Maybe its just me, but when I get messaging like this, I listen to it.
Like when servers or waitstaff got all up in their own shit and started saying stuff like “If you can’t afford to tip or don’t want to, then don’t bother eating out” or something along those lines of general sentiment.
So I did. I stopped going to those miserable, mid priced, microwave food prepping purveyors of disappointment. And I couldn’t be happier. Instead I take that $60 or $80 dollars that the wife and I would have used and make some awesome and never disappointing meals at home.
So sure. I can do the same thing with fast food. Given that our typical order at Mcdonalds or where ever usually comes to about $25 bucks. You know what kind of mac daddy motherfucking burgers I can make with 25 bucks worth of ingredients?
I’ll tell you- The kind you will NEVER get from people complaining about their wages.
The “value” from fast food is very very easily arguably more from the “fast” than it is from the “food” part. What you’re mostly paying for is the ability to eat without having to put in effort or go to the store.
It feels argumentative of me to say this, but you don’t genuinely believe the only people in this country that complain about their wages are minimum wage esque workers, right?
I don’t really take it argumentatively.
The majority of complaint I’ve ever hears about wages have come from organized labor unions trying to grab another sector. Thats mainly where the big push has come from in the food industry.
On the floor or basically anywhere else, I’ve very seldom heard much complaint about what someone was making in any real way. On a sub-zero morning welding on a river where ice forms on your face every time the wind blows, sure, you’re going to get some “I don’t get paid enough for this shit”, but even a fast food worker knows going in that they are going start at starting wage (minimum) and not go too far from there.
No, they can be white and speak less than perfect English. Or they can be whatever from wherever and speak perfect English like someone who isn’t American. Not that I’m saying that immigrants don’t wait tables at all in the US. Obviously they probably do, in some cities it may be more common than others. My point isn’t that immigrants don’t do these jobs but that Americans do indeed do these lower paying jobs in large numbers.
There are few things that are more perverse in the world for a non-American than the tipping culture in the US. Why are you expected to fork out such a large percentage of the amount listed in the menu? What’s the point of the menu then? A rough yard stick measurement? Multiply this number by 1,2 to find out how much you’ll pay in the end? Why is it called a “tip” if it’s basically socially conditioned as mandatory?
And if they could make a 3/4 lb. pizza burger with 3 cheeses, and a nice tomato/basil (I use newman own, I’m a cheater) and top it with crispy pepperoni on a bakery fresh bun- for less than the price of a big mac- They wouldn’t be complaining about their wages.
But they don’t. They assemble food parts from a bin.
I dunno. I do 20% unless the order is less than $20 (pizza and stuff). Then I just do a five.
On the other hand, if the food is messed up and/or the service isn’t worth tipping for, that place is done and will never get another penny.
I think the tip thing has gotten kind of crazy too. It used to be that everybody knows that waitresses don’t make a good hourly wage, so you sweeten it up a little bit for them.
Now it seems like that table has turned where if you don’t tip, you’re an asshole and the workers now have the right to mess with your food and give crappy service.
Personal opinion- Most food service workers have never worked in a quantifiable results oriented field, and simply assume that everything they’re doing is great and entitles them to invite themselves to your paycheck.
Do Europeans have a different minimum wage for waiters? In the US minimum wage is $7.25 for normal jobs and $2.13/hr for tip jobs.
I was just eating lunch with a German auditor yesterday. The bill came to $40 and the waitress was kind of flighty and mean and screwed up his order and was nasty about it.
So he tipped her $2 and then asked for another refill on his “coke szeerow”. She brought it back clearly pissed and he goes to take a sip.
“Don’t drink that! I’ll buy you a six pack of diet coke at a convenience store on the way back to the office.”
“Why”
“Trust me.”
Dad always tought me to treat service people really well and to always use my best manners and be classy when asking for corrections. Then, if the service sucks, reduce the tip and don’t come back. When I asked why as a kid he explained that working service jobs and dealing with the public all day really sucks. Plus they might spit in your food or worse if you’re a jerk about it.
I have never not tipped. We had a waitress disappear on us and forget about us for 30 minutes. I got up to look around and found her playing beer pong with a group of dudes in the other dining room. They had to remake our cold ass food. I tipped a penny. My buddy put a brownie face where the tip goes.
It’s very commonplace in the corporate world as well.
I think the general argument is that the minimum wage is too low to live on, and the purpose of the minimum wage was supposed to scale with inflation, yet doesn’t. Not that they shouldn’t be making the minimum themselves (although that’s obviously a large part of it), but that the minimum should just be higher.
I just don’t know of or can’t pinpoint the period prior to the SEIU trying to break into food service that minimum wage was supposed to be a living wage. It may be a failure of memory, or simple ignorance, but I’ve never heard a word about that in my life prior to that.
Maybe its a “times are changing” thing, but minimum wage jobs, to my knowledge (never had one) were for high school students, retirees that wanted to keep busy, the disabled, etc.
What does “minimum wage” mean to you in a literal sense?
It’s been around for years now. Every time someone swings through fast food on their 9-5 workday, ran to Walmart for milk, eat at any restaurant that serves alcohol, they’re supporting industries that pay minimum wage yet are reliant on non disabed retired high school students to staff their business.
I think you’re right in a lot of ways, but here I think based on my personal experience (I know, I know, N=1) many times that is not the case.
I do agree the tables have turned a bit, but the flip side of that is:
real wages haven’t risen proportionately to keep up with inflation in a couple decades so tips are arguably more important now than before and
one thing people forget a lot is your tip doesn’t just pay for that slammed busy night, it helps even the wages out for all the nights that waitress or bartender sits there earning $2/hr with no customers, well below the minimum wage line. In other words for every night where the waitress makes bank due to tips there are 2 or 3 other nights where she’s way below $7.50/hr with no uptick in hourly pay. Same thing with bartenders. Wage fluctuation is staggering.
I do agree a lot of people think they’re doing “great” until told otherwise, but speaking from my prior years of experience bar tending and then managing bars that’s a problem the management has to address–I made it crystal clear we would accept nothing but hustle and --surprise! – we got hustle haha.
Not souch a wholesale disagreement but some thoughts many people don’t consider
Oh my God yes. At least in a lot of places (flashbacks occurring lol). We would never have accepted anyone messing with drinks or food–that was an instant firing offense with the possibility of legal action and they knew it.
I have not tipped exactly once, and one that occasion the service was so bad I talked to the manager and the waiter was fired. I make sure to tip because days at $2.15/hr suck ass and all the flash cash from Saturdays rarely made up for those shifts
