As to the first sentence of your statement, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And nowhere does it say in any of the definitions that I’ve read that hostage holding is required.
I really have no interest in this other than to say that I can see where Otto is coming from. Maybe he could have phrased it better or used a different term to describe what is happening, but he didn’t.
Maybe what he’s describing is stretching the definition of extortion, although according to Merriam-Webster, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If you read the definition, you might agree. You might not, but I really don’t give a fuck. I’ve already stated that I would do business elsewhere, and Otto can do whatever Otto wants.
Not present: force, intimidation, or undue or anything illegal.
So yes, holding hostage is required, if someone is extorting you they are threatening you. Refusing to do business if you can’t make money certainly isn’t extortion.
Or if someone wanted the local Pizza delivery place to drive two hours outside of town and lose money on the sale, would the Pizza place be “extorting” the customer by refusing to deliver unless it was a closer address?
But that’s the whole point. Rather than simply saying he objected to the resteraunt trying to make sure its delivery driver wasn’t losing money out of his own pocket, he phrased it in the most inflamatory and absurd terms possible.
But starting a Pit thread with deliberately inflamatory language serves no purpose other than being a dick. And he maintained that inflamatory pose for many, many posts.
Instead of having the intellectual honesty and common decency to say “Wow, I was wrong and being a jerk. It’s not really extortion, they’re just trying to make a profit and not lose money.” he just dug himself deeper.
What the fuck ever. You can add “making up definitions” and “Humpty Dumpty” to the list of things you can type until your fingers bleed. I used a word in a way that you don’t agree with. Tough shit.
How sad for you that you have to resort to swiping Daniel’s material…
Well, no, because “extortion” is an actual word, as is “extortionist.” “Cockgoblin” may not be a real word, but I don’t think I’m the first person to say it so I can’t say as I made it up.
No, not at all. Which is why it’s so odd that after you made the ridiculous claim that only “mandatory” things can be “demanded” and I called you on it, you’re bizarrely trying to make it sound like I’m the one who claimed it.
Shitwad.
And again, spike-through-the-skull-level-dumbass, it’s not my responsibility if the government has decided to fuck service workers. Whether the government decides that I owe them money or not is irrelevant. I don’t owe them money. As long as you’re appealing to governmental authority, do you think there’s a court in the land who would award damages to a delivery driver who sued a recipient for failure to tip?
Being as how despite being told several times that I was not using a word in a legal sense, and being that you continue to act as if I did, you’re a scumfucking liar yet again.
Jeez, coming from a useless waste of tissue such as yourself, you really hurt my feelings.
The part where you characterize my objection as "“A researaunt wants us to tip and I don’t wanna.” I have never once said that I am unwilling to tip. Try to keep up.
First off, you left out the second part of the definition. Secondly, I’m not trying be a jerk, but am asking seriously. Aren’t they holding him/them hostage by not delivering the food unless he/she/it tips or tips more (using the second definition of hostage-one that is involuntarily controlled by an outside influence)
I’ll concede this, but again, couldn’t one say that this is an ingenius way of getting out of having to deliver to an address two hours away (I agree that to do so would be a poor business decision)?
I don’t know Otto here or in real life, but it seems to me he/she was initially being a bit hyperbolic. I could be wrong and will admit it if shown otherwise.
Once again, I agree that all of this is a bit of a stretch, but if one can’t use the definitions as listed, how can one argue/debate/cuss/smack your dog/etc.?
You really are useless, aren’t you?
I remember this seems to be a pattern of you, you’re a cowardly asshole who can’t bring himself to admit when he’s being pigheaded. You made up a definition for the word. You’re being an inflamatory asshole.
Just apologize, if you have any honor left.
How pathetic that it doesn’t make you realize you’re being an ignorant and inflamatory asshole. Besides, it was good material and highlights how you’re just making shit up to bait people, you asshole.
You really are stupid. The word in question was “demand”. Your purile semantic quibble around which you started by saying ‘now who’s making words up’, indicating that before you were the one making words up.Try to keep up. Or are you not being a fucking drama queen whining inflamatory asshole to the degree you’d like?
You are a liar.
Quote me saying that?
Fucking liar.
What did I actually say, liar?
As in, the company can’t demand tips since they’re optional, which is what you’ve had your drama queen brand panties in a bunch about all this thread, that they dared to try to make a profit. Fool.
Oooh, glorious rebuttal! Glorious! Except it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a pig headed son of a whore who doesn’t have the intellectual integrity to simply say “Whoops, I was wrong.” Instead you have to resort to being a petulant and whiney little brat who insists on making up words.
You’re a waste. In all senses of that word.
Funny, you’re the one without the grey matter to realize that no matter whether it’s the government’s policy or not, your company’s failure to tip does take money out of the pocket of the delivery driver. Continue whinging.
It’s odd to have an utter moron of an inflamatory asshole drama queen who can’t even understand the concept of “taxes” try to insult my intelligence. Kinda surreal, actually.
Wrong, you obnoxious asshole with a massive entitlement complex. It’s not irrelevant, because your delivery driver has trouble making a living if he’s not tipped. Your callous asshole behavior doesn’t change that fact. Whine all you like drama queen, babble about how it’s “extortion” or “rape” or “theft” or whatever other new words you’ll take so you can be an inflamatory tool. Go for it.
