I went to get a haircut today. The girl who gave me the haircut was a student who did haircuts to earn extra money. She was very nice and told me a lot about her personal life. In the end, the bill was $15 and I gave her what I thought were $23. She started thanking me aggressively, saying “You’re so nice! Thank you!” She wrote down the days she worked on her business card and handed it to me. She also told me that since I was new to the neighborhood, we could hang out sometime and she could show me around. I thought she really liked me, and was thus overjoyed at having me as a customer. I would soon find out something that would cast doubt into my theory of why she was so happy.
I got on the BART and went to San Francisco to do different things. I paid for different things with my card. At one store I decided to pay with cash. I reached in my pocket and found nothing. I was surprised until I realized I had given the haircutter a $37 tip for a $15 haircut, paying a total of $52. Since it was my mistake and she had innocently enjoyed from it, I decided to let her enjoy the money.
I viewed this loss of money as an investment
It is sometimes all right to ask for some money back if you accidentally overtip someone. In this situation, since several hours had passed already and because of the fact that I would be going to the same place in the future, going back and claiming the money which now belonged to her would have actually upset her. I was the one who had made a mistake. I will tell her next time about it while making sure she does not feel uncomfortable about the situation. I can then look at it as an investment, making a new friend along the way and increasing my list of connections. In Orange County, even the smallest gestures and actions helped me in different ways in the long run. I hope I can share those stories with you one day. I hope I can make such investments result in skyrocketed returns like never before in this new place.
Being nice to people and not taking the joy away from them, when you can afford it even a bit, does wonders in the long run. I would want the same joy to come to me, so I would love to give such joy to others when I can, or at least not take it away from them if I had the power to. Invest in good people by giving them happiness and by not taking away their happiness, and you will get the same returns in larger proportions and different forms.
What would you do in a similar situation? As for me, I do have to be careful the next time I decide to tip someone. Also, I think having shorter hair after having long unmanageable hair for a while seems like a fresh change that goes along with the recent move.
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