A Tip: Treat Good People Well

One of the reasons The Dreaded One and I started our own cafe was because we both had terrible experiences at roughly the same time of working for awful employers. We're hard workers, it's just how we roll. And we were treated like shit and taken for granted. At roughly the same time, we both said enough, and quit.
In my case, the absolute tool I was working for (this dick gleefully emptied the tip jars each week in front of us all and pathetically claimed when I enquired at his lame Christmas party that he spent the entire year's tip jar on the Christmas party... uh huh. Really? All that money went into a badly cooked Christmas roast?) let me go one week into the two week's notice I gave him. Fortunately I had seen him do this to previous workers and factored it in. What a clown.
We both decided that if we were working this hard, we should be doing it for ourselves. That way, we can choose the people we work with, choose the music we want to listen to while we work, and we can do nice things for the people who choose to work for us, like having the decency to give them the tips they have earned.
We are now still working hard. We're very much hands-on. It's a bit of a struggle. Who knows what's going to happen.
But you get these little, lovely moments, these small gestures that mean a lot to you. You get good customer feedback. You get the random positive online review. You enjoy a lengthy conversation with someone who has chosen to work for you, and they're talking and you find yourself thinking I'm really glad I met you. You're pretty fucking cool. Whatever happens in the future, I like you a lot.
And if you're really lucky, these employees you quite like will describe you as pals, and will want to hang out and have drinks with you after work hours.
And they will bring this up with you prior to you giving them the previous couple of months' tips.
I think we're getting some of this thing right.