Mother of mercy, how stupid are you? I’m not appealing to government authority, you moron, I’m pointing out that due to government regulations they end up losing money if they’re not tipped.
Says the liar.
There is no non-legal defintion for the word, moron. It’s an actual word that you can’t just make up, fucking primma donna.
But you know that. You know that the word has a specific denotation, and a specific connotation, and you’re choosing them to be an inflamatory whining little bitch.
Do you have do demonstrate your stupity so blatantly? Have to? Must?
Let me walk you through this, Donna. “A resteraunt wants us (the company) to tip or they won’t deliver. I don’t wanna (have the company be forced to tip or face non-delivery).”
There, even a moron like you should be able to understand now. Or am I “assaulting” you, fool?
So far all we have for my “lies” is your utter failure at even basic reading comprehension. Surely you can do better than simply waving your ignorance around as if you’ve made a point? Cantcha?
People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that, since I don’t much care about prescriptivist grammar, I don’t care about how words are used. Nothing could be further from the truth: I care passionately, often far more passionately than circumstances dictate.
This is a great case of that. If we take your definition of hostage literally, then every time something outside of my life affects me and I don’t like it, I’m being held hostage. Today, the weather held me hostage inside. My boss, by refusing to give me money unless I show up for work, holds me hostage. If I try to take your car and you refuse to give me the keys, you’re holding me hostage.
That overliteral approach to the definition renders the word useless. I reject it.
This suffers the same problem. Any business arrangement involving ingenuity sudenly becomes extortion, if we take this definition literally.
The key to an extortive event is that one person uses unethical coercion, or the threat of unethical coercion, to obtain something. “I’m going to punch you in the face if you don’t give me your lunch money”: extortion. “Give me your lunch money, and I’ll trick Joey into thinking Lisa has a crush on him”: not extortion, no matter how ingenious the trick.
I can imagine a circumstance under which the deliverer would be acting unethically. If you ordered the food for a large party, and they agreed to deliver it, but when they showed up they refused to give you the food until you’d given them a big tip, THEN I could see it as fraud. I could even, if I squint, see the case for calling it extortion: by agreeing to deliver food, they got you to rely on them, and then by threatening to withhold the food AFTER setting up the agreement, they’re threatening to use unethical coercion (i.e., mess up your party) in order to get something from you.
The key in this example is that they agreed to deliver the food to you, specifically, and you acted in accordance with that agreement. If you call them up and they told you that they wouldn’t deliver the food unless you begged for it in Croatian, or unless you paid for it with both money and live tarantulas, or unless you organized a throat-singing choir to thank them for the delivery when they arrived, neither fraud nor extortion would occur. By virtue of having not entered into the contract with you, they’ve not bound themselves ethically in terms of what they can ask from you.
The second half of the definition isn’t relevant. They’re not gaining anything by ingenuity or a compelling argument, they’re setting conditions under which they’ll provide goods and services.
It’s no more “extortion” than a bank charging a fee to use an ATM.
Not at all. They’re refusing to enter into a volitional contract unless it’s beneficial to them. Nobody is being controlled, at all. Any more than my cable company holds me “hostage” by refusing to provide me with TeeVee unless I pay my bills.
I don’t think so… anymore than it’s ingenious for any business not to engage in a transaction on with they’ll lose money.
Again, if the OP simply said “The delivery company doesn’t want their driver to lose money come tax time, so they won’t deliver to us, and I’m an asshole and I don’t care about that and I’m gonna throw a hissy fit.” it would’ve been much more honest than claiming that they were “extorting” and “blackmailing” him.
I don’t think so. He has, repeatedly, confirmed that “extort” was the word he wanted to use. Continued to be a petulant whiner while moaning about how he was gonna use the word, no matter what it meant.
If you’d like, I’ll be happy to cite all the places he defends his choice of deliberately inflamatory bullshit. Nowhere did he admit that he was just being inflamatory, and certainly nowhere did he apologize for it.
Here a just a few quotes:
Post 14: “Of course it’s extortion. It’s fairly mild extortion but it’s extortion nonetheless.”
Post 19: ““Tips” are voluntary. Demanding that a customer make a payment that is voluntary is extortion.”
Post 22, after Lefty points out that “extortion” has an actual definition: “Keep on saying it; doesn’t make it true.”
Post 92, after Lefty asks him what definition he’s using: “It’s my very own special definition. Seriously, there’s no definition I could offer you which is going to make you think that a food store demanding what should be voluntary is extortionate behaviour.”
Etc… He’s a mindlessly inflamatory jerk. And I really do feel that this message board would be better off without them. Plus, although I don’t remember posters in general, I do remember that our drama queen OP has a habit of being such a pigheaded asshole that rather than back down an inch, even when it’s clear that he’s wrong, he just ramps up his inflamatory bullshit. As far as I’m concerned, he’s broken the “don’t be a jerk” rule, but IANAMod, so my opinion doesn’t really matter.
