SOME THINGS THAT PUZZLE ME ABOUT PEOPLE (5-2004)

There’s an old saying that acknowledges the diversity of opinion 
among humans: “Different strokes for different folks.”

And while I respect everyone’s right to have an opinion that 
differs from mine, and I realize that everybody has different 
tastes and preferences, that doesn’t mean I understand them.

Sometimes I wish I could get inside someone else’s head so I can 
better understand their thought processes. Instead, I find myself 
scratching my head and wondering, “what were they thinking?”

Some of the things I don’t understand about people include the 
following:

Why do some people actually enjoy listening to rap music? Are 
Bach, Hayden, and Gershwin spinning in their graves? 

Young people have always been a bit rebellious, and they express 
it with their musical preferences. But rap is so far removed from 
what I would even classify as real music that it makes me wonder 
how much more deterioration is possible for the next generation.

I don’t understand tipping, either. I mean, I understand the 
concept. But I don’t understand the logic of the rules governing 
leaving gratuities. 

When you tip a server in a restaurant, it is supposed to represent 
a token of thanks for a job well done. However, some restaurants 
add the tip in automatically when computing the bill, especially 
it there is a larger party. When you’re forced to leave a tip 
whether or not you thought the service was acceptable, it defeats 
the whole purpose of tipping, to reward good service.

I also don’t understand the percentage rules. Apparently, 15 
percent is considered an appropriate tip for most restaurants. So, 
let’s say I am dining with another person and we order separate 
checks. I order a triple cheeseburger with everything and my 
friend orders a single hamburger with ketchup. 

Now, if my bill comes to 10 dollars and my friend’s bill comes to 
only six dollars, I would be expected to leave a bigger tip. Yet 
the server didn’t have to work any harder to take my order or to 
bring it to me than she did for my friend.

Ideally, restaurants should pay servers a decent wage and let 
tipping revert to its original purpose. It should be an extra 
reward for a job well done, not an expected part of a server’s 
wages.

Perhaps we should adopt Iceland’s policy on tipping. There, it is 
considered rude to tip.

Something else that has always puzzled me is that some otherwise 
intelligent people refuse to believe proven facts if they go 
against what they have always believed. For example, some parents 
still believe that sending a child out to play in the cold will 
give them pneumonia, even though there is absolutely no evidence 
of this. And some people plan their day around their horoscopes, 
even though astrology is not based on any scientific principles.  

Then there are those who refuse to believe that the universe began 
with the Big Bang, or that plants and animals on earth evolved, or 
that the earth is more than four billion years old, even though 
all of these conclusions have been verified time again by 
generations of scientists using multiple techniques and working 
without any particular bias.

So there you have it, a few of the things I simply don’t 
understand about my fellow humans and their traditions. I bet the 
guy who thought up that saying, “Different strokes for different 
folks,” was puzzled by aberrant behavior, too. That was the only 
answer he could come up with.