And for the record, no, I am not presently overweight. I have more fat and less muscle than usual as I haven’t been working out seriously in a year, but normally I clock in between 10-20% body fat (I’ve been in single digits here and there) and I fall well within healthy weight for my height.
I was fat when I was young, and I was not proud or happy about it. I hated everything about it except the eating. I was teased and made to feel like crap and it actually DID eventually motivate me to change that. However it wasn’t necessary to get me to change, so all that suffering may have motivated me but it wasn’t the only thing. Like training a dog to behave- you CAN hit and yell and punish it or you can offer praise and rewards and use kinder ways to get it to act a certain way. Either method can generally work but the one we choose says more about who we are.

Most athletes are “overweight” as “healthy weight ranges” don’t account for body fat percentages or muscle mass. Pick a pro footballer- they are probably overweight.
No one cares about health when we talk about olympians. Training until you go blind or pee blood, causing permanent long term damage to your body in pursuit of an athletic peak do they? I don’t see people shaming and harassing olympians and line backers etc. saying “it’s fine to do this if you want but the fact you’re proud to be so unhealthy isn’t ok…”
Get over yourselves and work on your issues. Go lobby for prohibition of alcohol or having freeways torn down and replaced by foot and bike paths if you’re so worried about everyone else’s health. The truth is that 9/10 times it isn’t about health when people start aiming at overweight or “fat” people, it’s about your own issues and how you need to project them onto others to feel better.

However, were I still poor and were I to find myself able to enjoy a sit down meal, a thing that has in my life brought me to tears, and some waiter gave me shit because I didn’t leave a tip, I’d be in jail instead of going around big tipping because they are called “your problems” because they are “Your problems.” Everyone else has their own problems. It is natural that to each of us that our own problems tend to be most important. That said, the hypocrisy of asking others to be mindful and cater to your problems while refusing to acknowledge theirs is one of the things I disdain in compulsory tipping discourse.
People need to pick a lane. It’s either everyone cares about their own problems or let’s try to be understanding, but I do not cater to “fuck your problems, but coddle me.”

The way it should be is that everyone should be guaranteed a minimum standard of living including a place to live and a decent diet. As you say- that’s not the way it is and we live in what is. What is, is that it is not a customers responsibility to sublet your circumstances or choices. Their contract is to come and eat, yours is to come and work, the managements is to come and pay you what was agreed and provide the promised experience to guests. That is what is.
For the record, I tip and average of 40-200% in most service scenarios as I have been so poor I lived in a tent and ate things caught in the woods to survive. When I ate. Now I am not so poor, and I have money to tip and so I do.

I’ve never done food service. The pay is generally shit and the work sucks so I picked other jobs, for most of my youth most of them also sucking and having shit pay but generally better pay with some sort of possible path to actual money.
This will be relatively short and plain and I understand completely that people have circumstances etc. so it will sound cruel but is just matter of fact.
Employment is a contract. I do not expect a worker to donate time. I expect them to do exactly what they signed up and agreed to do. I’ve hand weeded 10 acres in high desert heat and moved half a ton of rocks I had to dig out of the ground to prevent horses from stepping on them for $20 before. I agreed to the job, I agreed to $20. I had no idea what the job entailed and Oopsie on me for agreeing to take $20 for a job worth more, but I needed the $20 so at the time I was happy with it even if more would have been nice and the lay felt unfair.

Nnn hhhnrn.

Lol. Came for the same. Won’t do the whole thing with the entire story. Long story short they literally left a note and what evidence we have suggests they then did exactly what would seem most logical to do.

So be careful with “averages” and if you plan to dabble in statistics- which are surprisingly common in life, maybe take some statistics classes or study up on statistics and probabilities because most people are either hopelessly out of their depth or revert to some intuitive or assumed frame of reference and end up being very bad at examining and contextualizing data of the sort. In order to be able to act appropriately on data you need to have some ability to understand it. If you don’t understand the how’s and why’s and such of data- it is very easy to fool you or manipulate you if one desires, and to
The concept of the internet “lying,” and truth vs. true, you can’t know for yourself or determine what is or isn’t which if you don’t understand what you are being shown.

