, I wrote about the things that I will miss when we move to Denmark this summer.
Yesterday, however, I was reminded that there are also things that I will not miss.
Now, maybe this kind of thing happens in any big city, and I certainly saw plenty of it in New York, but I have a feeling that the two incidents that I witnessed yesterday were more typical of Boston than almost anywhere else.
Let's start yesterday morning: I had some errands to run, but my first stop didn't open until 10am. So, I stopped by a local diner for some breakfast. I could tell the waitress had a bad attitude immediately. I stood waiting to be seated for a good 5 minutes while she finished her conversation. After she seated me, she went to clear a couple of tables, only to return to the coworker she'd been chatting with earlier to loudly complain about the size of the tips she'd been getting that morning. "Four dollahs from three tables! Four dollahs!" A little while later, after clearing another table "A dollah twenty-five? That's what he leaves?!" Perhaps her tips are so small because she complains so loudly about her small tips.
Rumor has it that tipping isn't as customary in Denmark, unless the waiter does a really excellent job. Waiters there are paid a living wage.
Later in the day, I was slowly making my way out of Boston through some typical mid-day traffic, and I see the driver of the minivan in front of me give the finger to an old man on crutches who was trying to cross the street. At a cross-walk. Where he's supposed to cross the street. I'm sorry, was he inconveniencing you? Oh, Boston. Oh, Massholes. What am I gonna do with you.
I'm sure there are rude people everywhere, but there's a special breed of self-important jerks in Boston that you rarely find anywhere else.
And that is something that I will not miss.
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