• Fckng tip society, today I went to a coffee shop where I had to make a line order my food, get a number and just wait on the table for the food to be brought over. I was prompted to leave a tip at the moment of paying at the register.

    My order came out completely wrong just 2 items. Iced coffee and plain croissant became hot coffee and a sandwich… and I was supposed to leave tip because of the great service I was going to get?? F that.

  • Funny, but it used to be customary to tip the executioner so he’d ensure a quick and mostly painless death. No tip meant blunt axe or sword or insufficient drop height leading to death by suffocation instead of neck snapping. Maybe for the electric chair it means a dry sponge? The Green Mile comes to mind.

      • Interesting, but the article does say that it happened with the guillotine.

        When the guillotine was first introduced, some condemned criminals would pay executioners to sharpen the blade, ensuring a quick and relatively merciful end. Prisoners sentenced to beheading in certain eras in England would also pay their executioners, requesting execution in a single blow. In both of these senses, the payment was more like a bribe than a specific fee for services rendered, as it were.

            • Blunt axe, sword, and insufficient drop height leading to death by suffocation instead of neck snapping all have absolutely nothing to do with guillotines and instead have to do with beheading/death by axe/sword and hanging. The article very explicitly says that this kind of tipping did not happen (or was extremely rare).

              You are correct that the article talks about people tipping the guillotine operator, in the specific context of “certain eras in England”, which implies it was neither widespread nor applicable to anything outside of that very specific context.