.. applied the wrong assumption or you failed elsewhere in your analysis. It could be you were wrong on the data or it could be that something else occurred which you did not factor in which changed the situation. Maybe they did want it to be romantic when they asked but you did something or they found information between those points which changed the context of their desired relationship with you.
Assumptions, the data used and the data not considered, these shape an analysis of data. Without those things data is just that. Numbers and facts or estimates etc.

This maybe is more relatable for most people- either first hand or through pop culture exposure. The classic “does this person like me?” Or “is this person mad at me?” You have data- how they act, the things they say, previous or known behaviors etc. and maybe a “feeling” or “vibe.” Ok. So using that data you’re going to come to a conclusion of yes or no- and if you’ve never had this happen and you’ve never come to the wrong conclusion and thought someone liked you when they didn’t or thought they didn’t but they did etc- you’ve probably seen it happen to others or in a book or show or movie etc.
“But they asked me to go to the beach just the two of us, that’s something you do with a crush not a friend!” Well… the first part is data. Fact. They DID ask you to go to the beach just the two of you. That second part is your assumptions and your analysis. You assume that asking you to the beach has specific context. The fact they told you they wanted to do so as friends means you..

The data was correct- those areas got hit a lot. The theory was correct- reinforcing areas that you commonly observe damage can be prudent. The conclusion wasn’t a “lie,” it was not correct- that reinforcing those areas would save more lives. The data you gather is important. The sources and specifics. Your analysis of the data and conclusion- the part where you decide what the data “means” and how to act on it, or what you identify as the problem needing solves- very important.

It was inferred that because bombers seemed to take the heaviest damage in those areas, they’d reinforce those areas. So they did. And you know what? It didn’t help. Arguably it made things worse. But why? Was the data wrong? Did it lie? No. Those were the places the bombers coming back were hardest hit. But what was the problem? The problem was the bombers that WEREN’T coming back. They wanted to have fewer losses. See the truth of the matter was that the areas they marked were heavily hit often- but those areas seldom caused a lost bomber- the fact so many bombers made it back with damage to those areas can indicate that. They needed to study where the bombers that DIDNT come back had been damaged to see what areas being damaged were causing losses.

So is the average high school teacher in America making $80k? Sure. By some average using some set of data and assumptions and such. I’d say that is 100% true. Are most teachers actually making that much? If you looked at the pay stubs for you local highschool would they show that much? Probably not- but depends on where you live and other factors.
Data doesn’t lie, or at least accurate data. Data alone is useless. Let me tell you a story. In WW2 they were losing lots of bombers. They tracked it and saw that bombers coming back were shot up mostly around certain areas. A pattern of areas that bombers seemed to get shot in.

effectively the same number of hours as a “full time” “year round” employee who works 40 hours a week on salary. Meaning that $40k would be much less impressive. But it depends. On the teacher, the school. Not every teacher puts in a billion hours and buys things out of their own pocket and has to stress over money. It’s very common- but that isn’t going to be every single teachers experience. This is where we face the challenge of making broad group based statements. “Retail work is low paid…” well- several places were paying $15-20 an hour starting for entry retail jobs when minimum wage was $5-7 an hour.
Some retail district managers make $50k or less a year and some retail places pay store managers $70-90k a year or more.
A generic job like “software developer” can pay $30k or less a year or over $200k a year. Depends on who you work for and where and other factors.

So I’m that regard even $86,000 can be “not that much” to expect a person to have even one child or dependent and live a “normal adult life” let alone have may money to enjoy your life, travel, have things you want, etc.
But…. We can also make another argument about teachers pay. If a teacher were laid a salary of $40,000 for the school year- it varies by school- some schools have lots of work during breaks and others have some and others- have none. Meaning a teacher CAN be off 4-6 months out of a year. If we pick 6 to make it easy- a teacher working 6 months and a salary of $40k would actually be getting $80k in theory if the salary was based on the entire year and not just the school year. In that sense $40k would be pretty healthy for working half the year. Of course asides the fact many teachers still work at least part of some breaks, also remember most teachers average more than 40 hours. So if you are working 80 hour weeks and working half the year you are still putting in

