Author: Jay Miletsky

According to statistics, one of every five American women have been sexually assaulted. This number is extraordinarily high and, despite everyone knowing at least one person that has been a victim of this heinous crime, there’s a still a great deal of ignorance surrounding the topic. This issue’s so complex: the blurred lines, the grey area that rape and sexual assault dwell in, the definitions of what is and what isn’t rape are constantly changing. No single definition has ever been able to sufficiently clarify the boundaries of rape and sexual assault.

With the “yes means yes” laws already failing and unravelling, there is a growing need to clarify what is and what isn’t rape. We need to be able to define what rape and sexaul assult are and what actions are punishable before any real progress can be made. For as crude (and likely incomplete) as it may be, definitions such as the ones that follow might be a good start:

• If you violently force a woman to have sex with you, you are a rapist.
• If you use the threat of violence to compel a woman to have sex with you, you are a rapist.
• If you use blackmail or other such methods to coerce a woman into having sex with you, you are a rapist.
• If you convince a woman to have sex with you by insinuating that something negative may happen to her or her family if she refuses, you are a rapist.
• If you use your position of influence, like a boss or a teacher, to pressure a woman into having sex with you, you are a rapist.
• If a woman chooses to have sex with you based, in whole or in part, upon one or more significant lie or false promise, you are a rapist.
• If you use guilt or other such tactics to convince a woman to have sex with you who was otherwise unwilling, you are a rapist.
• If you knowingly have sex with a woman who has been forced or coerced into having sex with you by someone else, you are a rapist.
• If you have sex with a woman who is unconscious, incoherent or otherwise unable to properly communicate with you, you are a rapist.
• If you have sex with a woman who agrees to have sex with you, but is too drunk or drugged out to make an informed decision, you are a rapist.
• If you have sex with a woman who says, “Yes,” but is either too young or too mentally or emotionally disabled to make a competent decision, you are a rapist.
• If you have sex with a woman who says “No,” or tells you she doesn’t want to (even after you’ve begun hooking up), you are a rapist.
• If you are in the midst of having sex with a woman who suddenly tells you she wants you to stop and you continue to have sex with her anyway, you are a rapist.

The truth is, even for a list as long as this, not being labeled a rapist is shockingly easy: just don’t f*cking rape anybody. The only body you have the right to do with as you please is your own.  

And, of course, there’s the other side of the coin. Too often, those who have been raped are seen as the only victims. There are also those who have been wrongly accused. They need to be protected as well:

• If you willingly have sex with somebody and later falsely accuse that person of raping you because you feel guilty or embarrassed, you’re no better than a rapist.
• If you willingly have sex with somebody and later falsely accuse that person of raping you because you’re afraid of getting in trouble with a significant other, parent, or someone else, you’re no better than a rapist.  
• If you willingly have sex with somebody and later falsely accuse that person of raping you in an effort to excuse your behavior or save your reputation because you were caught by a significant other, parent, or someone else, you’re no better than a rapist.
• If you accuse someone you’ve willingly slept with of raping you to get revenge because they broke up with you or otherwise upset you, you’re no better than a rapist.  
• If you accuse someone of raping you who you’ve willingly slept with (or not slept with) in an attempt to extort money or otherwise gain from the accusation, you’re no better than a rapist.
• If you accuse someone of raping you who you’ve never slept in order to get revenge on them for something, you’re no better than a rapist.

Regardless of the statistics, the fact of the matter is one rape on a college campus – or anywhere – it’s one too many. There’s a clear need to continue pushing forward and working to eliminate the threat of sexual assault. However, legislating in a fog is will prove fruitless and ultimately cause more problems than it solves. To find real solutions, we need to start by defining the problem.

Twenty year old college student Jess Jones, a waitress at D’Jais Bar & Grill in New Jersey, was surprised when her party of eight decided not to leave her a tip on a $112 bill. Instead, they left a note in the tip line of the credit card receipt that said “LOL – 1 hour for food.” Of course, it’s impossible for that type of slight to stay quiet for too long–not when the waitress in question has a smart phone and a Facebook account.

