Unlike the Old Scout stories, this actually happened to _me_ .... so
I'm not relaying from some guy I met in a cul de sac for a change.

I'm on a consulting gig in this little town in Virginia, up in the
mountains. Very scenic, should be a postcard for a Hallmark movie or
something. Wholesome as wholesome can be.
I've been there 3 weeks, and the best place in town to eat is the
hospital cafeteria, but I've been going there for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner the whole time.
Good food, they'd contracted it out to one of the big hotel chain
catering companies, and even the locals would go there for dinner out,
even if they didn't have a loved one in the hospital.
But after3 weeks, I've eaten everything on the menu at least once, and
food boredom is beginning to set in.
This town is tiny - no fast food chain, no Mom & Pop diners on the way
between the single motel and the hospital... which explains why I
actually watched a kid have his birthday pizza party in the hospital
cafeteria one night.

I asked one of the people I work with, "Is there any place else to eat
in town?"
She thinks about it for a while, then comes out with, "Steve's, I
guess, if you really want to eat someplace else in town and not drive
50 miles to the next town."
"Place any good ? what do they have?"
This primly dressed lady with a gold cross in the tiny space at her
collar said,"It's decent bar food, but nothing to write home about. My
husband likes it."

I find Steve's, go in, sit down... Waitress comes out, says,"You're
new in town," asks me for my order, etc. Typical bar food.
I sit and wait for it to be cooked, and notice a little stage on one
end of the room. I guess they have live music on Friday or
something....

About 5 minutes after my burger comes out, a woman comes out on the
stage and begins stripping. She gets down to just a G-string.
Two guys that had been (at 5:30PM) face down on the table get up,
stagger to the stage, and watch. They start grabbing at her butt, and
she's slapping their hands away.

I raise an eyebrow, but... it appears to be a local thing. There's no
bouncer, nobody is getting mad at them for pinching her, and I'm not
going to cause trouble when I'm the new guy here and don't know the
local customs.

Song ends, she comes over to my table and asks if I'd like a table
dance. I explained I didn't expect to be coming to a place where I'd
be tipping, didn't bring much cash, but if she'd like to hang out, I
had a $10 in my wallet I could lose.
She danced, then sat down and talked, and said,"Just pass me a dollar
every now and then so my boss thinks I'm working. "
I explained, "Hey, I don't have any dollars, I just have a little cash with me."
She frowned, then said, "Reach under the table..."
I felt a wad of $1's pressed into my hand.
I raised an eyebrow, "???"
"Those guys hurt when they pinch, they're drunk , and they don't tip
well. I'd rather sit here and get my own money passed back to me than
get bruises on my butt."
I shrugged, stuffed the bills in my shirt pocket... and we sat while I
ate, chatted and talked, and I'd pass her a dollar bill every few.
Finally I got done eating, the wad of bills was gone, I took my leave
and went back to the hotel.

As I was taking my cell phone from my shirt pocket, a single $1 fell out.

And that was how I got tipped by the topless dancer.

On Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 7:22 PM Jeff Zeitlin - editor at
freelancetraveller.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> It is a common trope in fiction, and in [good] SF particularly (and it's
> even considered a good idea in real life, "ugly American" notwithstanding),
> that when one is in "somebody else's" milieu, one should do one's best to
> conform to the expectations of that milieu, or at least know enough to
> avoid giving offense.
>
> DGP's _World Builders' Handbook_ (WBH) provided some rules for generating
> customs that PCs could theoretically run afoul of. However, rather than
> asking people to pull out their PRNGs and copies of WBH, I'd rather ask
> people to think about and list those kinds of 'things' that they've
> encountered in real life, and maybe come up with a couple of variations on
> them that could make life interesting for PCs.
>
> NOTE: "R-rated" is specifically NOT excluded - I recall some examples in
> fiction where starting from the assumption that if you stuck to what mom
> taught you was decent/indecent, you couldn't go wrong, went wrong.
>
> (Bonus points to anyone who can name the two references I was thinking of
> when I wrote the subject line.)
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
> --
> Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
> Freelance Traveller
>     The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
> xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
> http://www.freelancetraveller.com
>
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