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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)

#171

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #72
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 thought that tipping is mainly to enable the restaurant owner to avoid paying their workers properly.

It's a cultural norm that would persist (and does) regardless of whether or not there is a genuine purpose to it. That some restaurant owners use it to avoid paying workers doesn't mean that's "its" purpose. Others use it to supplement revenue (like when Starbucks and Uber and those places just keep the tips for corporate). If it has any purpose at all, it's a social signaling protocol to say "I am a good person" that servers use guilt to amplify as much as possible.

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

#172

Post by verall »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #128
verall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Because they are afraid of being homeless?

Most landlords don't accept partial rent if your salary isn't earning you enough.

I'm not sure what your point is - most people will go extreme distances to avoid becoming homeless:

- commuting from a lower cost area >60m away

- using food banks or not paying less critical bills (like utilities you usually have a few months before they start shutting things off)

- begging or selling themselves on the internet

- negotiating with their landlord who is often happy to have less money than an onerous eviction

None of these are positive things - they all have nasty negative externalities. Jobs that give money but not enough at all to live on leave desperate people in a terrible limbo.

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

#173

Post by Der_Einzige »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #72
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 thought that tipping is mainly to enable the restaurant owner to avoid paying their workers properly.

Only in red states. Blue states don’t garnish a minimum wage for tips.

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

#174

Post by fckgw »

b3ing wrote: post #78
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #29

I wash dishes by hand as we've got a small kitchen, but one thing I've noticed is that dishwasher machines leave a unique taste/smell that can be noticed when drinking water from washed glasses. It's so much nicer to use a glass that's been hand-washed.

Maybe they used those pods or the no streak additive. I use the dishwasher for glasses most of the time and haven't noticed any difference, but all i use is the cheapest powder/gel and only half of what fills up that little slot.

Industrial dishwashers, which can clean plates and silverware in 90 seconds, do not use detergent pods.

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

#175

Post by Cthulhu_ »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #89
Y-bar wrote: post #23

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. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Also, I have an employee Al who lives with his parents, so he doesn't need to pay anything for housing. Bob is single but has to pay for his own apartment. Carol is a single mom of 4 who needs to pay for her housing and everything for her kids. So should I pay Carol the most, Bob the 2nd most, and then Al the least, even though they're all doing t…

Because any job is better than no job; if nobody will hire you for whatever reason, your standards for income will drop until someone does.

That said, in my country (Netherlands), a lot of service industry jobs (waiting, dishwashing, store restocking, etc) are jobs that people have temporarily or part-time during their studies. But it's a crooked comparison as tipping culture is still very much optional over here and staff gets paid more.

As for your update, in a free capitalist economy, no, you don't need to pay Carol more than the others, you pay her a fair wage according to laws, hours paid, etc; if that is not enough for her to cover the cost of living + raising kids, the government needs to compensate. As an employer you can support her private life by offering flexible hours, of course.

That said, in an idealized, socialist country, people can choose whether they work or stay home raising a family, and nobody has to work to make ends meet. Unfortunately, this is often not compatible with capitalism or government policies / expenditure.

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

#176

Post by lubujackson »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #89
Y-bar wrote: post #23

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. Edit: Check out https://livingwage.mit.edu/ for examples based on real-world data.

Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Also, I have an employee Al who lives with his parents, so he doesn't need to pay anything for housing. Bob is single but has to pay for his own apartment. Carol is a single mom of 4 who needs to pay for her housing and everything for her kids. So should I pay Carol the most, Bob the 2nd most, and then Al the least, even though they're all doing t…

In theory, that's where govt subsidies come in.

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

#177

Post by rangerelf »

School-Cotton wrote: post #130
wiradikusuma wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people in the US tip flight attendants who serve them meal?

Tipping flight attendants happens often enough that it wouldn't be considered bizarre, especially in business/first class. But it's not the norm, no.

This comment made me gag.

"Tipping culture" has definitely gone too far.

What about the pilot and other members at front? Do the tipped flight attendants kick some bucks over to them?

It definitely feels like an abdication of responsibility (and obligations) of the company that those people work for.

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

#178

Post by Cthulhu_ »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #128
verall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone take the job then, if it didn't provide those things? Because they are afraid of being homeless?

Most landlords don't accept partial rent if your salary isn't earning you enough.

Landlords are part of the problem though; due to landlords, property managers, investors, etc, the cost of housing / rent / owning a house has gone up, meaning that a job that would get you a decent apartment 20, 30 years ago is no longer enough.

I'll accept that inflation is a fact of modern economies, but rent and the cost of housing has gone up faster than inflation, and income has not kept pace with inflation: the US minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009, while inflation never stopped. And minimum wage itself as it is today is broken; on the one side, it seems to be more of a suggestion anyway, given that the service industry does not need to conform to it (because the assumption is that wage is stipended by tips).

And the other thing to consider is that if an employer pays you minimum wage, they would pay you less if they were legally allowed to.

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

#179

Post by wolpoli »

Gormo wrote: post #100
Larrikin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you tip the mortgage specialist at the bank that prepared the mortgage for you?

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

#180

Post by rangerelf »

pessimizer wrote: post #135
School-Cotton wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I bet that if this bit of history was more widely exposed, "tipping culture" would be exposed as the degrading practice that it actually is.
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