Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Restaurant workers quit at record rate

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 961 posts

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#191

Post by arcturus17 »

Paul_S wrote: post #29

Restaurant owners refuse to pay higher wages because that would remove a huge profit source for them - variable pricing. As long as part of the wage is in tips the owner effectively is capable of charging customers different prices. Rich people pay more but poor poeple also visit. If you raise the price to pay a good wage without tips and abolish tipping you lose the poor customers.

Eh, how is variable pricing a source of profit for the restaurateur? Their profit is calculated on a fixed price. Also from what I’ve observed in the US, everyone is morally obligated to pay a tip… Rich people may go above and beyond the average (citation needed) but having tips arguably does not raise demand from more modest people, since they are still expected to pay base price + tip. There is no real price segmentation at play as far as I can tell…

Modest people also eat out in Europe or in Japan, where morally mandatory tipping does not exist, so there is that.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#192

Post by gruez »

kube-system wrote: post #110
k33n wrote: post #53

Great servers at high end restaurants are making 100K a year because of tips. Why would they want to make $20 an hour?

They are extreme outliers. The 90th percentile wage for waiters (excluding fast-food!) is $20.46/hr. The 75th percentile is $14.73 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes353031.htm The vast majority of waiters would love to make a $20 wage.

Does the BLS data account for under-reporting of cash-based tips? If I really was making $100k a year because of tips, I would be really tempted to not give 30% (marginal rate) to uncle sam.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#194

Post by hellbannedguy »

conductr wrote: post #82
yepthatsreality wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but this goes beyond restaurants in my opinion. Look at these states that had mass migration of people during the pandemic. You will find the (big) sky-rocketing cost of living where those who are moving in on a whim are also not seeking jobs in the state. However all these businesses need employees to handle the new increase in customers. The employers aren’t raising their wages either, which is also not attrac…

> The employers aren’t raising their wages either They are. It takes time but they are. I work in a business that is having a hard time hiring entry level healthcare workers because Walmart and Amazon warehoueses is now paying $15-20/hr when it was only $12 pre-covid. Walmart and Amazon would only raise wages if they truly had a labor supply issue, which they do, we all do.

I do see a bit of improvement. CVS starts out at $15/hr. I have a feeling that is only in certain zip codes?

Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want to pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr.

I don't see a big increase in wages, and I work a lot of lousy jobs.

If job conditions were a bit better, a lot of employees will stay at a low paying job because they actually like their fellow employees, and sometimes the job.

I don't know why being nice/respectful is so out of fashion in corporate america?

I grocery shop at Safeway, and The Nugget markets. Safeway employees hate their job. They even have a hard time retaining new immigrants. When I shop at Safeway, I sometimes need to move to another line if I feel the checker is having a bad day. (I overheard an employee state a manager wanted him at a store 70 miles away at 5 am the next day, and he told that manager he didn't have transportation other than the bus. I wanted to grab the phone and lay into that "Manager".)

As opposed to The Nugget, which is notated as one of the best 100 places to work. It's like going back to the fifties. The employees are nice. It might be they hire people whom will have better jobs one day?

Anyways, it's not just about wage. I have had lousy low paid jobs I liked, and well paid union jobs I despise.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#195

Post by gruez »

nomrom wrote: post #15
nostromo wrote: post #6

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the government paying people to sit at home - something NPR forgot to mention in their article.

If a survival stipend competes successfully against a low-paying, high-stress, and absolutely miserable job conditions then the problem isn't the stipend, is it?

>conditions then the problem isn't the stipend, is it?

It's laughable to make that comparison when the "survival stipend" is money for doing nothing. I'm not sure how any private enterprise can compete with that.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#196

Post by jlarocco »

Andrex wrote: post #188
jlarocco wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe restaurants aren't a viable business? I know it sounds crazy because we've had them for so long, but maybe it's not sustainable to have so many of them? In any case, this seems like a great area to let the market figure it out. If restaurants go out of business the owners and employees will find something else to do.