Unsurprisingly, the instance has gone viral, bringing with it the typical, howling chorus proclaiming the importance of tipping the wait staff, how little they make, how hard they work, how much they rely on their tips to survive, how people shouldn’t go out if they can’t afford to tip…nothing that we haven’t all heard before, just this time with a different villain.

In this case, the villain is decried as much for the insult as for not leaving a tip. If the “LOL” is to be interpreted as, “Ha! You waited on us, and now we’re stiffing you because we feel like it, so go fuck yourself!” then yeah, the customer deserves their fair share of scorn. My guess, however, is the the “LOL” was meant more as, “You’ve got to be kidding me, expecting a tip when we had to wait an hour for our food!” Even so, people will bemoan that a poor experience isn’t always the fault of the waiter or waitress. The possible delay in the kitchen (or some other situation) is outside of the wait staff’s control.

But does it matter? Our society had become so entitled that it’s now completely beyond comprehension that tipping is not a requirement and should never be expected. Yes, in our country most restaurant customers leave a tip, even if the service is poor.

But it’s not mandatory. Whatever is left should be appreciated, not expected. And if nothing is left, it’s not the “scorned” food service employee’s place to berate, attack, or publicly humiliate the customer. The customer is a customer of the restaurant – not a customer of the wait person. The waiter is a representative and employee of the restaurant. If a waiter or waitress verbally (or digitally) attacks a customer (even in Jess’ case, where she blurred out the customer’s personal info on the picture of the bill that she posted), they should be fired.  If I were the owner of that restaurant, I wouldn’t want my customers to start thinking that they’ll be tip-shamed if they don’t leave anything.

Sadly, it’s come to a point where people expect others to pay their way. People getting married register for gifts in advance; if they invite you to their wedding, they’re not just inviting you to celebrate a happy day with them, they’re expecting you to bring a gift. And why allow that gift to be heartfelt and thoughtful when they can tell you in advance exactly which set of crystal crap they want? No real need to stay and dance – just leave the gift on the table and you can be on your way.

I recently went into a yogurt shop. It was one of the newer ones where I get my own cup, pull the levers to mix my own yogurt, add the toppings on myself, and finally put the cup onto the scale so the cashier can then tell me how much I owe them. Next to the scale, of course, is a tip jar. Tips? For what? I did all the work! Fortunately, a small sign next to the tip cup answered this for me: “Your tips are for us keeping this store a clean and safe environment for you to enjoy.” So, wait…I now have to tip people to keep the store that they work in clean? What is their salary for?

I know we all love to come down hard on companies and make villains of those who exercise their right not to leave a tip, regardless of how good the service is. I know it’s easy for the heavy-hearted to defend the long-suffering food service employees. And yes, they work hard. In my college and post-college days, I spent waited tables by night and built my company by day… but I always appreciated what I was left, and if I wasn’t left anything, so be it – that’s their choice. Call it an occupational hazard, if you want. Somewhere along the line, appreciation morphed into expectation. Even the most remote work ethic has become contingent on the customer ponying up over and above the stated price tag, with potentially damaging repercussions when they don’t.

Sadly, it may be too late to stop the tide of entitlement.

The frustration with our economy goes back about seven years now (hmmm…what else has lasted about seven years? What..else…?), and isn’t showing many real signs of substantially improving in the near future. So it’s not surprising that many struggling people, both employed and unemployed, have turned their focus toward advocating the $15 minimum wage law under the banner of the newly en vogue villain, “income inequality.”  Memes fly around the Internet demonizing CEOs for making exorbitant salaries while sob stories about fast food workers unable to provide for their families while earning the current minimum wage get passed around like herpes at a frat party.

But, once upon a time (almost too long ago to remember now), America was the place people came to from all over the world, anxious to work their asses off in the hopes of becoming that CEO. This was the country that gave people the opportunity to dream, work, reach, and achieve. But that’s gone – in the face of adversity, we’ve largely changed into the country that cries, whines, blames, and takes the easy way out.

