A bee in my bonnet

 I have a bee in my bonnet about what we should and shouldn't pay for these days, cause maybe we’re already paying in other ways …

I resent it a little when we are asked to pay 20 cents for wasabi when we buy sushi rolls at our local sushi shop. The soy sauce comes free, and they usually chuck five of those little suckers in, but you have to pay for a minute envelope of wasabi. Wasabi … it goes with sushi. Like salt goes with pepper. To me this is like ordering a ham and salad roll without the top of the roll or a piece of fish without the chips. They belong together, they just do. What’s it all about this extra charge? Will they start charging for straws when we buy a drink? Tomato sauce is another condiment we are often asked to shell out extra for with a pasty or a pie. Again, they belong together. Don’t fucking charge me for it. In South Australia they don’t charge you for sauce, or bread rolls at dinner (but we’ll get to them later). They have a couple of sauce bottles behind the pie warmer and when you say yes to sauce, they push the spout in and it distributes through that pasty or pie beautifully. That friggin' plastic sachet of tomato sauce is completely pointless on top of a pie or pasty and you can’t dip. It’s not the done way and the packaging is far too small to accommodate it.

We should not have to pay extra for a dinner roll at dinner. The bread roll with a meal comes free when you eat out in Adelaide. In other cities you pay for it. Often up to two dollars. They might not have Sizzler there anymore, but they have free dinner rolls.

The sneaky charge. I have found this previously with regards to water in restaurants. Mostly when dining out when we ask for water, it comes free in a water bottle with glasses. But sometimes there’s a sneaky charge and it arrives in plastic still water bottles pre opened or worse in Perrier bottles with bubbles and there is a charge. A large charge. I don’t mind paying for a Perrier but ask me if that’s what I want, don’t take the piss.

I loathe having to pay for parking at local markets and/or to pay an entry fee. I want to save my money for the vendors. I want to give my money to them for their wares and encourage them to make more wares and feel loved and supported by their community. I don’t want to pay Brisbane City Council for the right to park my car at a venue that I can support small business owners at. I hate that. In fact, in all honesty I hate paying for parking at all in fact. First in first served is my motto. Maybe charge people if they stay too long but there should be no need to pay upfront. Get over yourselves. Paying for parking in Brisbane is fucking unbelievably extravagant. Sometimes it’s a choice between educating my daughter and parking. And apparently dearest in the world. How do they justify this? I usually take the train … and hell hasn't that gone up. Public transport costs! It’s perverse.

Road tolls. A bell tolls and that’s the only toll we should ever know. We already pay for roads. We pay taxes and rates. We do not have a say in whether, where or why new roads and tunnels are built. Either you have the money to build it Main Roads or you don’t, or you save for it. Like we save for a holiday. Brisbane just does it because they fucked up all their roads by just dropping them from a great height and expecting drivers to make some sense of them … then they need more cause they neglected to count the population properly. Perhaps fuck off the abacus.

When using the toilet in Europe there can be a fee. My poor travel buddy in Salzburg had the runs and was busting while we scrounged for a few groschen (at the time) to put in the door so she could get in. You pay for ablutions. We also had to pay for a square of toilet paper in Hong Kong (delivered by hand). I found this odd. Toileting should be free. It’s an everyday, necessary task.

I do want to state for the record that I am not penny-pinching, tight, mean, miserable or stingy about money. I give money to charities, buskers, and homeless people. I just feel that things have gone a bit far and that some things should just be part of the service. It’s simply good manners.