The joys of LinkedIn. The author [0] was captain at Eleven Madison Park [1]. I've never been there, but back when I had an expense account job, the few similar spots I'd been to in NYC were mostly old fogies quietly eating dinner with their spouses. Occasionally you'll have folks on dates amusing themselves on their iPhones.
Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, but this is not Japan, and if you are skipping or skimping on tips here in the US, chances are you're screwing over a relatively poor person. US law allows restaurants to pay waiters and waitresses well below minimum wage, under the assumption that their tips will make up the difference. But I suspect I'll not convince you.
If everybody stopped tipping, wouldn't the law change? It's sort of the same as the problem of automation: the people at the bottom get screwed for a while while the system self-corrects.
And when the system inevitably doesn't self-correct it just turns out that the people at the bottom get screwed. Nothing new there.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It worked with Uber rating drivers and riders. Care to elaborate on why this wouldn't work?
A big, obvious concern would be having a system that alerted you to drivers previously seen exhibiting bad behavior, and the social justice network taking that as an opportunity to avenge the bad behavior and inadvertently causing danger to themselves, their "adversaries" or other drivers on the road. On top of that, everybody drives poorly at some point, and for some reason. A roommate of mine wrecked his car once l…
Isn't this roughly equivalent to the concern that sometimes people give unfairly bad reviews on Yelp? Sure, it happens, but it seems like the solution isn't less data, but more. If you have 100 or 1000 data points on every driver, then it seems like it would be pretty easy to extract the people who are actually problematic versus just normal drivers.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big, obvious concern would be having a system that alerted you to drivers previously seen exhibiting bad behavior, and the social justice network taking that as an opportunity to avenge the bad behavior and inadvertently causing danger to themselves, their "adversaries" or other drivers on the road. On top of that, everybody drives poorly at some point, and for some reason. A roommate of mine wrecked his car once l…
Isn't this roughly equivalent to the concern that sometimes people give unfairly bad reviews on Yelp? Sure, it happens, but it seems like the solution isn't less data, but more. If you have 100 or 1000 data points on every driver, then it seems like it would be pretty easy to extract the people who are actually problematic versus just normal drivers.
It is very possibly an over-concern.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have often imagined a dashcam that does license plate recognition and lets you know when shitty drivers are nearby. And of course, it would have voice response so you could give nearby cars compliments and public grumbles. Presumably you'd also want it to be geosensitive and real time, so that it could say, "Hey, there's a lunatic coming up behind you." Seems like it would be easy to put together a dash stand, some…
No no no! Hopefully you guys are joking. This is another case of geeks thinking technology and public shaming will cure us all of bad human behaviour. Cynically I think you'll get funding.
Our current version of this in the US is a system where there are a much smaller number of observers (cops). Too many bad observations and you face license suspensions.
In practice, the small number of observers means that there are plenty of bad drivers who have long periods of bad behavior with no negative feedback. Basically all I'm suggesting here is increasing frequency of observation while reducing the size of the penalty from "large ticket" to "mild shame".
It's also approximately equivalent to what happens in a small community. There if you are a bad driver, word will get around and eventually get back to you. That doesn't seem like a terrible dynamic to me.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, there are two big differences. One, I'm more willing to forgive those with less privilege for errors of ignorance or misplaced reactions to trauma. Part of what privilege gets you is space to learn and to work our your issues. Two, poor people can't afford to buy much in the way of service, so their ability to mistreat other poor people is limited. The richer the person, though, the more personal service they…
No. Just no. Poor or rich, if you go out then human decency is a requirement. If you go out, have the cash for the tip. Justifying poor behavior because someone is poor or rich relieves them of personal responsibility. My family was poor for a while, and I was always taught to respect people[1]. 1) unless they became a danger or acted like fools, then protect everyone else from them
If I were justifying bad behavior, that would be a reasonable concern. Good thing I'm not.
Yes, one should always tip. But my brother, who was a waiter for many years, was very tolerant of poor people from subcultures where tipping was uncommon or mysterious. Accepting that not everybody can yet play at your level isn't justifying bad behavior.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#67It sounds to me that the author is simply not a good fit for the job.
It would appear that someone who is a graduate student in literature doesn't think that they were put on this earth to serve food to others. Hence he's just projecting his dissatisfaction with poor career choice on the people he is supposed to serve.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, but this is not Japan, and if you are skipping or skimping on tips here in the US, chances are you're screwing over a relatively poor person. US law allows restaurants to pay waiters and waitresses well below minimum wage, under the assumption that their tips will make up the difference. But I suspect I'll not convince you.
If you make less than minimum wage because you're not getting enough tips, your employer is legally supposed to pay you the difference so that you would still make the minimum. Whether places actually abide by those laws is a different story I imagine.
While this is true, waiters, particularly in higher-end establishments tend to make much more than minimum. It's small comfort that your manager has to create a floor if you're used to $15/hr and due to some bad tippers you end up at $10/hr for the night.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#69For those who love the stories of people behind the scenes, it's worth digging around in the Wayback Machine for Bitter Waitress's archives. E.g.: http://web.archive.org/web/20080917050640/http://www.bitterw... And my favorite San Francisco story in this vein is "Ice Balls": http://the-tusk.com/2015/01/09/ice-balls/
Some solid misandry here...From the article, last 2 paragraphs: >"It turns out there are a lot of upsides to being a woman. You get to hang out with women. You >don’t have to hang out with men. You don’t have to condescend to people about things like ice. >You notice other people’s reactions to you. People consider you safe enough to tell you their >problems. You get to smile at kids you don’t know. You get to hang o…
> What some people do not realise is that men wouldn't do what they do with accumulating status and wealth, if women didn't reward them with sex for it.
That's ridiculous. It's not even true. It fails to be true in many ways: There are plenty of men who accumulate status and wealth even though they'll be having exactly the same amount of sex. There are lots of women who accumulate status and wealth, and women definitely aren't rewarding them with sex. You can in fact find plenty of people pursuing status and wealth who do so at a level where it reduces the amount of sex they get. And equally there are people of both genders who get lots of sex without much in the way of status or wealth.
But worse, it's morally vacuous to the point of being creepy. It's like saying mafia hit-men are perfectly fine people because they are just responding to commercial incentives. Nope! People are responsible for the effects of their actions. Sometimes bad actions are rewarding, which is why we have morality in the first place. If bad actions were never rewarding, they wouldn't be a problem. You can't just shrug and blame "the system" for the shitty things you do. If you do shitty things, you are the one doing them and you are to blame.
Re: Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Speaking from experience, there are plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude to service staff as rich people, often times even worse. Yup. One of my brothers was a waiter for many years in a town where it was easy to tell the lower classes from the upper; it wasn't just common for him to receive no or little tip when he waited on members of the lower classes, it was the rule . In years, I…
Japan does this right: nobody tips. Customers pay the restaurant, and the restaurant pays the waiters. Tipping is one small step away from paying bribes. Don't do it. Don't encourage it. Don't accept it.
OK, but then don't eat at restaurants in the US.