Don’t buy into it.

On the surface, $15 an hour minimum wage sounds good – at least, it sounds better than $8, or whatever the minimum wage is in your state. But in a society that increasingly refuses to read beyond the headlines, it’s important that you pop the hood and look below the surface on this one. The extra money that companies would put towards increasing minimum salaries to $15 doesn’t just materialize out of nowhere. It needs to come from profits (meaning profits get reduced), price hikes on the good and services that those companies sell, or a having to reduce the amount of money they spend (most likely resulting in cutting back on the number of employees they have, or the benefits they provide them).  

Each of these options runs counter to the ultimate goal of people trying to create a better life for themselves. Let’s start with the last one on the list. A company that is already paying 100 employees $10 an hour is spending $1000 an hour on their payroll. Simple math shows that an increase to $15 an hour hikes up the total payroll budget to $1500. To get back under budget, the company will be looking to lay off about 34 employees. That’s 34 people who will now out of a job. As companies en masse shrink their workforce, those former employees will have a harder time finding new employment. Fewer employees means a reduction of productivity, which will result in lower revenue and profits. Plus, it’s likely that these newly laid off people (with less money to spend) will seek government aid, resulting in higher taxes and eating into the extra $5 an hour everyone worked so hard for.

But why does anyone have to get laid off? Profitable companies should, for the greater good, simply accept lower profits, right? Wrong. Companies exist for a single purpose: to generate a positive return to the people who invested in them. As profits go down, so do the investment dollars those companies can attract. Investors risk their money in the hope of greater return; the lower that return, the less attractive the risk. With fewer investment dollars in the market, there will be fewer small companies getting off the ground and hiring people, not to mention less spending on research, development and marketing (which, in turn, hurts the companies who provide those services) – ultimately leading to, once again, a reduction in the workforce.

Okay, so companies need to maintain their profits. Fine. Why not simply raise their prices to fill in the gaps? Because raising prices will result in fewer sales and, as prices go up, fewer people will want to or be able to afford the increased prices. With fewer sales being made at higher prices, it’s likely that companies would lay off employees simply because they don’t need as many, or be forced into layoffs if the reduction in sales leads to lower profits. But wait! You say – there’s a flaw in that rationale: with the minimum wage being higher, people can afford to pay higher prices, so it’s less likely that sales will fall. I’ll let my critics work out for themselves why this isn’t a qualified argument.  

Of course, there is one other option that $15 per hour proponents love to suggest: reduce the salaries of the CEOs and other top executives. After all, some of those sums are truly outrageous, right? Again, wrong. Think of a company like a pyramid: at the top sits the CEO. There’s only one of them, and it’s his or her job to steer the ship. It’s the CEO’s job to grow the company, increase profits, establish a corporate vision, and navigate difficult waters filled with demanding investors, fickle customers, media scrutiny, supplier issues, and other variables. It’s a highly complex position that relatively small number of people in the world are qualified to do, and a good CEO will be responsible for the creation of numerous jobs. At the base of the pyramid are the minimum wage earners. There’s no question that these people work hard, and their hours are long…but the fact of the matter is that their positions simply aren’t worth as much. Minimum wage positions are fairly easy to fill. They usually don’t require a high level of skill or education, so the number of people who are capable of filling them is high (one of the first lessons in Econ 101: the higher the supply, the lower it’s value). If the CEO’s and key executives’ salaries are lowered to pay more for people at the base of the pyramid, the executives will leave and look for opportunities in companies where they can earn what they’re worth. This leaves less qualified people to take their place and is very likely injure the company (and forcing layoffs in the process).

The bottom line, ambitious millennial, is that you’re not venturing into the job market to make a higher minimum. You’re beginning a career where, with enough hard work and ingenuity, anything you want is possible. Minimum wage increases will only hurt, not help, those endeavors, and ultimately the people they’re intended to provide for.

For most people, travelling might be planning eight months in advance for a trip to Disney. And while that sounds like a fun enough trip for most people, for you, real travelling isn’t about magic kingdoms and resort spas….it’s about seeing the world, experiencing real adventure and just being on the move.

