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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)

#381

Post by CrazyStat »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #365
CrazyStat wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A less than fun example of this is that the organized labor holiday "May Day" is celebrated in many countries notably excluding the US. Because the US already had Labor Day in September, which predates the May 1 celebration.

That's quite a simplification. Labor day didn't become a holiday until after the May Day vs Labor Day debate started. It started as a concept in 1882 but it was not yet celebrated in any significant capacity and most unions pushed to change the day to May day after the Haymarket massacre in 1886. The first state to make it a holiday (Oregon) didn't do so until a year after the debate was already ongoing and it wouldn…

Let's see, where to start.

> Specifically the federal government pushed for Labor day over May day and chose to commemorate the one and not the other with a federal holiday because of fears that memorialising the Haymarket massacre would further empower the labor movement which was at its peak in the US at the time.

It's absolutely absurd to argue that the labor movement was at its peak in the US in the 1890s. This was the era of the Pullman strike--which the government infamously ended by force--and the Sherman Antitrust Act being used against unions under the theory that they were an illegal monopoly on labor. Labor in the US probably reached its peak after WWII. The 1890s were extremely business friendly.

September Labor day preceded May day in both concept (1882 vs 1886) and legal observance. As you noted, the US made September labor day a public holiday in 1894. If you are aware of any country that made May day a public holiday before that time please tell me; I haven't done an exhaustive search, but here's a sampling of when European countries started observing May 1 as a public holiday:

Austria: 1919

France: 1919

Germany: 1933

Russia: 1917

Spain: 1931

Sweden: 1938

UK: 1978

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

#382

Post by pbhjpbhj »

samstave wrote: post #285
khrbrt wrote: post #201

This as good a place as any to mention one of my favorite authors, Dishwasher Pete[0], who wrote a zine about dishwashing and dishwashers[1], and a memoir about his quest to wash dishes in all 50 states[2]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete 1: https://archive.org/details/dishwasher7 2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827458.Dishwasher

When I was a teenager and I had just got heavily into martial arts - my Professor was teaching us about perception. (1992) One of the examples he used, was to ask us "Who is the most important people in a restaurant?" > "The dishwasher, and the Janitor" >>" Do you think you'll go to a restaurant again if its bathrooms are filthy and your dishes are dirty?" His point was that you have to look beyond whats in front of…

I think if you're asking "Who are the most important people in a restaurant?" then you're already on the wrong path.

The janitor and dishwasher are vital, but so too are most of the roles. It's a collective effort. Which of the legs of a chair is most important? Silly question imo.

Which person is least important, usually the one that makes the most money. Their capital is important, but with a more distributed wealth in society the workers would be able to own the restaurant without an overlord.

I'm really interested in the idea of flat wage structures. The cleaner is possibly one of the lowest paid people at my office, but they give up just as much time to be there for an hour as the CEO does.

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

#383

Post by booleandilemma »

QuantumGood wrote: post #266
nehal3m wrote: post #66

I was a dishy for years in a few different restaurants and hotels. It's hard work but if you do your best to help out the kitchen and wait staff wherever you can (picking up ingredients, helping mise en place, fetching dish carts yourself, stocking bar) then you can really make a difference in the day to day. Sometimes I miss the camaraderie. It's an easy industry to get stuck in though, and there's usually a lot of…

I washed dishes in a downtown tower with four restaurants, all sharing one kitchen. The output of the dishwasher took four people, mostly because delivering the dishes across the huge kitchen distances was time consuming. I had a lot of generalized anxiety, and so I liked complex physical challenges. I eventually replaced all four dishwashers. Took a lot of intense speed and strategic dish delivery. I came very close…

Did you feel guilty about the other 4 guys losing their jobs?

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

#384

Post by dataviz1000 »

I'm a little late to conversation.

As a chef for 17 years, here is the advice I was given when I asked someone at age 16 what I should do to become a chef. He said I should get a job as a dishwasher. His reasoning is I needed to learn to appreciate and respect the restaurant's dishwasher because, in his words, 'when shit hits the fan and everything goes wrong, it is the dishwasher who will save your ass.'

At 17, I walked into one of the best restaurants in the California and told them I was looking for a job as a dishwasher and why. I was very lucky because it lead to working in the best restaurants in the world. It took another 5 years, age 22, before I learned the power of telling an employee out loud I can't succeed without them. They didn't even want a raise, they only wanted me to say those words.

