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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#751

Post by grapehut »

amyjess wrote: post #732
pcmoney wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the owner who has operated a cut throat, extremely demanding, razor thin margin for years folds because they don’t understand basic labor supply and demand? Keep in mind this person has mostly likely done in depth analysis on how to make their most popular item at the same quality but for 2% less of some expensive ingredient. I know one phenomenal restaurant owner who spent an entire year to get the cost of their…

If you can't stay open while paying people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. I would rather have nothing but chain restaurants owned by megacorps than have people working for less than a living wage.

That's fair, but would you also rather people unemployed than working for less than a living wage as well?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#752

Post by vanviegen »

14 wrote: post #675
Aloha wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

I think I get 15 paid sick days a year, 15 vacation days with an extra day added each year, and 12 lieu days that I get off but no pay. This was the first year having it. What a difference it makes to my mental well being. I spread my days off out so I get lots of 3 day weekends and I feel a lot less burnt out. The sick days are a big one. If my kid is sick or I hurt myself or I have a bad tooth or just feeling down…

From a European perspective, it boggles my mind that sick days can be limited. What happens when you run out? You get fired for not coming into work, I imagine?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#753

Post by mindslight »

71a54xd wrote: post #700
avidiax wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting take, but it seems like a post-hoc rationale/strategy to me. Conservatives will block any rise in the minimum wage, but couldn't completely block additional unemployment benefits. Progressives would back a rise in the minimum wage, but had to deliver on relief for the unemployed working class, so they did just that. The secondary effect of rising wages was probably only something that conservati…

Yep, but at the end of the day anyone who's trying to build wealth or have anything left for retirement gets fucked by inflation. People who are spendthrift and receiving UBI or unemployment payments (long term) were never trying to do that anyways and their payments in theory would increase with inflation. I'm a supporter of the idea of UBI but I just can't see the incentives panning out realistically.

But price inflation is the policy goal regardless of minimum wage or UBI. In fact, government spending makes for better inflation in that it is spread around the economy, rather than lending based inflation that only shows up in CPI after it sends assets through the roof.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#754

Post by CTDOCodebases »

jclulow wrote: post #328
stevejb wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilt trip? I have never felt this ever. I pay a tip proportional to the service. 10% bad, 15% average, 20-25% for very good. As an American living in Australia, I really do miss tipping. I think that on average the restaurant service here is a lot lower. At most restaurants at the medium level (e.g. $25 hamburgers) you pay in advance, and then a waiter will bring the food to you when its ready. Do you need more wate…

As an Australian living in America, the expectation that there will be a person to refill your water cup is pretty uncomfortable. The need to tip is a ridiculous abdication of the responsibility for labour laws to ensure staff a living wage. If you don't like the service at a restaurant, don't go! There are other restaurants that will compete for your custom. If no restaurant is sufficiently servile for your tastes,…

Adding to this what tipping also does is pit the server against the kitchen and sometimes the house itself in establishments that don’t share tips with the kitchen.

Tipping can still take place. It just doesn’t need to be obligatory. It’s the difference between a culture of servitude vs a culture of service.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#755

Post by notriddle »

donatj wrote: post #407
mariodiana wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope. Tips are their own, special thing described in tax law.

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc761

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#756

Post by judge2020 »

vletal wrote: post #449

Last week we went to a great local restaurant. At least it used to be in the pre-covid times. Now most of the stuff had a "temporary worker" or an "apprentice" sticker on their chest. You could see their hands shaking while serving heavy glasses of beer, improper way of serving food. They forgot about us at one point. We kindly asked to get served. The new hires were not even able to take our orders without being apo…

You're supposed to dream big and have career goals, so I would be surprised if any young wait staffers dreamed of staying wait staff for the rest of their life. Covid was just an opportunity to get out for a lot of people who otherwise couldn't be without the paycheck.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#757

Post by ISL »

vanviegen wrote: post #752
14 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I get 15 paid sick days a year, 15 vacation days with an extra day added each year, and 12 lieu days that I get off but no pay. This was the first year having it. What a difference it makes to my mental well being. I spread my days off out so I get lots of 3 day weekends and I feel a lot less burnt out. The sick days are a big one. If my kid is sick or I hurt myself or I have a bad tooth or just feeling down…

From a European perspective, it boggles my mind that sick days can be limited. What happens when you run out? You get fired for not coming into work, I imagine?

Sometimes, yes.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#758

Post by xyzzyz »

lumost wrote: post #736
flippertheD wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, all businesses run operations dif and have dif margins, so let's not forget that. I run a recruiting company. From our data a few things have popped up. First, people want higher wages in the lower wage industries. They are asking for $15-20 per hour. Second, lot of these people don't want to go back to the same labor jobs they had - they want to do something different. the problem with this is that they want t…

Why shouldn't a teenager make 20 an hour? At 16 your looking down the road at 2 very expensive options. 1) Go to college and earn a degree for 120-240k dollars 2) Start paying rent, owning your own car, healthcare, food, and leisure activities. Both of these are expensive directions to take. It used to be that someone could pay for school with a summer job, why shouldn't it be now? It doesn't appear the education cha…

> Why shouldn't a teenager make 20 an hour?

It's not that he "shouldn't". Rather, many businesses cannot afford to both pay teenage employees $20/h, and also to not raise the prices. Some businesses can raise prices just fine, but others are not able to, as the customers will stop buying at higher price point. For example, if all groceries doubled their food prices, I'd still buy food (though maybe less than before), and likely spend more on it than I used to. However, if all restaurants doubled their prices, I'd pretty much stop eating out altogether, except special occasions.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#759

Post by lumost »

throwawayboise wrote: post #253
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.

McDonald's and similar jobs used to be an entry level job for teens and college students. When I was 16 I was happy to work there for minimum wage ($3.35/hr at the time). Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job. I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few hours suddenly became req…

The minimum wage was set to $3.35/hr in 1981, a time when 22.2% of Americans were employed in manufacturing vs. 10% today. There were many alternatives to working at McDonalds that stopped existing in the US over the last 40 years. The ultimate answer to what Americans would do instead of manufacturing turned out to be restaurant and retail work.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#760

Post by jdgoesmarching »

systemvoltage wrote: post #666
AussieWog93 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm skeptical that a business would choose to go out of business rather that give raises. Have you considered that margins are tighter than you think? I know small businesses like that. I run a small business. I know other small business owners. An MBA-like focus on hyperefficiency is rare. Usually people have their views about how the world should work and act in accordance with that. Some people will come around,…

It doesn't take a MBA-like focus to think "Gee..only if we had more margin, we'd pay more". This entire thread is totally out of touch with reality.

To be clear, you’re arguing that companies pay more when they increase their margin? The rest of this thread is out of touch for thinking otherwise? I don’t know, that definitely sounds like MBA-brain to me.
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