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A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

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

#131

Post by nmd »

wichert wrote: post #109
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a combination of things, but it's similar to why online stores advertise a price, and then add charges at checkout (like shipping, or credit card charge, processing fee, etc). You entice the customer with the lower price, and once they have committed, you can hit them with another charge or fee without as much ramification. Restaurant customers can be price sensitive, so tipping is a way to advertise a lower pri…

Let me change that a bit: "it's pretty ubiquitous in the US". It's not common everywhere. My personal observation (in NL) is that with the transition from cash to contactless payment it seems to be becoming less common over time. Payment terminals here are not setup to ask for a tip (with very rare exceptions) - you just pay the amount on the receipt directly.

As someone also living in NL (Amsterdam though, may be different in other parts of NL), I have to partially disagree with you. It's not at the US level yet, but, my experience is that many if not most cafes/restaurants I go to now display a "Choose your tip %" screen on the payment terminal before paying, and anecdotally it feels like this is becoming more common over time with the newer payment terminals.

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

#132

Post by NegativeLatency »

School-Cotton wrote: post #126
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.

Culture is a complex thing and probably shouldn't be anthropomorphized like this. I see no reason to believe someone came up with this cultural norm for an identifiable purpose, as opposed to it having just evolved randomly in response to various factors. Tipping seems terrible for restaurant owners since it lets waiters capture an unusually large share of the value of the product.

The actual origin would be hard to say but it took of in America for some very specific reasons https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...

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

#133

Post by dfxm12 »

CalRobert wrote: post #71

My summer as a dishwasher made it clear tipping, already deeply stupid, is wildly unfair even to service workers. A lot of people helped you get your meal, but your dishwasher is definitely not tipped.

I bussed at a place where the dishwashers made more than me. They had an hourly wage that was higher than what I got hourly + tips. Every place is different. Some do tip out the back of the house. At the end of the day, I want to get paid an honest amount. I don't know if I care where the money comes from.

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

#134

Post by ElevenLathe »

wodenokoto wrote: post #28
gryzzly wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I was called a busboy when I was working in a restaurant washing the dishes, not a dishwasher. Never heard it be used for anything but the device.

No, busboy clears tables and delivers it to the dishwasher, who cleans the items using a dishwasher.

In practice, at least in the US Midwest where my experience is, there is not always a clear line between the two jobs. I washed dishes as a busboy and bussed dishes as a dishwasher.

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

#135

Post by pessimizer »

School-Cotton wrote: post #126
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.

Culture is a complex thing and probably shouldn't be anthropomorphized like this. I see no reason to believe someone came up with this cultural norm for an identifiable purpose, as opposed to it having just evolved randomly in response to various factors. Tipping seems terrible for restaurant owners since it lets waiters capture an unusually large share of the value of the product.

But you're just making that up. It evolved almost instantly after the US Civil War as a way to employ newly released slaves without paying them. It was described as a "new idea that had just come from Europe."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/16/fac...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-jobs-history-slave-wage...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/minimum-wage-raci...

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

#136

Post by FireBeyond »

romwell wrote: post #61
jonhohle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last point is rarely discussed and incredibly unfortunate. We’re creating a lower class of citizen who must exist in the shadows, constantly fear being relocated, and can easily be exploited for labor or worse. Then somehow this is packaged as being humane in some way.

...while being simultaneously vilified for "taking our jobs" and being "dangerous" (whereas they are being very deliberately used to generate profits). You are making a solid case to issue permanent residence permits to all undocumented workers (since our economy would, at this point, collapse without them), and - most importantly - punish employers with prison time for hiring people unauthorized to work going forwar…

I always go back to the Tyson Chicken raids a few years ago to show just how broken this is.

ICE officials raided a few facilities a few years ago, and actually found about 900 undocumented workers.

Many of them gave evidence to officials, including written instructions from the company that advised them how to fill out employment, banking, taxation paperwork if they "didn't have documentation", i.e. Tyson didn't just know this was the case, they were actively enabling it.

