this week - onions on sale!!!!

I hate being the cheap person. It kills me. If you know me at all, you know that I overtip. I forget about money that I have hidden in my room or the pocket of some pair of jeans in the back of my closet. I drop more than necessary on shoes, meals, travel. I get overly annoyed at check disputes, the way people circle and divide up what exactly what it was that they ate. "Well, I only drank one glass out of that bottle of wine and I wouldn't have even ordered that appetizer if you hadn't said that you were going to take a bite out of it. I'll put $17.29 on my card and you can pay $20.94 and then we'll tip as little as possible." (Penn kids, just sayin'.)

I have been trained to see money as something so fluid, that comes and goes and not having it can be quickly solved by picking up an extra shift. Minor debts can be made up easily. Want something? Work harder. No need to watch what you spend - Work more to make more to spend more. My school of thought on money is clearly in direct correlation with the amount of time that I have spent working in the restaurant industry. It's amazing how this profession can in the exact same vein bring out the upmost generosity in a person and simultaneously the ugliest greed. Ex- "I had 4 beers, how much do I owe? Ah, fuck it, I only have 20s. Here's $60." and "What a shitty night, I can't believe I didn't break $300 on a Saturday!" These are actual quotes by the way. Tim Kirkland, thank you very much.

Now, for the first time since I started working when I was 15, I am scraping and scrounging coins and having to make the difficult decision between a McDonald's dulce de leche sundae or a bus ride to work. (If I eat the sundae, I'll have energy to walk to work, right?)