The most important skill I learned in kindergarten was sharing. This life lesson has served me well over the past 20 years saving me quite a bit of frustration and money. In college I picked up quite the reputation for pulling others into any purchase I could in order to cut the overall cost. I quickly found that sharing a subscription plan like Netflix or a service like high speed Internet was easy and saved me a ton of money.

Sharing a movie subscription service is incredibly simple and cost effective. While your neighbors are often the most likely candidates, co-workers and friends also make for excellent potential subscription partners. Netflix is perhaps one of the easiest subscriptions to share given their support of profiles.

By setting up a profile for yourself and the person you're sharing with, you can each be sure to get what you want without running the risk of one member getting all of their choices at once. You can also share Netflix's Watch Instantly feature making it easy to have a movie you like on hand even if you're only sharing a two DVD plan.

So you're glad you're not a Wall Street trader these days? At least they banked fat salaries and maybe got a golden parachute. The story's not so green at your local restaurant. These are bad times to be a server. Dangerous, even, because their tips have plummeted faster than the Dow Jones.

One New York City waiter has said that the bottom has fallen out for America's service professionals. He wrote that early this year, he'd make about $500 a week over five shifts. This summer, restaurant sales fell for the first time in two and a half years. Today, $270 for a full week is typical. People are guarding their cash, and they aren't coming into restaurants as much anymore. When they do, they're increasingly cheap. The 20% tip, once more or less standard for good service, is a memory. Some customers are merely rounding up to the nearest dollar.

The horror of this comes from the fact that many of our service professionals are vulnerable even in the best of times. They simply don't make an adequate hourly wage -- it's below minimum wage. They usually don't get insurance. They can be fired at the drop of a napkin. The expectations have been that they'd make plenty to live on through their gratuities, and if that failed, they could just switch to another restaurant. But with more people paying less in service charges, and with few places in need of new staff, that is now just a fantasy.

Most customers would never consider walking out of a restaurant without paying their bill in full. That would be theft. But because tips are discretionary, there are plenty of cheapskates who think nothing of bolting without a proper tip, or of justifying a dramatically reduced tip with some minor infraction. And now waiters (and bellhops, and valet parking attendants, and dozens of other ubiquitous workers) are finding it impossible to make their rents.

The Attorney General proposed some new updates wants to update the American Disabilities Act this month. The changes were greeted mostly as a boon--a potentially expensive one--to disabled people. One provision of the law actually cuts back on accomodations of people who use service animals.

The main problem with this law remains that some businesses feel like they can ignore it and exclude service dogs. I have a friend who is blind and lives in a building for the blind and a store across the street routinely harasses blind people with seeing eye dogs. We are not in some epidemic of bogus service animals, are we? The DOJ worries that we are. The proposed law claims there has been "a proliferation of animal types that have been used as 'service animals,' including wild animals." If an animal is under someone's care and control can it really be called wild? It's not like people are going into McDonald's with seeing eye deer or hearing raccoons, are they?

The new law will clamp down on animals that provide just emotional therapy, not specific physical services. That's fine. Some people were exploiting the rule--though hardly so many that it seems to warrant a federal crackdown.
The new law will also make it more difficult for animals who are not dogs to qualify for service. The law already requires that the animal "be individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability."

I was FLORed. (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.) Late last night I placed an order for a few dozen FLOR carpet tiles for my living room, the 'Morning Coffee' pattern in 'Decaf' (reddish orange) and 'Espresso' (dark dark brown). The shipping cost, via UPS Ground, from the Georgia warehouse to my home in Portland, Oregon was painful, though, $39 for my order; I would have ordered a few extra tiles in some other colors and textures, but that would have tacked another $13 on my order. I shivered, and pressed "buy."

This morning, bright and early before the sun was up here on the West Coast, I got my shipping confirmation. Speedy! I thought. Then around 9 a.m. I got another email, this a promotional offer. "Free Shipping for a Limited Time!" the subject read. Ohhh... ouch!

I spent several minutes feeling peeved, and then I thought: why not just call? I dialed the customer service line and was connected to a friendly representative who happily processed a refund for my shipping. Giving me plenty of time to enjoy my morning coffee.

If you, too, are in the market for some FLOR tiles, now's the time! The free shipping code is BP887W, and the email didn't say when the promotion would end.