And if you have kids the child care is often over $1000 a month too…. So just the things that would let you work like a car and child care and a house are already potentially as much as $70k alone in our hypothetical city. Meaning if you made $86,000 you’d still be struggling to get by on the $16,000 a year left for clothes and hygiene products and food and everything and anything else you need or want not including savings and retirement, phone bill, internet, medical care and insurance…

So you could be living in bumbleville making $60k living in a 2500,3500+ sq ft house that is yours, eating hardy home cooked meals and doing well, and someone in “big city USA” making $120k lives with their parents or 4 roommates in a rental and doesn’t own a car because it can’t fit into their budget. Hence average salaries tend to be very misleading,
Especially when don’t nationally. When your single person dwelling is $3,000 a month in rent, $36,000 of your income automatically goes to housing compared to a place where your rent might be $1000 or less and a mortgage can be close to that. Transportation costs for city commuters can easily exceed $300 a month even without a car- and having a base model sub compact car can cost $1000 a month or more in a city. So a car and rent alone would cost you close to $50k a year- meaning you need to make at least $60k a year if you want to have even $1000 a month to eat and see the doctor and save and maybe… live life or have a family?

You also have to understand that America is not all exactly like where you live. That said, most of the population of the country lives in urban centers and along the coasts. Coincidentally these areas often have higher salaries and higher cost of living, and having more people concentrated in a given area, they tend to also have more teachers. Meaning that a national average for such things will usually skew because so many people live in higher cost of living areas where higher income doesn’t translate into higher quality of life. In much of the country you can still own a home making $40k a year-
Especially before covid transplants and related factors warped the markets. If you double that to $80k you still would have trouble or find it impossible to buy a home in NYC or the SF bay. People making $120k+ in those areas have trouble or just can’t afford a home. Maybe a small condo or twin house. Maybe.

Then you factor in the supplies and other things teachers often must pay for themselves and other things that aren’t covered by their schools but are part of the job and we can paint a picture that even many “highly paid” teachers don’t get paid a lot. Especially when you compare a teacher with 4.6.8+ years of schooling working the hours they do and putting in the effort so many do to other jobs where similar circumstances and requirements exist.
So it isn’t always that teachers are paid some small amount- teachers, like many jobs, can be paid a relatively large amount that is small or insufficient either due to the work requirements or the area in which their job requires that they work- or both as well as other factors.

So in “wealthier” areas teachers, even public school teachers, can make $60,70,80 thousand dollars maybe more a year- but it can still be not enough to have a home or afford a middle class standard of living.
What’s more, when we talk about not being paid a lot- a teacher can have after school responsibilities like meetings, classes, detention duty, programs, clean up, prep, tutoring, conferences, admin work, grading papers etc. they often need supplies for their classes and curriculums they must buy off school hours. A teacher Can work as much as a high powered lawyer or engineer, maybe 80-100 hours a week or more. If we base salary on a 40 hour work week, $40k for 40 hours a week isn’t terrible in general. If you are working 100 hours a week for $40k you are basically not making minimum wage by the hour.

If you live in tumble weed Nebraska and make $40,000 a year you’re likely doing ok financially. You aren’t rich but you probably can own a home and a car and live middle class. If you live in Beverly Hills, Much of the SF Bay Area, much of the north east like NYC or many areas of Connecticut, if you live in Miami or Honolulu etc etc. $40k probably isn’t enough to have much at all- maybe barely enough to survive and not be homeless if that. So, in a place with $3 million dollar homes you may find a school. And around those homes may be $1.5 million dollar homes. So a teacher teaching at that school either is likely commuting hours a day or would need to make enough to live in the area.

Now, teachers. We have to consider a few things. Firstly, who do we include as a “high school teacher?” Is it anyone that teaches at a high school? Is it anyone who teaches high school level classes or classes that count towards high school acreditaron?
Most importantly- we did NOT specify PUBLIC high school teachers. Private school teachers can make much more money than public school teachers. One also must understand that the general perception or argument that teachers are not well paid is itself “truth but not true.” Well paid is relative. “I don’t make enough to live…” well… let’s look at that.