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Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

nytimes.com

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Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#181

Post by tomc1985 »

betterunix2 wrote: post #152
CM30 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal cash is also much easier to use, doesn't rely on any software needing to be installed (or a computer/network access in general) and offers a decent amount of deniable plausability too. Why the obsession with replacing everything with technology when sometimes the old system works fine?

Cash cannot be used to pay websites/etc., and having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods. So the growth of online ordering essentially pushes people to use electronic payments of some kind, and as the number of online purchases increases so does the pressure to use electronic payments generally. Don't confuse ease-of-use in specific situations with ease-of-use generally.

"having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods"

How is that more convenient? You've a pipe dream if you think one option is more convenient for everyone

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#182

Post by SilasX »

bootcampjs wrote: post #32
tzahola wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also when I get a haircut they give a big discount for cash “discount” ;) Nice euphemism for tax evasion.

Potentially, although do remember that card processing fees are rather high for small businesses, and every transaction that they don’t have to lose 3% or 5% of or whatever is extra money they can keep.

20+% business/personal tax vs 5% CC fee. Which do you think is the bigger motivator there?

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#183

Post by jstarfish »

ravenstine wrote: post #112
greggarious wrote: post #54

Do people not carry cash? Maybe the types who have an apartment with a doorman in Manhattan don't. But I (a "millenial") often go to bars and restaurants that are cash only. Eventually, I found it was easier keep budget my "entertainment" in cash. Visually being able to see how much I have, how much I'm taking out helps. Being able to see that amount grow if I'm frugal one month feels good too. I have friends who cla…

In LA, pretty much every bar takes plastic. I rarely carry cash on me; only when someone doesn't have Venmo or I need to get quarters for the laundromat do I need to obtain actual cash. Whenever I got out to eat with people, cards are used 90% of the time and the bill gets split between cards. It's not that paying with cash is a faux pas, but it is slightly weird and an inconvenience when the person doesn't have quit…

> If more people carried cash, we might see fewer muggings because anyone with just cards can just call their bank and have them turn off all the cards if they get stolen.

I don't think it makes much of a difference. People used to carry cash almost exclusively and muggings still happened with regularity. The difference between now and then is that your cellphone is the first object removed from your person (which will later get fenced at a recycle-your-phone kiosk and shipped overseas), followed by a quick rifling through of your wallet looking for cards.

For debit cards, a gun gets thrust in your face, a PIN is demanded (if you aren't abducted and taken to the ATM altogether) and you get pistol whipped while they withdraw $500. It used to be done on a succession of ATMs but I don't know if the FIs impose caps on ATMs withdrawals now.

Thieves know cards can be deactivated so they'll make like Bain Capital and load them up with as much debt as possible before busting out. The primary goal is converting your plastic currency (debit or credit) into something that can't be terminated remotely (such as cash or prepaid gift cards) before you have a chance to make those calls.

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#184

Post by jedberg »

jpindar wrote: post #173
acdanger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of donations through apps like GoFundMe, but does there exist any services for making digital donations to homeless people I might encounter on the street? I've thought about how the lack of cash is affecting these people, quite a lot but haven't encountered any solutions.

Gift cards? Coffee shops and such have low denomination ones.

The problem with that is a lot of those stores will kick the homeless person out. We used to buy meals for homeless people on the street when we were getting fast food in college. Oftentimes they were afraid to come into the McDonalds with us, even though we were taking them in, because they had been kicked out in the past. There's no way they would have gone in to use a gift card.

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#185

Post by greedo »

intopieces wrote: post #162
betterunix2 wrote: post #2

Maybe we should not have tips? There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips, and there are plenty of countries where tipping is not common (including some where cash is still favored over electronic payments). Why not just pay people a fair wage that they can live on?

>There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips. Sure there is. In tipped professions, tips go directly to the waitstaff the day they are earned. It's what makes being a waiter a fantastic starter job when you move to a new city, say, or get kicked out of your home by an abusive spouse, or just need to make money without waiting 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. It also reduces the opportunity for your e…

Nope. Our tips were pooled, and we didn't receive them until the end of the week. They had employment taxes taken out, and were also split up with busboys, dishwashers, line cooks, managers etc. This was in California in the 90's.

So the idea that tips reward performance is a joke. If I was excellent one night, a coworker who was terrible would get a boost (in average) while my take was lowered.

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#186

Post by herbst »

ironjunkie wrote: post #159
betterunix2 wrote: post #2

Maybe we should not have tips? There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips, and there are plenty of countries where tipping is not common (including some where cash is still favored over electronic payments). Why not just pay people a fair wage that they can live on?

The biggest hurdle to move away from tipping is that the people that get screwed by the tipping culture are the first one to want to stay in it. They are also the first ones to moralize people about how tipping is a must and if you don't tip, that poor waiter will be unable to make a living. NO! The ones that get away easy in this whole scheme are the owners that have now no responsibility to pay their employees corr…

The issue here again is the screwed up minimal wage, or how tips can be accounted for that. Therefore a american exclusive issue.

Source: Most people i know who earn tips, are the ones who rather refuse or minimize a tip to someone else (central europe).