For the traveler at heart, the best place is always the next place:

1. It’s practically impossible for us to sit still and pay attention to one thing for too long. We may be able to make it through a good movie, but that’s about it. Anything longer than that where we’re not part of the action, like having a good conversation, is way too much for us.
2. We’re more concerned with going, and less concerned with where we end up. As long as we’re on the move, we’re happy. Where we end up doesn’t really matter so much – we can make the best out of the worst places, and always find something interesting to discover, wherever we go.
3. We can’t stand agendas and schedules. We’re cool with bus, train, plane and boat schedules – but try to map out the whole day with exciting things to do, and we may have to kill you.
4. …And good luck getting us to go on a tour or spend a day on a beach. How long have we been laying in the sun? Five minutes? Feels like an eternity, and there’s a small village down the road we want to explore.
5. …Because touristy things suck. We want to go where the locals go, eat what the locals eat, and not veer within 20 yards of any store that sells commemorative snow globes, t-shirts or shot glasses.
6. Our favorite playlists always include songs about traveling or wandering. As far as we’re concerned, songs like Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and Running On Empty and others were written for us and about us and they perfectly describe our longing to be on the road again.
7. We never feel settled, no matter where we are. We’ll always love coming home and seeing our friends and family, but it won’t be long before that unsettled feeling creeps up on us and we’re longing to be on the move.
8. …Which can be tough, because we’re never truly at ease. Since we’re never traveling as much as we’d like, it’s hard for us to ever feel truly or relaxed. And it’s hard for us to hide our discomfort from everyone else.
9. We’re always conflicted, and this may cause us to feel down once in awhile. Just let us work through it – trying to make us feel better by pointing out all of the great things in our lives is like trying to tell a caged bird to cheer up because it has pretty feathers.
10. …So we may snap at you once on awhile. We don’t mean to – it’s just that after awhile of being confined to one place, we have a lot of pent up frustration, and sometimes we take it out on those who are closest to us.
11. We’re deep thinkers. We think a lot, and we’re philosophical about life – and the more of the world we experience, the more deeply we think about things.
12. We don’t need, want or even like the best accommodations. Those are for tourists. We’re not tourists – we’re travelers. There’s a difference.
13. We love to meet to people, so we’re super easy to talk to. We’ll strike up conversations anywhere we go, with pretty much anyone. We love to listen and are usually really good conversationalists.
14. …So we know people from all sorts of cool places. Going to Zurich? We know someone there – he’ll hook you up with a place to crash. Heading to Melbourne? We know people there as well. We meet tons of people and stay in touch with a good lot of them.
15. …But we only have a few really good, close friends. For all the people we know in all of the places we’ve been, we only have a few really good friends who know us inside and out.
16. …And relationships are hard for us – like, really hard. Like anybody else, we want love in our lives. But relationships tend to tie people down, so we’re not very good at them. We want to be, but we’re just not.
17. If given a choice, we prefer to travel alone. We’re happy to have other people tag along – for awhile. But part of being on the road is a need to be free, and traveling with someone else usually involves some sort of compromise, which kind of kills the whole experience for us.
18. At some point in our travels we’ve worked on a fishing boat. Or we plan to. Every restless spirit dreams of experiencing life at sea, hunkered down with salty old fisherman, doing a hard days work – at least for a little while.
19. …We’ve also crashed at a stranger’s house. Or will eventually. It saves money, we make new friends, and there’s usually a working toilet. What could be better?
20. We’ve always got a book with us. We mean an actual, physical book – not a Kindle. And it’s usually one we’ve read over and over again, with creases in the cover and dog eared pages. A favorite, old book is the closest we’ll usually get to a traveling companion.
21. …And we write a blog. We love to wax poetic about the places we’ve seen and people we’ve met, and always have tons of pictures to share.
22. We pack light. No oversized suitcases for us, thanks. If we can’t carry it or fit it into a backpack, we don’t need it.
23. And know how to stretch a dollar. There are plenty of ways to travel on the cheap, and we know them all. We can eat, sleep, party and get from place to place without having a lot of money to do it.
24. We don’t get the point of GPS – getting lost is half the excitement. Sure, it’d be easy enough to just get wherever we want to go by using maps and GPS, but then we’d miss the thrill of getting lost, and that’s when we meet the coolest people, see the most amazing sights, eat the best foods and really experience life!
25. But no matter how far away we go, we’ll always come back…at least, for a little while. Of course you’ll see us again. Set us free, and we’ll always, eventually, make our way back.