And in press conferences, when journalists asked "Are there any plans to investigate the company or issue fines or charges?", the response? "We are not considering that at this time."

What it actually ended up looking like, with some other safety issues raised around that time is that Tyson perhaps decided their undocumented workers were getting a little too angry about poor safety standards, and making waves. It would be entirely unsurprising if Tyson made a sweetheart deal with ICE that said "Hey, if you come to these plants, you'll get to make this big stink about undocumented workers" (and remember, this was during the Trump administration), "but in return, can you leave us out of it?", shades of "Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"

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

#137

Post by JoshTriplett »

atoav wrote: post #85
throwaway199129 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes the assumption that all workers require a living wage. When I worked as a teenager and throughout college, I didn't need to make a living wage since I either lived with my parents or with roommates (admittedly funded by a combination of work and student loans). During that phase of my life, I didn't require a living wage. I just needed some extra money, and so I was willing to accept lower paying jobs that…

It doesn't matter if you require the living wage or not — there will always be people who don't strictly need it in any society. Just like there will be people on the beach who won't ever need a life guard. Everybody needing a thing is not a precondition for it making sense to exist. If we want a society without exploitation the simple fix is to lift the minimum wage beyond any value that could be considered exploita…

We could establish UBI, and then we wouldn't need a minimum wage. We could decide as a society that we want everyone to have a baseline level of support, rather than doing it indirectly (and less effectively) by forcing the nonexistence of low-paying jobs.

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

#138

Post by DowagerDave »

wichert wrote: post #109
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a combination of things, but it's similar to why online stores advertise a price, and then add charges at checkout (like shipping, or credit card charge, processing fee, etc). You entice the customer with the lower price, and once they have committed, you can hit them with another charge or fee without as much ramification. Restaurant customers can be price sensitive, so tipping is a way to advertise a lower pri…

Let me change that a bit: "it's pretty ubiquitous in the US". It's not common everywhere. My personal observation (in NL) is that with the transition from cash to contactless payment it seems to be becoming less common over time. Payment terminals here are not setup to ask for a tip (with very rare exceptions) - you just pay the amount on the receipt directly.

In North America the growth of Square has pushed things the other way; tips are front and center for the most limited of "tippable service" - starting at 18% and up from there. Tipping on fast food or something like a latte were the extra labour is already priced in is ridiculous.

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

#139

Post by DowagerDave »

nmd wrote: post #131
wichert wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me change that a bit: "it's pretty ubiquitous in the US". It's not common everywhere. My personal observation (in NL) is that with the transition from cash to contactless payment it seems to be becoming less common over time. Payment terminals here are not setup to ask for a tip (with very rare exceptions) - you just pay the amount on the receipt directly.

As someone also living in NL (Amsterdam though, may be different in other parts of NL), I have to partially disagree with you. It's not at the US level yet, but, my experience is that many if not most cafes/restaurants I go to now display a "Choose your tip %" screen on the payment terminal before paying, and anecdotally it feels like this is becoming more common over time with the newer payment terminals.

Is Square popular and/or growing? This is the biggest change I've seen in Canada and the US

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

#140

Post by Closi »

nmd wrote: post #131
wichert wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me change that a bit: "it's pretty ubiquitous in the US". It's not common everywhere. My personal observation (in NL) is that with the transition from cash to contactless payment it seems to be becoming less common over time. Payment terminals here are not setup to ask for a tip (with very rare exceptions) - you just pay the amount on the receipt directly.

As someone also living in NL (Amsterdam though, may be different in other parts of NL), I have to partially disagree with you. It's not at the US level yet, but, my experience is that many if not most cafes/restaurants I go to now display a "Choose your tip %" screen on the payment terminal before paying, and anecdotally it feels like this is becoming more common over time with the newer payment terminals.

I'm in the UK and we have this system too, although half the time the servers will just press 0% for you before they even hand over the terminal just because tipping isn't really a big cultural thing over here (at least compared to the states).
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