Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#401

Post by WalterBright » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

diob wrote: post #314

WalterBright wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Customer entitlement is out of control It's not just customer entitlement. It's been a steadily rising thing throughout society for my whole life. People are less and less willing to accept responsibility for their choices, and more and more it's always someone else's fault. For example, a person who chose to go $300,000 into debt to go to Columbia film school, where the starting salary upon graduating is $30,000,…

This seems like a wild take to be honest. Humanity over the generations remains much the same beast, it's just that as you get old you forget the lessons your generation had to learn by experience (rose tinted glasses so to speak). You also fail to see that the context of the humans being raised today is different from yours, and their experiences / opportunities different as well. Heck, even those in your generation…

Common or not, I regularly see stories about this in the newspaper. The students change, the stories are the same "but nobody told me I couldn't get a decent job in this major, look at all the debt I have now."

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#402

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #387

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a restaurant through high school and have been coding professionally for 20 years. After a certain point, programming becomes less hard. It becomes a set of very familiar syntax snippets to copy/paste around. Rushing around a kitchen in the heat, and often toxic, juvenile environment all week never changes… versus programming in your house? Give me a break. You’re not coming close to putting the same real…

It took you… - 20 years of work - x years of study - being born with the right nature/nurture mix for computer work …to get to this point. That’s a very significant initial hump in difficulty that restaurant work doesn’t have.

You're equivocating on the meaning of the word "difficulty." It's impossibly difficult for anybody but me to be exactly me, but that doesn't mean it's hard work for me to be me.

I've worked in a factory as a machine operator, and in a company as a programmer, and they're not comparable in either difficulty or compensation.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#403

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #356

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.

This has been tried many times, you are ignoring the reasons it did not work. The employees hate it because they make less money, forcing the restaurant to go back to tipping. It was effectively a pay cut for employees. It is not wage/revenue neutral because it changes customer behavior. Generally speaking, Americans are more generous when the money goes to directly to a service person than to a faceless business tha…

> This has been tried many times, you are ignoring the reasons it did not work. The employees hate it because they make less money, forcing the restaurant to go back to tipping.

Yup. A couple of restaurants in the Seattle area tried this. "20% price increase, no more tipping".

Over time, their employees left, saying they were being paid less.

Remember this the next time you hear the "if you tip 15% or less I'm literally paying to serve you!" (which is also BS. The IRS, if you don't disclose tipped income, assesses a standard rate. If you're truly earning less than that in tips, you can document it and pay less. But almost no-one wants to do that because the IRS is behind the times, and almost all servers make more in tips than that standard rate).

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#404

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #365

_delirium wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most workers do not fully report all of their tips, which saves them both income and payroll taxes I wonder what percentage of tips are still cash tips, which is the only case where you can get away with that. I imagine the percentage of tips that are on a credit card (or even app like Doordash/Seamless) vs. cash has been increasing over time, but I can't find solid numbers.

Most credit and debit card tips are paid out to servers with cash from the register at the end of the day. The amount of the tips is recorded, but the recipients are not, and taxes are not assessed against the tips. Technically, servers are supposed to declare the cash they receive as income, but it is accepted practice not to do so.

[deleted]

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#405

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

posguy wrote: post #284

kop316 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case for some....but that is not the case for all. For one ancedote, my father in-law runs a restaurant with my aunt in-law (his sister). They are the only workers, and split the profits evenly. They are in the midwest (low taxes), and own the restaurant's property/building. They were able to completely shut down during COVID and restart back up, and have survived several economic downturns. They are…

Sounds like its time for them to raise prices past what they deem to be a reasonable rise. Other restaurants in the area will likely do the same, and not pricing yourself to match can cause a drop in business as people seem to think the more they pay the better the quality (especially when your service or offering is priced on the low end of the market). You might look at this and say charging $4 for X item is alread…

timing the market is everything. Consider this the 'first mover disadvantage'. If you price yourself at the higher end of the market before the rest of the market moves, the lower price competitors will absorb your clientele.

