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An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

henrytapper.com

111–120 of 166 posts

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#111
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how raising the price of a large pizza increases money in the driver's pocket.

If the company wants to get more money from the customer (to pay to the driver or not) they need to put the prices up. If the driver wants more money he needs to negotiate that with his employer. It's not the customer's responsibility to pay over the quoted price just because the driver thinks he is underpaid.

You don't understand tipping in the U.S. Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#112
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here). This means that when someone in the UK might withhol…

> The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).

As I understand it this was promoted by business owners themselves (which makes a certain kind of sense because it offloads the risk of a slow night onto their employees).

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#114

Ticketmaster the employee There's actually a good Freakanomics episode on this[1]. How tickets are undervalued and part of Ticketmaster's value is that they take blame for the high prices. [1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship. It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people. The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher tha…

Isn't a better system to just hold a lottery? Yes, maybe now you have fans with dedication, but it just feels like an enormous waste of time for everyone to be online refreshing a page for an hour when it will boil down to luck anyway who will get a ticket

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#115
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here). This means that when someone in the UK might withhol…

In many states now, all employees are paid at least minimum wage. In my state that is $10+/hour. But that depends on the state.

The federal government allows tip based workers to be paid only $2.13/hour by their employer but they must make at least $7.25/hour after tips. But in my state they have to be paid at least $10+/hour before tips.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#116
post #105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how raising the price of a large pizza increases money in the driver's pocket.

If no one paid a tip, people wouldn't want the job so the company would have to raise wages to compensate. This extra cost can be passed on in higher pizza prices.

If everyone poured a bucket of water on the driver's head, the company would eventually be obligated to give the drivers ponchos. So really I'm doing the driver a favor by pouring a bucket of water on his head.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#117

Many years ago I delivered pizza while in college. When it was time to move on my manager and I decided to have some fun. For the last three days I was there I delivered to every terrible customer we had, then had a little fun at their expense. Like the guy that routinely refused to tip a single penny and said 10 pennies make a dime. I handed him a dime and told him now he didn't have to wait for 9 more pizzas. It wa…

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

I can't say I held a grudge, but I found it very funny in my pizza delivery days when somebody would tip a penny. Pulling the dime trick would have made me go out as a hero to my fellow drivers.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#118
post #115
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here). This means that when someone in the UK might withhol…

In many states now, all employees are paid at least minimum wage. In my state that is $10+/hour. But that depends on the state. The federal government allows tip based workers to be paid only $2.13/hour by their employer but they must make at least $7.25/hour after tips. But in my state they have to be paid at least $10+/hour before tips.

WA? CA? I personally really like the fact that servers are getting paid so well here in WA, and I've been tipping a lot less as a result. When it goes up the $13, I might reconsider it altogether. Thank goodness, I dislike the entire process. I think that it makes people mean; when you are a server working for tips you have a thousand bosses, and far too many people are terrible with even a modicum of power.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship. It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people. The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher tha…

Isn't a better system to just hold a lottery? Yes, maybe now you have fans with dedication, but it just feels like an enormous waste of time for everyone to be online refreshing a page for an hour when it will boil down to luck anyway who will get a ticket

Do I have to pay to play the lottery? If that case, it's practically equivalent to a ticket price of (lottery price)*(probability of winning), so you haven't really solved anything, the scalpers will buy many lottery tickets. Double more so if the lottery is free, then the price becomes expressed as the grinding of multiple identities, straw buyers, etc. into fooling the system to give them more chances; scalpers are even better positioned to game a free lottery since they have the economies of scale to produce a very large number of straw identities.

Any friction you introduce other than "being a fan" is just a convoluted way to hide the real market prices, and that's exactly the margin where scalpers operate. As for "being a fan", it's very hard to quantify and operationalize.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#120
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here). This means that when someone in the UK might withhol…

> I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.

It's not attitude, they do underpay certain people. But at the same time various US pizza places do include a service or delivery fee which still doesn't go to the driver. As a result you might pay a delivery fee which is isn't a delivery fee.

In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.

From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.

Going back to pizza delivery, in my country (not US) the delivery fee is often included in the pizza. This is done by offering a pretty huge discount for picking up a pizza.

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