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

#385

Post by achillesheels »

viccis wrote: post #242
bko wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the give-away that the union wasn't beneficial is that you were forced to join. If there is value add to parties, it would have to be voluntary. For instance, in financial industry, there is a certified financial analyst (CFA) designation that some choose to get. Employers normally pay those with a CFA higher wages and people sign up to get this certification and pay dues, all without anyone being forced…

All effective unions are mandatory. They represent the interests of the mass of workers there, and they wield that collective power against two groups who would be happy to take food out of their mouths if they could get away with it: their employer and new employees who need a job enough that they are willing to work for less money or worse conditions. So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a u…

The Teachers Unions of America add value? I mean this respectively: are you a Democrat shill?

How on Earth can you generalize that? Look at the kids math literacy and obesity in CA. How is this bringing value to the team?

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

#386

Post by dweinus »

viccis wrote: post #242
bko wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the give-away that the union wasn't beneficial is that you were forced to join. If there is value add to parties, it would have to be voluntary. For instance, in financial industry, there is a certified financial analyst (CFA) designation that some choose to get. Employers normally pay those with a CFA higher wages and people sign up to get this certification and pay dues, all without anyone being forced…

All effective unions are mandatory. They represent the interests of the mass of workers there, and they wield that collective power against two groups who would be happy to take food out of their mouths if they could get away with it: their employer and new employees who need a job enough that they are willing to work for less money or worse conditions. So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a u…

I'm not anti-union at all, but I do think there is a very common experience that sours people against them early in their career: that of a mandatory union that docks your already meager pay without any obvious benefits. It of course overlooks the things you enjoy as an employee that the union won and fights to retain (breaks, safety standards, etc). I think anyone who wants unions to succeed needs to think about solving that problem, because unions only succeed on collective action.

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

#387

Post by Iulioh »

Animats wrote: post #361
93po wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a very high cost of living country (Switzerland) this would be good economics if you trained your staff to put stuff in front of it as part of its workflow. I think this would work best if the robot was typically had an empty queue and you could just clear a table and place it directly in front of the robot and walk away. There's lots of brief moments of downtime in a restaurant to do stuff like shuffle a…

This is just the first version of the technology. It could get much cheaper if manufactured in volume, and it can get faster as well. Rule of thumb is that 10x the volume cuts the price by half.

I don't really think that this is really possible.

Robots like this are pretty common in the industry (like the mechanical industry) and one costs around 50k and we already produce them at scale.

How much can they lease it for, in your opinion?

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

#388

Post by bumby »

astrange wrote: post #378
bumby wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't clear, my point was that it allows employers to arbitrarily lower their wage rate where the business is viable. Example: -Employee needs $15/hour to 'afford life'. -Business is only profit-positive if it pays $12/hour or less -Assuming the employee will only accept a job if it allows them to 'afford life', as long as the government subsidizes the equivalent of $3/hour, business is able to turn a profit.…

> my point was that it allows employers to arbitrarily lower their wage rate where the business is viable. But it doesn't do that, in fact it requires the employers to raise their wages. Your model has a single employer (a monopsony) who doesn't need to negotiate. That's a case where minimum wages cause both wages and employment to rise. > This was laughably on display a few years back when McDonald's received blowba…

>But it doesn't do that, in fact it requires the employers to raise their wages.

Is there evidence to this claim? Even the most recent UBI studies seem to run contrary to this point.

This otherwise borders on a bad-faith post. Yes, McDonalds corporation is different than a franchise, but the profits of the former are obviously tightly coupled to the operations of the latter.

And it’s not a left/right political argument on whether welfare is “bad”. That’s an overly simplistic perspective. It’s about how a particular system is structured and whether that leads to desirable outcomes for society as a whole.

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

#389

Post by Gormo »

wolpoli wrote: post #179
Gormo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No -- it's also not customary to tip people who get a commission from your purchase.

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

#390

Post by tick_tock_tick »

Y-bar wrote: post #23
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…

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.

What if a person isn't capable or willing to do work that justifies such a wage?

I'd rather see the answer on the other end closer to a UBI then making basic jobs uneconomical by making a "minimum wage" higher then the value of the labor.

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