A "How To" Guide to Being a Tourist (5)

IX) Can I Have a Bag?

I hate to admit it but after every trip I make to Tesco, or any other supermarket for that matter, I save the carrier bags I was given on that visit and stuff them in a ‘bag of bags’ in my student flat. Mostly to make myself feel better and perpetuate the lie to myself that “the next time I go I will reuse these bags”. But that almost never happens, I find myself standing in the queue realizing that I will simply have to take even more of these incredibly wasteful carrier bags and once again fail in my effort to save the environment.

This is unfortunate but ultimately excusable because the groceries I am trying to carry home fill 8 bags and there is no feasible way to carry them without bags.

What always strikes me as strange, and further illustrates the extremely wasteful nature of the human race are the people who demand bags not because they require them but because….. well, I’m really not sure why. A bag for a single post card? A bag for a single golf ball? A separate bag for each of the 4 shirts you just bought?

Many people would be shocked to find out that ALL of the oil that comes from drilling in the North Sea is not of high enough quality to make petrol and hence is used in the manufacturing of plastics. I may be failing in my effort to reduce my bag consumption and hence our dependencies on oil, but these people are not even trying.

X) Do You Sell Any Ladies Clothing?

It’s a fair enough question. But I have to tell each customer that asks, “I’m afraid we don’t, the shop simply isn’t big enough to carry men’s and women’s clothing”. Some people smile and respond, “Thanks anyway” while others get rather angry.

Maybe it has something to do with the R&A not allowing any female members, or maybe these people are just bitter, but upon me informing them of the lack of women’s clothing some simply tell me my shop is sexist.  “Women play golf as well you know” or “I would have spent lots of money in here if you did carry women’s” why are these statements necessary or appropriate. Green grocers’ don’t carry women’s clothing; neither do pubs, banks or post offices. Are these shops sexist?

XI) Obama Sucks

Generally a topic that arises when I ask people if they would like a VAT for to reclaim their tax. For those of you who don’t know VAT stands for Value Added Tax and is a 20%  consumption tax present on all luxury items sold in the U.K.  The tourists usually make some snide comment about how high our taxes are in the UK. When I try to explain to them that somebody living in NYC pays the same amount of tax as someone living in London (It’s simply collected by different means, ie we don’t pay tax for our city, township, county, state and federal government – we simply pay council and national tax therefore our VAT must be large to make up the money) it seems to go in one ear and out the other. These tourists hear about a 20% tax and they immediately revert to Republican roots and comment about how Obama is also driving the U.S. into the ground and making it “just as Socialist as the UK”

Let me remind all tourists that even some of our most conservative politicians in the UK would be considered too left or “too Socialist” by the right to be anything but a joke in American politics. And conversely the American right is a joke in Britain, so maybe before you start singing the praises of your home politician (whoever that may be) you should make sure you are in a country where the population will agree.

Facts That Learned Men Should Not Teach

1) Columbus thought the earth was flat

Admittedly the last time you thought in detail about Christopher Columbus sailing the Atlantic in 1492 you were probably about 10 years old. And so I cannot put too much blame on people for continuing to perpetuate this misconception. Columbus may not have gotten the shape of the world correct (he thought it was pear shaped) but he certainly knew it wasn’t flat.

If you don’t believe me lets just rewind to when you were first learning about his voyage. Your teachers told you when Columbus landed in the Caribbean he referred to the local population as ‘Indians’  due entirely to the fact that he thought he had landed in India. Not the brightest conclusion but certainly not a conclusion you could have reached if you thought the world was flat (Columbus had sailed west when he left Europe and would have thus ‘fallen of the edge of the world’ not reached India).

Columbus simply thought there must be a faster way to get to India by following a geodesic on his ‘pear shaped’ earth. And yet this remarkable insight into the geography of the world is completely obscured by non-learned men insisting he was 1500 years behind his time. 

2) An apple fell on Isaac Newton’s head

It makes a very warming story, a genius discovery galvanized by a falling apple. Unfortunately it is completely false. In Newton’s own words “the thought of gravity came to [him] while [he] sat in contemplative mood, and was occasioned by the fall of an apple”

3) Gravity acts on all objects with the same force

This one annoys me more than it should. Usually discussed in the context of Leonardo Da Vinci dropping cannon balls from the leaning tower of Piza (which also never happened). Teachers like to tell their pupils that “everything falls at the same speed, showing that gravity acts with equal force on all objects”. Nice, but wrong. These people have clearly never heard of Inertia, which in this case is an objects' resistance to external forces based on its mass. When a heavier object falls it indeed is being pulled by a large force of gravity, however the heavier object also has a higher resistance to changes in motion and so falls at the same rate as the lighter object.

Probably more will come to light when I start working at a high school in Fife during the fall term but for now this apperas to be all.

A "How To" Guide to Being a Tourist (4)

Looks like I'm back on topics concerning pub behavior, I know this guide is a bit shorter than normal consisting of only one topic, but I feel it is a topic which must be covered.... enjoy.

VIII) Tipping

I know I previously stated in my 2nd edition of a 'how-to' guide that the tipping culture in Britain is poor at best, and in many places ceases to exist all together, but I feel this is a point which needs a bit more explaining. For some reason unknown to me (or to anybody who isn't God) the custom in Britain seems to be a 10% tip on restaurant bills and a 0% tip on bar tabs. Nobody knows where this rule originated yet everybody seems to adhere to it. It just seems to be a fact of life you get used to living in the UK. 

What concerns me is the tipping tendencies of the tourists to our town. As pointed out in the first 'how-to' many tourists are incapable of learning what our money looks like or how to use it, how to successfully make a purchase with a credit card, and blind to all acceptable pub behavior. Tourists seem to be unable to learn any of the customs of the UK, with the exception of changing their average tip from 20% to nothing. 

I'm not expecting Americans to tip bar staff as much as they would in the U.S.. Where the time you wait to be served directly corresponds to the amount you tipped on the previous round. But keep in mind that a person behind the bar in the UK is earning an average of £45 (in hourly pay) per 8 hour shift, and American bar tenders are taking home $100-$500+ (in tips) for the same amount of work. Working in a bar is not a walk in the park and sometimes the bar staff would very much appreciate you not waiting incessantly for your £0.05 change.