I often hear people talk about this a way to say that giving people tips should be your choice and not an expected requirement. Usually, people use fast food restaurants as an example on how no one ever tips those people and make complaints about it. Just today, for the first time I saw a fast food venue actually request for a tip.

Basically, it was a regular food court vendor at the mall as today I had to dine out. I used my credit card to make the purchase and when my card was placed into the machine you have to do things such as entering your pin number and approving the transaction. The first message it asks you was “how much are you tipping?”

I was very surprised at this and it seems like even the employees expected you to pay extra for it. This just made me wonder, so are people such as retail employees are going to ask you for tips now too when you go buy things at the supermarket? At this rate every service in every industry is going to have their special “tipping” requests or “essential fees” just to balance out the economy as everyone needs to make their money back while not wanting to feel “cheap” by saying no.

There was this advertisement for McDonalds where apparently for one day everyone could buy a Big Mac for about 98 cents. I believe the burger normally costs over $3. The funny thing was that there were so many people that openly admitted that they normally wouldn’t dine out at fast food places. However, they felt silly not to take advantage of it.

Am I the only one who thinks in the reverse where it is kind of silly to dine out at a place simply because of a sale? I think this is also one of those situations where it doesn’t matter if it is a good deal. If you didn’t intend to say make the purchase initially then you are just spending more. Unless you were specifically say replacing your original daily meal in this example. Then that would make a little more sense to me.

Today I got an e-mail from a friend as he simply mass e-mailed everyone about this Burger King promotion where it appears for quite a few days you can simply walk in the restaurant during breakfast time and get a free sandwich. You can see the deal here: http://www.burgerking.ca/en/View.aspx?uid=TopMenu_BREAKFASTONTHEKING

In the body of his e-mail he commented how he doesn’t normally promote fast food places but recognizes that there are people with say kids to take care of. Hence, having to spend all that money on food to keep them happy.

That got me thinking. Now for a lot of people finance usually is a major factor when it comes to food. So, knowing that you can essentially get a free breakfast for awhile in a place like this to save money would you actually change your routine to do so? (Assuming it meets with your health requirements and all)

From my personal observations, the interesting thing is that even with offers like these people tend to spend the same amount of money as these free offers are mostly treated as a supplement as oppose to seeing if it can realistically be used to cut a portion of their spending. So like in this example, they will continue to buy/prepare the breakfast that they would normally eat and simply get the free sandwich too.

While changing your food routine can be unrealistic in many ways, I’m surprised people do this for items like gadgets and stationeries. Example, a person winning a free DVD player yet they still buy a new one. Since the one they won was free they treat it is a spare backup instead. I guess in many ways using something that was acquired free feels too lower classed. Suppose it depends on mentality and how much money you want to save.