It's apparently gone way down, while their work (and need for safety) has gone way up. Let's do our part.
Tsh’s free weekly email, 5 Quick Things
This is The Good List — I’m Tsh Oxenreider.
A quick reminder that we’re doing things a little differently right now on the podcast, since we’re all social distancing and quarantined at the moment, or still out there doing essential work, which we’re incredibly thankful for.
Instead of doing a weekly, short episode, we’re doing even shorter, more frequent episodes of The Good List, to help remind us all of what’s good out in the world, what’s helpful to keep our sanity intact, and that we’re not alone, even when it feels like it. We’re in this together.
Today I want to remind you of a little something that’s really important. We need to be tipping our service and delivery workers whenever we can. I was reminded of this a few days ago when I saw a tweet from a pizza delivery driver who said his store is offering no-contact deliveries where customers pay exclusively on the app and they leave the food on the doorstep without needing a signature. I think that’s great. But he said that even though the app has the option to leave a tip, over 90% of his customers aren’t tipping, even the ones who normally do. They’re probably just not thinking about it. So this is your reminder that we need to be tipping these hard workers. And if you can, tip them a bit more than you normally would. Here in the U.S. many workers who rely on tips make less than minimum wage (which is a thing I hate, but that’s a whole different episode for now), so when we’re not tipping them, they’re hardly making enough money. By law, these places of businesses should make up for the difference so their workers make at least minimum wage, but we all know how hard that is for these businesses to do right now, especially our small, local, mom-n-pop shops. So, if you plan to use the services of these businesses that are so generously providing delivery service for us — please, tip your delivery person. They literally need it to survive. And if you already are — thank you, and keep up the good work.
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Hi Tsh. My name is Megan and I'm calling from Atlanta, Georgia. And one idea that has brought me a lot of joy and peace this year is called the generosity fund. So my husband and I got married last year and we wanted to really figure out what we want to be as a couple, who we wanted to be and what we wanted for our futures. So we made a vision board, and one of those things on our vision board was that we wanted to be generous, and in order to do that, I really wanted to make room in our budget. So I had this radical idea to set aside 10% of my net income to a savings account that we would call the generosity fund. And this fund would be used for anything outside of us, so we couldn't spend it on ourselves.
It's very open-ended, so we could use it to take friends out for dinner or buy gifts, donate to worthy causes. We really wanted to keep it open-ended just to leave room for whatever need may arise. And it's just been so cool. Before, whenever a need would happen, it would feel like such a burden to give because all of our money was already put into different budgets. But now that we have a regular stream coming to this specific fund that's not for us., it's given us the opportunity to be extra generous without any stress or guilt of overspending. And it just feels so good to always be able to say yes instead of saying no. We've been able to support friends through times of unemployment. We've been able to donate to fundraisers and give awesome baby shower and wedding gifts and just take people out for dinner. It's been really cool and we've only been doing it for the past six or seven months. This is definitely something that we plan to carry out throughout our lives and look forward to see all that happens next. Thank you.
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A follow-up reminder that if you haven’t yet, sign up for my free weekly email called 5 Quick Things, where I share 5 things I either created or loved from the week, and you can read it in less than one minute. It’s part of my main and bigger newsletter called Books & Crannies, which is listener and reader-supported, where we chat weekly, I share extra stuff I don’t share anywhere else (like longer-form essays and bonus episodes), and where we’re occasionally do something fun. For instance, sometime this month we’ll probably have a Netflix viewing party together, each of us in our own homes, so that should be fun. If you’d like to join in, go to fivequickthings.email and then when you hear from me, click the button in the email to upgrade to a paid subscription, which helps support my work more than you can possibly imagine, especially in times like these. Thank you so much in advance for that.
I’m on twitter @tsh and sometimes on IG @tshoxenreider, and you can also find a transcript and the show notes of this episode, and all episodes, at thegoodlistshow.com.
And don’t forget to leave me a voicemail or send me a voice recording, telling me one thing you’re doing to stay sane during your quarantine and social distancing. Let’s encourage each other with good stuff, because there’s still lots of goodness out there — leave me a voicemail at (401) 684-GOOD, which goes directly to voicemail; or, simply record your voice and email the voice file to hi@tshoxenreider.com. Just state your name and where you’re from, and what’s one thing helping you get through this right now. And we may feature it here on the show.
Music for the show is by Kevin MacLeod, and thanks, as always, to Caroline TeSelle and Kyle Oxenreider for their help, as well as my furry intern, Ginny. I’m Tsh Oxenreider, and I’ll be back soon — thanks for listening to The Good List.
Tip Your People