Cheapskates

There is a phenomenon I've found in the executive set of the movie studio system that drives me insane. Shitty tipping. I'm not sure what the deal is, but these wheelers and dealers take their high rolling executives out to VERY fancy restaurants several times a week, but seem to have NO sense of how to tip. They generally tip about 10% or LESS.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? You're not even paying for it yourself! The company is reimbursing you! Pay the poor server their share! You were probably snotty and annoying and high maintenance anyway!

For instance, King Lear just brought me a receipt from a VERY schmancy restaurant where he entertained several clients. The Bill came to $525.55, and he tipped only $60!!! By my calculations, a proper tip would have been almost double that. And it's not because he's British. I had another extremely high up boss a while back who wouldn't tip over 7%. I wanted to scream at her.

This happens across the board for practically everyone I've worked with. If I were a server, if I saw studio people coming, I'd probably spit in their food.

Nitter Natter

King Lear is something of a crank. A British crank. He likes to go on long, sort of boring, almost academically lazy rants on whatever pops into his head. When I say long, I mean like a good half an hour. The outgoing assistant warned me about this, but truly, there's nothing I can do to stop it. Even having my patent vacant, glazed-over expression of complete disinterest doesn't seem to work.

So far the rant topics have included:

• How people in America don't make any sense
  
• How our travel agents don't seem to understand how to reserve a hotel
  
• How Americans can't seem to get the mail system down - why can't I send something registered mail? (you can!)
  
• America sucks because I can't send my taxes in by courier
  
• Los Angeleans are the fakest, most evil people ever (ok, I can't argue with him on that one)
• My temporary apartment isn't a penthouse, it's only one bedroom
• One time I had to stay in a hotel room that faced another wall and it had no light and it was dark
  
• Kids in America get to have school buses and marching bands and in my day we walked to school and had no marching bands
  
• The people in the cafeteria are so inept that you have to explain every little detail about your order to them or they'll burn your toast
• In my day my town had only one movie theatre and we saw Papillon with Easy Rider and we liked it

Etc. I'm boring myself even typing this.

Flush

I prayed for an easy assignment after the preceeding nightmare.

What I have is something a bit awkward.

My new boss, we'll call him King Lear, is (was?) a President here. It seems he has been deposed. I am here because his assistant was re-assigned and I am to see out the end of his term. He is something of a lame duck. Apparently the office used to be nonstop activity but now people don't call him or have their weekly meetings with him because he's been fired-ish.

I'll get to more on all of that later. What really matters to me is that I'm typing this because it's 6:12 PM and I'm still here because he's been in his private bathroom for 53 minutes and doesn't seem to be leaving. I have to go. I have a yoga class at 6:30.

The question is, do I just leave? Knock on the bathroom door? It's a dilemma.