In addition, type of food matters a lot. A place that sells 'cheap slop on a plate' has lot less price flexibility than a boutique that sells fancy sushi.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#406

Post by Bhilai » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #166

Covid has made me question eating out at all. It’s trivial to cook something that’s better tasting and healthier than fast food, most cafes. With all the practice in the last year, it’s not hard to come close to my favorite upscale restaurants for 1/4 of the price. I don’t need to find a recipe, I can “just cook” now. Eating out seems like an antiquated division of labor given how streamlined procurement (grocery del…

Yes agreed. I hate cooking but I decided to bite the bullet during covid and learnt to make simple meals. The whole chore of cutting, cooking, cleaning up, dishes and utensils still seems like a burden to me but I enjoy eating home cooked meals and have improved overtime to modify internet recipes to my liking. Eating out now seems expensive and unhealthy in most cases and I often doubt the quality of ingredients too.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#407

Post by donatj » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

mariodiana wrote: post #383

jandrewrogers wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been tried many times, you are ignoring the reasons it did not work. The employees hate it because they make less money, forcing the restaurant to go back to tipping. It was effectively a pay cut for employees. It is not wage/revenue neutral because it changes customer behavior. Generally speaking, Americans are more generous when the money goes to directly to a service person than to a faceless business tha…

I can't articulate the details, down to the last detail, but the worst thing to happen to tipping is the change the IRS made, some years back. If I understand correctly, the IRS always used to estimate tip for a server based on a table's bill. (The custom is 15-20 percent, and I think the IRS used to average lower than that.) But the IRS always used to collect its cut on tips from the server. The change is that the I…

I don't know if there's been case law behind it, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to try it, but I feel like there's a strong argument to be made that tips are gifts from the consumer to the wait staff.

That said, gifts totaling under $15,000 are non-taxable.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#408

Post by dsm4ck » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #385

mdavis6890 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we are observing is the Demand Curve shifting left (people less interested in eating out) and the Supply Curve shifting down (the people willing to work in restaurants for any given wage is going down). Remember that supply and demand curves cover all wages/prices and quantities, they are not specific to a certain price/wage or quantity. This is observed as a shortage - more customers willing to buy a restaurant…

Is it really a shortage? If the preferences of potential restaurant customers simply changes such that they're no longer willing to pay enough for a restaurant meal for the restaurant to stay financially solvent, that's not a shortage. It's only a shortage if something is preventing the market price from changing (in this case, the price of a restaurant meal increasing) or preventing restaurants and customers who are…

"A shortage, in economic terms, is a condition where the quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied at the market price." https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortage.asp sounds like it fits the situation to me.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#409

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #290

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay generally isn’t the issue; especially, tipped positions. It’s the work conditions, treatment by management and customers, the inconsistency in hours, and no benefits. We’re seeing here in Portland that people still don’t want return to restaurants at $15/hr. Restaurants suck to work at.

At least in Europe, paying the salary off the book in large part, is very common.

And the hours are often longer off the books, since things like cleanup are sometimes not counted as worked hours.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#410

Post by tshaddox » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #393

tshaddox wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a shortage? If the preferences of potential restaurant customers simply changes such that they're no longer willing to pay enough for a restaurant meal for the restaurant to stay financially solvent, that's not a shortage. It's only a shortage if something is preventing the market price from changing (in this case, the price of a restaurant meal increasing) or preventing restaurants and customers who are…

does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and observed one? The only thing preventing restaurants from changing their prices is the 'penguin on an iceberg' issue. You may be correct in raising your prices, but if other restaurants are willing to lose money longer before they raise their prices your business may suffer/fail because of it before the rest of the market changes their prices/wages.

I'm no expert in how economists use the term, but I suppose it could certainly be called a shortage if there is some systemic reason why restaurants can't (or at least think they can't) raise prices in the short term. Personally I don't find that likely, at least based in my region where restaurants have indeed raised prices and many seem to be thriving (although many others failed in 2020).