Few things in this world work as hard or run as fast as the mind of an over thinker. No matter what the situation is, out brains are always on overdrive, analyzing and dissecting the crap out of everything, only to inevitably feel disappointed and unsatisfied by the conclusion we come to, anyhow.

So what goes through our heads during any given minute of the day, when we’re suddenly faced with a situation that most other people would simply shrug off? Well, hold on to something and brace yourself – we’re about to take a wild wide through the mind of an over thinker!

The situation: The over thinker’s boyfriend or girlfriend sent a txt message saying “Hi. I’m gonna come over in a bit – want to talk to you about something.”

Now, of course, this could be about anything – plans for the weekend, problems a mutual friend might be having – anything. And many (or even most) people would probably just txt back something like “Ok, cool, see you in a few” and go on with their lives. But for the over thinker, that txt – those 15 little words – will kick off a cranial meltdown:

Huh….wonder what that’s about…

Let’s see…

**Sends reply txt**: Sure. What do you want to talk about?

Did I do something wrong? 

Everything was fine when we saw each other last night…

At least, I think it was fine…

**Sends a second reply txt**: Hello? Are you there?

Why aren’t they replying?

Their txt was kinda blunt. There wasn’t even a smiley face at the end of it…

Or after the “Hi”…

Something’s definitely wrong…there’s almost always a smiley face…

Fuck.

Did I say something last night that I shouldn’t have said? 

What did we talk about? 

Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that one thing…

Was that that big of a deal?

No, I think everything was still cool after that..

Why did they write “Hi” with a period after it, and not an exclamation point? 

An exclamation point would have at least told me they’re happy…

Periods are bad…

Nobody who’s happy uses periods when they text…

But they did write “gonna” instead of “going to”….

That’s a better sign…

“Gonna” is more casual, which probably means everything is fine…

Unless….

Would spell check fix a typo to “gonna”?

Maybe, if it’s written enough times and gets put into the phone’s dictionary…

Damn…

Seriously, why haven’t they txt back yet?

Either they’re seriously mad about something, or…

Maybe something’s wrong, like, 'got into a car accident' wrong…

Should I call? 

I should call…

Really, what if they got into an accident on the way over here?

What if whatever I said last night that I don’t even really remember saying and definitely don't think was that big of a deal got them so mad that they weren’t focused on driving and they were in such a rush to get here and tell me what a dick I am that they hit a tree on the way over and need my help?

Or worse, they hit another car?

I should call to see if everything’s okay….

But if I call and everything’s fine, I’m going to look like a clingy, desperate douche, and that’s not good, either…

But I can call and say that I’m calling to make sure everything’s okay, because I didn’t get a response to my txt….

And then while we’re on the phone, I can ask what we need to talk about…

My fucking stomach hurts…

This is it, I know it…

We’re breaking up…

Why else would anyone send a txt that we have to talk about something without a smiley face or an exclamation point in it?

What could I have said last night? 

I have to keep my fucking mouth shut…

I thought everything was fine…

Wait, they spent a little longer than normal in the bathroom last night…

And were looking at their phone when they came out…

Were they txting someone else?

Are they cheating on me with someone else?

Maybe they met someone else and have been hooking up with them for awhile already and need to come over now to tell me that it’s over between us because of this new person…

I’m gonna call…

This is ridiculous….

Why aren’t they here already?

I can’t believe it’s been a full minute since I sent my txt, and still no reply… 

The longest minute in the world is a minute in the mind of an over thinker!