At the restaurant I’ve been working at for the past 6 months, I’ve developed a fairly close bond with the prep cook/dishwasher, an absolute iron horse in the kitchen who does the job of 3 guys, every day, both shifts, for 6.50 an hour. His birthday is coming up and I’d like to get him a gift which is both meaningful and functional. So I narrowed it down to 2 choices: either a high quality Zippo lighter or a nice Buck hunting knife. And I’d have them engraved with his initials.
Why these two choices? As far as I can tell, his only interests are knives and smoking. The thing is this: I feel a little unethical giving him a Zippo lighter, because I shouldn’t be enabling his smoking habit. He smokes at least 2 packs a day. On the other hand: this guy is an ex-convict who’s spent about half his life in prison. He works in a tiny cramped kitchen, EVERY DAY except Sunday (and now he’ll be working Sunday brunches also, starting next month.) He is there from 10 AM until 11 PM, busting his ass doing prep, washing dishes, and cleaning, and fixing the toilets, and running errands and picking up crates of supplies. He has NO LIFE outside of this job, basically. I know blue-collar people, and this guy’s collar isn’t even blue - it’s grimy green, faded and tattered and suffocating. This guy is NOT going to quit smoking. Cigarettes are basically his only escape from this drudgery, sad but true.
So I really wouldn’t feel all that bad getting him a nice Zippo. He’d get a hell of a lot of use from it, it’s classier than the see-thru plastic lighters he uses now and probably more cost-effective in the long run.
The other option: a nice Buck knife. He works with knives in the kitchen day in and day out, so a knife for his own personal use would be a good gift. Classic, manly, and functional. But here’s the thing - he is a convicted felon. But he’s not on probation anymore so I assume it’s legal for him to have a knife, right? From his stories, he has had a lot of experience with shanks in prison, but none of his actual crimes were violent crimes. So I do not see him using a knife as a weapon. But still, knife + ex-convict kind of seems like a bad idea, even if he never committed violent crimes (outside of jail.)
AFAIK, there is no problem with ex-cons owning a knife but I’d go with the Zippo along with some flints and fluid. If he doesn’t have any life outside the restaurant he has little use for a hunting knife of some sort while he’d get a lot of use and enjoyment out of the Zippo.
Yep, the Zippo, definitely - and, as Testy says, throw in a pack or two of flints and a can of lighter fluid.
Don’t feel guilty for helping him smoke - it really doesn’t work that way. He’ll either quit or continue smoking according to his decisions, willpower, etc, not because he does or doesn’t have a Zippo.
Besides, Zippos are really cool, especially personally engraved ones.
I’d go with the Zippo. Last time I checked, Zippo and Case XX Knives were owned by the same company, so maybe you can find a Zippo with a Case emblem on it. That or a carton of premium chains.
I don’t know what you’re looking to spend, but if you want to spend about $20, don’t go for the knife. Good knives cost good money. If you’re comfortable with the $50-70 range, a chef’s knife is an absolutely killer present. I work in a kitchen as a cook, and my knife is the best tool I have.
Kitchen knives just aren’t the same as having your own personal knife. Look for a good 10-12" one, and when you try it out, don’t grab it by the handle, but wrap your thumb and index finger around the blade where it meets the handle. That is there you hold a chef’s knife, and you should feel for the balance at that point. I recommend Wusthof, as Henckel’s (what I have) are usually designed for people who hold by the handle, not the blade.
Or maybe a nice new set of whetstones, if you know he already has knives.
I went ahead and looked at all 373 Zippos. It’s entertaining. I recommend it to your attention. Page 4 has a a plain Case emblem, and later on, there’s one saluting 100 years of Marble’s Knives. There are Zippos in 6 kinds of RealTree camo.
Real chef’s knives to be purchased by the person who’s going to use it. My wife and I both use (real) knives at work and therefore we have real one’s at home as well. (Loooove my 10 inch chef’s knife). The problem is, the knives my wife loooves don’t work for me. They’re too small and my knucles hit the table. They’re too lightweight for me to do any real work with. OTOH, my wife can’t use my knives since they’re too big and heavy for her to weild safely.
I vote for the Zippo. Keep in mind that possessing a nice lighter isn’t incompatible with quitting smoking. I haven’t smoked a cig since 1989, but I still treasure the Dunhill lighter that my father-in-law gave me.
I say go for the Zippo, I’ve seen some very cool ones, and I have a small collection of them, including one with the US Air Force seal embossed on it, another with a sunburst engraved and hand-painted by one of the girls who work for Lazy Dragon (they don’t normally do custom zippos, but I always like giving them free press), and a green one with a pink fairy girl on it.
Also, Zippo has probably the best warranty I’ve ever seen for any product. If it breaks, they’ll fix it. If they can’t fix it, they’ll repair it. Doesn’t matter when you bought it, if you are the original owner, or even what you did to get it broke. All that matters is that its’ a genuine Zippo made in one of their factories. You pay the shipping, and they fix it and send it back. I wish anything else I owned came with that kind of guarantee.
I’d probably be willing to spend up to 70 dollars. You can get a nice classy wood-handled Buck knife for less than that, and the engraving for only two initials wouldn’t be that much.
Enabling enschnabling. It doesn’t matter. A two-pack-a-day smoker is going to smoke regardless of how much or how little he is “enabled” by others. Giving or not giving the lighter will not make any difference in this.
The zippo with his initials is a great idea. The plastic disposables don’t de the job well when it’s windy outside, and chances are he gets to smoke outside, right?
