The future is awesome. There were nights in the midwest that were so cold that I'd take advantage of the grocery store's Free Delivery offer for orders or more by just ordering a carton of cigarettes delivered to my door. They stopped doing that because of me.

I doubt it.

a small expensive order is great for them. Less work needed to gather up a bunch of small cheap shit before delivery.

The workers weren't allowed to accept tips and it was icy as hell and I lived on the bottom of a hill. :( I'd usually tip a pack of cigarettes or at least a bowl of weed if they smoked, but that was all they could accept.

Infinite Zest, are you the inspiration for Jim Anchower?

Haha, no, but I did know the guy who was in the picture.

The character himself is a bit of an amalgamation of every stoner in Madison, but his character was created by the onion long before I was there. Could've been most of my housemates really. The real Jim was actually in Guns and Roses and some other bands and lives in the PNW.

How the fuck did they enforce the workers not taking tips?

For that matter, how were they able to take cigarettes and weed but not cash?

It was their policy, not mine. Try tipping your local 7-11 employee or the bag boy at the grocery store, or even the guy serving you popcorn at your local chain movie theatre. Even if you slip it into their pocket they'll probably refuse because they'd get in trouble. When I was working under Mark Cuban at Landmark Theatres this guy tried to tip me for my services, and I refused it but thanked him. Another employee accepted it and got written up because the tipper was a secret shopper. That's how paranoid you get when working under large corporations I guess. But here's some weed or cigs for after work or on the drive back.. that's just fine.

They probably discontinued that 'cause cigarettes don't usually have much margin on them. Doesn't matter to the store if you paid when they probably kept less than of it.