Holy shit, 5 pages and people do not know how to use a dictionary. Regardless, I blame Otto exclusively for this. There is a difference to between “extort” and “extortion.” And, this is not just the legal sense, but also the dictionary sense.
Leaving aside the insults and the rest of the noise:
And here we have what appears to be the heart of the matter. You have completely, totally and utterly misunderstood the situation. At no time did I indicate that the tipping issue was in regards to the company ordering food and not tipping. Re-read the memo from the OP.
[quote=memo]
When a person doesn’t leave a tip…**
Yes, the memo uses the word “we,” but it is not “we, the company,” it is “we, the individuals within the company who are not tipping.”
And Finn? It’s “restaurant.” I usually don’t point out spelling errors and I’ve typoed the word myself more than once, but I think you’ve spelled it wrong 90% of the time or more. “Restaurant.”
[QUOTE=Otto]
And here we have what appears to be the heart of the matter. You have completely, totally and utterly misunderstood the situation. At no time did I indicate that the tipping issue was in regards to the company ordering food and not tipping. Re-read the memo from the OP.
What difference does it make who’s not tipping? All this hubbub is over one or two stiffers?
Otto – if my read on the situation is correct … I’d be more PO’d at the handful of stiffers ruining the convenient deliveries for the rest of the office than I would be at the restaurant.
Otto, can I get your attention for a minute? I know exchanging bile with Finn is endlessly diverting, but if you’ll descend to a little less colourful argument with someone that’s not so interested in flinging poo, there are a couple of points I’d like you to consider.
Can you clarify for me how deliveries are currently managed in your building, as I asked you to before?
It seems to me, based on what information you have posted, that it’s hasty to assume that these restaurants have suddenly adopted a new policy. There are other interests that are served by the distribution of the Food Deliveries memo: Those of corporate, who have their own reasons for wanting their employees to comport themselves in a way that reflects well on the company, and those of the receptionist, who appears to be in the position of a liaison between those ordering food and those delivering it, and people who do tip, and can expect their orders to be prioritized accordingly if the company gets pegged as a “no-tip zone.”
Chronic non-tippers present a small PR problem for the company, create social awkwardness for the innocent receptionist, and create problems for co-workers who just want to order nosh with confidence that their orders will receive normal priority.
How are these problems (created by people who are effectively gaming the system to receive a 15% discount on their meals) going to be addressed? A memo that simply reminds people, “In the normal course of events convention requires a 15% tip for deliveries,” is not going to work, because it’s a certainty that the people who are demonstrating this bad behaviour know this and simply don’t give a rat’s ass. Something needs to be done about it, though.
It’s possible that the restaurants would be quite happy to continue taking orders from skinflints – it doesn’t come out of their end, after all. It’s possible that the author of the memo is simply stretching the point a bit in order to appeal to the cheap bastards’ self interest, rather than a sense of etiquette, propriety and fair play (which is evidently lacking in the offenders) in order to elicit a change in behavior that is desired by various interests within the company, and only incidentally by the drivers.
Honestly, how likely does it seem to you that several companies have contacted management and said that unless tipping improved, deliveries to your address would cease at some undefined point in the future?
The histrionics shown in other threads leaves the extortion accusation on my What-the-Fuck? meter just below “Meh”.
Here’s a real simple analogy. You call a restaurant, pay the same price as someone that walks in the shop and get to have someone bring it right to you. That’s called delivery, and you’re expected to pay a little extra for the convenience. Whether it’s a tip or surcharge. It’s a mix of social awareness, social custom and common decency. I can see I’ve lost you already. Anyway.
Now, compare that to this. You go to the restaurant and place the order. The owner tells you he’ll deliver it in 30 minutes and you’ll pay 15% extra for the delivery. You say you’ll just take it with you. The owner says no, you’ll get it delivered and you’ll pay the extra money. You tell him to screw himself and go to the shop next door. He has his cooks beat the shit out of you for going next door. You submit to them, go back to the office and pay the extra money for his food.
Individuals or small groups place orders and notify the front desk (security guard and receptionist) and leave the money. The guard/receptionist pays for the delivery and notifies the recipient’s supervisor to let the recipient know to pick it up.
Gah! They are not getting a discount! They’re paying full price on the meal.
That’s certainly possible, and it wouldn’t be the first time that management tried to manipulate the staff. I can only go by what I have in front of me though.
It has nothing to do with caring. I care for a food delivery driver equally as much as I care for any non-tippable UPS driver, flight attendant, grocery bagger, etc.
One professional segment has been arbitrarily designated to be able to pass the employer’s salary burden directly to the customer under the threat of various social guilts and stigmas. I honestly don’t see how social contract obligatory tipping (regardless of service quality) can possibly be defended as a fair system.
Again? I expect that if I work hard, I’ll be a millionaire soon. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Understand the difference? If I damned well don’t know the customs, then what? And I’m not sure what country to which you are referring. Mohammed!
As for the rest of you, I guess I’ll have to take my beat down like a man, but I would like to say that the tip is not part of the “contract”, and in most of the given examples, everyone understands the “contract” before entering into it. Seems the restaurant changed the terms midstream.
And thanks for not being mean to me. I don’t know if my fragile little ego could take it.
