Serving up justice, throwing shade & penny pinching

Dear Rachel,

I work at a dining establishment where the waitstaff shares tips. This is mostly a really nice system, except for the obvious loophole that someone could just pocket their own cash tips without pooling them. Welp, it happened. Guy gets caught pocketing cash when he forgets to cash out a ticket. He gets fired. But for months he has been stealing from me. Do I have any legal recourse here? Or must I resort to vengeance in the night?

– Cashed Out

Dear Tipper Gore,

Oh, vengeance in the night, hands-down. Dress up and go wherever this d-bag gets another serving job. Order extravagantly, take up every spare minute of his time. Ask for ketchup. Ask for a clean fork. Ask for more ketchup. Ask for the other kind of sugar. Ask him to ask the chef about specific ingredients. Deny him an entire night of tips from other tables. Then pay using a credit card and leave zero tip. That’s what you meant by vengeance, right?

– Don’t mess with me, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

My neighbor is using those sun-sail things to shade the patio. Now I happen to know these come in a wide variety of neutral colors: sand tones, earth hues, inoffensive forest greens and canvas tans. So why did they insist on colors too garish for a bouncy house? Sure, they will fade in time, but my retinas are fading right now from the barrage. I need to figure out how to talk them down, or else how to sabotage them without being traced back to me.

– Colorbombed

Dear Shady Character,

Unfortunately, home decoration crimes are not punishable by the law. Is it possible to be allergic to colors? You could always tell them you have no genetic tolerance for clown-nose red and see what happens. Otherwise, you could take a page from the fur-protestors’ book and splash bleach on the sun-sail things. Even if the colors don’t fade, bleach doesn’t leave fingerprints.

– Rock me mama like a color wheel, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I have a Mason jar of pennies on the counter. Let’s be honest, I am never going to do anything with them. I don’t walk into physical banks anymore, and with inflation my growing penny collection is probably worth less every year. So it won’t even be worth it to cash it out when I’m old. So it’s time to get creative. What are some home-improvement projects I could undertake with pennies?

– Moneypenny

Dear Common Cents,

With that many pennies, you could buy a lot of thoughts. No idea what a prayer costs, but you could make a charitable contribution next time the world is sending thoughts & prayers to some tragedy. But if you don’t want to waste your copper, you could retile your bathroom with pennies. Melt them down for a Statue of Liberty replica. Fill a bag and sleep with it under your pillow as a tool of self-defense. Or, tip your least-favorite server.

– Worthless, Rachel