> In any case, this seems like a great area to let the market figure it out. If restaurants go out of business the owners and employees will find something else to do. I'm not sure more corporate concentration would be a better situation.

I don't think my comment implies more corporate concentration.

And even if it does, why should restaurants be held to a higher standard than other sectors? It's fine for Google and Facebook to buy up everything, but restaurants can't consolidate?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#197

Post by wonderwonder »

gruez wrote: post #174
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks raise that spectre when a living wage is mentioned. "So many service jobs lost!" I shake my head at that - folks who imagine themselves Free Market advocates, and here they are agreeing with Karl Marx that a capitalist system can't survive without a slave-wage class to prop it up. Paying everybody a living wage should be the minimum bar for any economy. If ours can't do it, we need a different one.

> and here they are agreeing with Karl Marx that a capitalist system can't survive without a slave-wage class to prop it up. The employers aren't obligated to employ anyone. What do you think happens to the "slave-wage class" when the job disappears entirely?

Issue is that the only reason this slave wage class exists in food services is because of a coordinated lobbying campaign to influence politicians to keep it like that. Most people in this thread would be pretty upset if all tech companies got together tomorrow and decided to artificially cap salaries and bought politicians to enforce it.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#198

Post by rubyist5eva »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #4

The restaurant industry has known the solution for a long time but everyone wants to pretend it would be too difficult. Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage. The public will still show up to eat in your restaurant.

Food is expensive enough as it is, if restaurant prices went up 20% overnight I would never go to one again. Tipping is irrelevant for fast food.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#199

Post by motohagiography »

oramit wrote: post #135
ericbarrett wrote: post #73

Wages/insurance/tips are an ongoing concern of food service work, but I want to set that aside and talk about the other half of the article. Customer entitlement is out of control and anybody who works with the general public will tell you it’s gotten even worse since the pandemic—and it wasn’t trending in the right direction before. Flight attendants, park rangers, government clerks, the anecdotes are everywhere, in…

I think there has been a general rise in selfish behavior now that pandemic restrictions are being lifted. You have people who never took the pandemic seriously and now that things are back open, but are not the same, they are lashing out. That's one part of this. I also think you have another camp, which I'll admit to being a member of. I did everything I was supposed to do. I stayed at home, used masks everywhere,…

After a year of piety, it's possibly just "moral licensing." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing)

I can't remember the other term, but there is a related concept where we do things like separate our recycling, then fly private. Someone with a job helping other people becomes an abusive disaster at home. Or the classic relationship anti-pattern of partner who "does things for you, and now you owe them," (covert contract?) It's related to indulgences and self-licensing, and there is a calculation where we decide our past or even current good behaviour justifies poor behaviour now because we have an imaginary idea that we are somehow bargaining with the universe and it owes us something. (It doesn't care.) It's not the universe, it's your mother, and people are rude because they are caught in a psychological feedback loop of expectation, shame, and rage.

For years I thought it was economically broken that even restaurant and café jobs required a college degree, but now I don't understand how anyone without a psychology degree could be equipped to work with the public. We are hell.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#200

Post by tibbydudeza »

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #182
lashloch wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something amusing to me about the idea of an industry that "used to be" sustainable. Guess it wasn't sustainable after all.

It is as a behavioral habit. People always need to eat. It’s not fiscally viable closed system. Restaurants operate on tiny margins and come and go as frequently as software startups. We keep trying to hitch biological necessity to ridiculous memes of social capital accumulation, inventing more abstract and Byzantine math as if literal reality will implode if the rich can’t earn a profit. Like healthcare, the routine…

>> Restaurants operate on tiny margins

If you are a KFC/Burger King/McDonalds franchisee then it seems to work but I have lost count the number of establishments that open/closes in that one spot of our local mall.

Pub/Indian/Pizza/Chinese/Fish & Chips/ - they come and go.

Post reply on HN