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#187

Post by greedo »

btilly wrote: post #124
astura wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My steak arrived cold? Try paying your rent this month now!" Unless you are an uncaring psychopath you should pay servers in the US for bad service as well - everyone should be paid for the labor they do. If they aren't doing an adequate job they should be reprimanded or fired. That's not your job though, that's their boss's job. You don't know if they are just having an off day or the problem you had was caused by…

Your comment reminds me of http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove and http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html . In your books, either I agree with you, or I am an evil person. But if I take my clothing to a drycleaner, and my clothing comes back torn due to their incompetence, I'm not expected to pay for the drycleaning. Ditto if the valet damages my car. The fact that someone put time in does not entitle them to my mon…

If you get bad service, whether it's a rude waiter, cold/incorrect food or something else, the best and fairest course of action is to bring it to the manager's attention. They're usually pretty savvy about the real cause. But tipping a small amount just makes a waiter hate you.

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#188

Post by ashelmire »

rhino369 wrote: post #39
betterunix2 wrote: post #2

Maybe we should not have tips? There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips, and there are plenty of countries where tipping is not common (including some where cash is still favored over electronic payments). Why not just pay people a fair wage that they can live on?

In most of these industries, the "fair wage" is actually less than tips. Or at least they used to be. Ending tipping will hurt them overall. Just think about how a great a deal tips are for waiters. 10-20% of gross revenue is huge.

You greatly overestimate the amount waiters make.

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#189

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r »

jstarfish wrote: post #146
Sangermaine wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the US, employees must still be paid minimum wage. Depending on the state, an employer may count tips toward this amount. If an employee reports $0 in tips, the employer must pay them $7.25/hr. While I would like to believe that what you say is true, I find it hard to be true. You are beyond naive if you really think that because these laws are on the books they’re not being routinely and widely flouted or ignore…

Yeah, I had a few thousand dollars in unpaid overtime withheld by an employer; the Department of Labor helped me file a complaint, assigned me a representative, ignored all of my phone calls, and I never heard from them again. I tried to get a labor lawyer to intervene but the total losses weren't enough for them to bother litigating. They sent a demand letter and it was ignored. Next option would have been small cla…

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but I don't think that it represents the nation at large. Here is why...

According to the most recent census data I could find (2015), there are approx. 27M businesses in the US[1]. Assuming half those businesses are wage thieves, that would mean 13.5M businesses are currently in violation of the the law. The DOL can place a $10k sanction on the business owner for a first infraction[2]. This would then mean that the US gov't stands to make $135B by placing sanctions on these businesses. To catch each business, let's say it costs the DOL $2500/business. After looking into each and every business, they would run a total of $67.5B. Now they have made $67.5B after all expenses have been made. To put that in perspective, the US gov't has put aside $9.7B for the DOL in 2018[3]. As you might figure on your own, $67.5B is nearly 7 (6.9587628865979381443298969072165 if you want to be super accurate) times the DOL's 2018 budget. Now if you mean to tell me that the gov't is going to leave that sort of money on the table, then you and I need to figure out how we benefit from this.

You might well be thinking something along the lines of "The gov't is inefficient, etc. There is no way they could reclaim all that." You're right this is definitely a perfect world scenario, but even if they could only claim 1%. That still makes up a 10th of next years DOL budget. For the gov't , these numbers only get better as more businesses commit these crimes.

Now we have to look at this from the perspective of a business. Again there is only roughly 27M in the US. To make it fiscally responsible to take the $10k bet of sorts the business must save at least $10k/violation, obviously. For the sake of this argument let's say violations are handed out per person per month. ((404)7.25)+(((3024)-(404))(7.251.5)) = $7250, that is how much you make at minimum wage including overtime... If you worked literally every hour of every day for a month (30 days, technically). So if we assume the business thinks a person is going to report the violation, they are better off just paying minimum wage upfront. Let's reel this in a bit and say you work 40/wk/mo in overtime. ((404)7.25)+((404)(7.25*1.5)) = $2900. So now the business definitely comes out ahead. They would risk $7000 by trying to save, what, $1000? Remember, this is an extreme case, not everyone is going to work 80 hours a week. Even if a business isn't more likely to hire another person to cover your 40 hours of overtime a week, they can only save $580/mo compared to the $10k/violation.

I know that there are businesses that will literally do anything under the sun to make a buck, but I find it hard to believe that even half of businesses would go against some of the math above.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/econ/susb/2015-susb-...

[2]: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/elg/minwage.htm#Penalites

[3]: https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/FY2018BIB_0.pdf

Re: Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips

#190

Post by deftturtle »

ironjunkie wrote: post #159
betterunix2 wrote: post #2

Maybe we should not have tips? There is no actual need or advantage to giving people tips, and there are plenty of countries where tipping is not common (including some where cash is still favored over electronic payments). Why not just pay people a fair wage that they can live on?

The biggest hurdle to move away from tipping is that the people that get screwed by the tipping culture are the first one to want to stay in it. They are also the first ones to moralize people about how tipping is a must and if you don't tip, that poor waiter will be unable to make a living. NO! The ones that get away easy in this whole scheme are the owners that have now no responsibility to pay their employees corr…

Exactly. I quit a job where I was paid minimum plus tips, but it's not enough. The restaurant should pay more than minimum wage.

Profits should be split, regardless of how tips are handled.

They try to keep the cost of food at 30%, as is common in business. COG around 1/3 or less.

So when we have a really busy night, there is excess profit relative to the amount of tips.

Assuming tips are a constant percentage of sales, the amount we earn extra is proportionate to sales.

But there is a certain minimum number of sales the owner must reach to break even. At a certain volume, profit accelerates further, but tips are still relatively constant.

So my desire would be for a restaurant to split excess revenues more equitably in addition to whatever baseline wage they set.

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