A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#91

Post by DiggyJohnson » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

barryrandall wrote: post #62

infecto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what should they be paid? Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative. The output is fairly binary, clean or not clean. I am all for fair wages but how do we know if $10 is the right price or too low? Interesting how serious questions get so quickly downvoted. I am genuinely curious how you would price a dishwasher when the output is important but the work itself…

A lot of "serious questions" asked on the internet include assumptions and assertions that may or may not be true. These questions are often downvoted when people object to those assumptions and assertions.

Why are you speaking in generalities when we are discussing a specific question: this one. Your comment seems akin to saying "asking questions is suspicious, especially when I disagree with the premise."

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#92

Post by latchkey » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #3

Back in the late 90s I was working in a nightclub in the UK. It was my first time when I had to use a 'professional' dishwasher. That thing could wash 50-70 glasses in 3-4 mins and I remember that when I was pulling out that tray it was hotter than the sun. We had 5-6 trays for each dishwasher of them and at any given time 1-2 trays were out filled with glasses cooling down. These were like tiny ovens (same horizonta…

Recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41173177

East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#93

Post by throwaway199129 » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:46 PM UTC

darby_nine wrote: post #59

FredPret wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get this idea? What generates more value - a good thought that can steer a product or a company in a better direction, or a pile of clean dishes? Value is disconnected to the difficulty involved in producing it. In fact, this is a key part of the free market. Precisely because it's easy for people who can do your job to produce a ton of value and hard for dishwashers to do the same, the market tries to p…

> What generates more value - a good thought that can steer a product or a company in a better direction, or a pile of clean dishes? The dish, obviously. A company (or a product) is an abstract concept that is largely meaningless without workers to actually provide value people want to pay for. > Value is disconnected to the difficulty involved in producing it. Human labor is the source of all value. If you're handin…

> Human labor is the source of all value.

Does the random pair of apple trees growing in a field or the stream that supplies food and water have no value? Human labor didn't produce either of these, so by your definition they cannot have any value. Clearly that can't be the case.

I'm going to assume that you're using the communist definition of value, which is a bit more nuanced, as it determines value from the amount of human labor that went into producing a good. While human labor certainly can create value, it can also destroy value, so simply measuring human labor in terms of hours cannot reflect the actual usefulness that time provided. Hitting a bike in random places with a hammer for eight hours does not produce a more valuable bike; it probably destroys the bike, and no sane person would pay a higher price for that bike. This is one of the most fundamental flaws of communist economic systems.

Contrast this with the capitalist definition of value, which is simply to measure the price one is willing to pay for a good. If the price a consumer is willing to pay exceeds the price for which a seller is willing to sell, then you have a mutually beneficial exchange. Only time will tell whether or not the seller or buyer will actually benefit, but numerous experiments throughout history have shown this to trend upward in terms of improving the standard of living for the poorest in society.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#94

Post by Larrikin » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:50 PM UTC

Gormo wrote: post #84

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that tipping is mainly to enable the restaurant owner to avoid paying their workers properly.

No, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you, even in the context of an organization managing the transaction. You tip people who are personally responding to your requests -- that's why the dishwasher and other people you're not directly interacting with don't usually get tipped.

So like the accountant filing your taxes, the person who fixes your bug in the bug report, the electrician adding power to a new room, the plumber fixing a leak?

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#95

Post by iancmceachern » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

An army marches on its stomach

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#96

Post by bivargen » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

eldaisfish wrote: post #77

antisthenes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the full time wage can't result in a decent living (housing, food, medical expenses, clothes, feed and clothe a kid or two, and put away a little on the side) then it clearly is too little. I have seen this meme repeated a lot, e.g. any full time job should automatically provide for a LOT of shit that used to require 2 incomes, or a stay-at-home mom to take care of it. Now the goalposts have moved to provide for…

is your alternative that someone washing dishes is not entitled to have and support kids? I would ask you - do you have evidence to show that lowering wages benefits anyone other than the employer? Look at the Nordic countries. Paying everyone a minimum wage and creating a societal safety where education is free and everyone has access to the tools to better themselves results in staggeringly good outcomes.

While I agree with your sentiments, I must correct you in that Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, never had! Our societal safety also isn't all that it was, but to be sure it's much stronger than the US. For the other nordic countries I can't tell, though I seem to remember that Denmark has a minimum wage and Norway doesn't. As for Finland I have no idea.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#97

Post by keiferski » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #86

keiferski wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that underpaid workers aren't an issue, but - in my experience working in kitchens, the owner / person controlling the funds is very rarely actually on the cooking team. And so the respect comes from other team members, not management.

Oh god, get owners out of the kitchen. Unless they're experienced chefs starting their own restaurants (I know some people like this, they're awesome!) owners are much better off away from the food as much as possible.

I agree, I just meant that there is something of a disconnect between "working hard and getting the respect of the team" and "being rewarded by management with more money/benefits/etc.", probably because the owners tend to not even be familiar with the workers.

It's a different dynamic than a typical white-collar job where you're interacting with your manager (who can ultimately give you a raise) on a daily basis.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#98

Post by exe34 » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

lijok wrote: post #11

tennisflyi wrote: post #6

The "heart," but the only mention of pay is $10/hour, and advancement leads to more long nights as a chef in the volatile restaurant industry? Such respect Edit: also, the lip service of the title "porter" - the electric company will surely except that as payment

They get paid in lip service apparently. Just like all the essential workers during covid lockdowns.

Hey now, we did bang cutlery on cookware for them. No gratitude nowadays.

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#99

Post by gen3 » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

tczMUFlmoNk wrote: post #90

gen3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had to use rinse aid until recently. I needed to buy a new dishwashers, and it didn't have a heated element for drying (for energy efficiency reasons). Without rinseaid, things stay wet. I tried to do some research on the safety of the chemical, but couldn't find anything online

Searching for "rinse aid epithelial lining" tends to turn up a bunch of relevant results and research.

Thanks, now to figure out how much rinse aid my dishwasher dispenses....

Re: A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

#100

Post by Gormo » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 2:53 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #94

Gormo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, tipping is a way of directly compensating people who are directly doing work for you, even in the context of an organization managing the transaction. You tip people who are personally responding to your requests -- that's why the dishwasher and other people you're not directly interacting with don't usually get tipped.

So like the accountant filing your taxes, the person who fixes your bug in the bug report, the electrician adding power to a new room, the plumber fixing a leak?

No. Most of those people are self-employed, so you are usually already paying 100% of the compensation directly to them in the first place. Tipping is for when someone is doing work directly for you, but as an employee of another party.