“Why are you taking all our food to one guy?”
“He keeps overpaying and I feel guilty!”
“I just can’t figure out how you got three hundred egg rolls in that basket. Wait, duck sauce comes in gallons?”
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Are you serious? A “convenience” that I barely “deserve”? It’s called commerce… you know, exchanging money for goods and services? It makes the world go 'round. And I’m supposed to be wracked with guilt for engaging in a basic commercial transaction?
I support labor reform probably as much as most of the people here, but I’m not going to prop up a broken system by indulging what is basically institutionalized pan-handling.
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Ah, one of those idealists whose principled stance just happens to coincide with the path of greatest personal convenience. Kind of like those people who think that staying home on election day makes them Patrick Freakin’ Henry because they aren’t “legitimizing a rigged system.”
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“The food here is awful!”
“And the portions are so small!”
/borscht_belt
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It’s funny but it’s also true. If I’m paying $28 for a hunk of shit it had better be a BIG hunk of shit. 
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Well, there aren’t many +100-year-old jokes that still get a laugh. Those that do generally reflect some kind of universal truth. I’m pretty sure this joke is translated from the original Yiddish and arrived in the summer resorts of upstate New York via Renaissance Europe. Although who knows? Maybe they were telling this joke in Aleppo 1500 years ago.
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[> The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950, according to data from Bloomberg. Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950.][1]
Square the circle by having the CEO’s and their ilk capture a reasonable portion of the company earnings instead of this netting this obscene imbalance. (btw- the 50’s are the Golden Age in many a conservative’s business man’s mind. Logic ends where unfettered greed begins.)
(edit: source of quote)
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio_n_3184623.html
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I certainly don’t remember skewing it as “barely”. Flat out, it’s a convenience. People performing the additional service of cooking the food they sell you.
edit: Oh, and if it’s a restaurant, providing plates and utensils if needed and cleaning up after you leave.
Yes, but the price of the food reflects the cost of preparing, cooking and serving it (including wages for the people doing this, the most important part), plus a profit for the restaurant owner. Or should do.
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I know that. I’m simply explaining why it’s a convenience. It’s a service. Restauranteurs do it for the profit, not because it’s a social program or government mandate. If every restaurant quit doing what they do today, you’d have to cook your own damn food. That’s why they call it the Service Industry and not the Servant Industry…
…although some restauranteurs would prefer the Slave Industry (meaning the guy I used to work for who held back wages on the under-the-table immigrants he employed, which is why I quit - though I’m not an immigrant).
I wonder how the teachers of Ontario feel about how cheap Glass, Lewis and Co are, after all, the Ontario Teachers Federation owns them, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Lewis. @glasslewis
I should also point out the analysts there get paid into the low six figures and they manage 15 trillion dollars.
This company had the nerve to wag its finger at some poor, low ranked worker, then the MilkTruck NYC @milktrucknyc was so sniveling and spineless that it fired the kid and then apologized for him!?!?!
Screw Glass, Lewis & Co, and screw the spineless Milk Truck NYC ! I hope your execs get cancer of the eyeball and all get into a car accident which throws them from the car into 30 sheets of glass before they land in a pool of boiling oil.
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Yes, it’s hard to find a job these days. The point still stands that if you can’t handle your ability to pay your bills depending on a loose social convention/the kindness of strangers you need to find a way to move on. There aren’t many people out there who are going to do it for you.
And for every example I put forth, you will come up with another way to say “But, but, but it’s hard!” To which I’d respond “What gave you the idea it wouldn’t be?”. How do you distinguish yourself? However the fuck you can. It’s all about who you know? Then start shaking hands and get to know some people. If people in low wage jobs understand this, but don’t find a way to act on it, there ain’t much else I can do for them. Low wage jobs are low wage because anybody off the street is capable of doing them. You’re never going to be able to command a high price for your ability to write things down, and carry food. We can lobby for changes all we want, but no one is going to make a decent living off of waiting tables, ever. The best thing that could happen for servers would be the striking of laws that allow their wages to be lower than minimum wage because they receive tips. This would put them that much closer to being treated like real employees who are able to directly negotiate their wages with their employers, can negotiate for benefits, decent and reliable shifts, etc, etc.
I can and do gladly toss in my 20% on top of the bill, but I don’t respond well to ultimatums. Nor do I respond well to the reasoning that my kindness is mandatory because the people on the receiving end “need” the money. Everybody doesn’t make enough money, Everybody has bills to pay and a family to feed. It’s not my fault you have a shitty job, it might not be completely your fault either, but it certainly ain’t mine. I have no problem with extending a helping hand, but don’t treat my helping hand as though you’re entitled to it, and don’t pretend that the job you’re doing isn’t relatively simple, and easily done by very nearly anyone else.
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I got empathy to spare. What I don’t have is patience for ultimatums placed upon my kindness. I’m a solid 20%er when it comes to tips. I know the score, I understand the system. I tip because I am kind, not because you are entitled to my kindness. I also understand that the job I’m paying that 20% for is a low skill position. You want to make more money? You don’t want to have to worry on whether you’ll get stiffed by this or that table? Learn to do something that people are willing to pay more for.
That isn’t always an easy task, but one should not expect it to be. It’s true that there are extenuating circumstances that can block upward mobility, but for every server whose having a hard time keeping the lights on there’s a also a migrant worker who lives in their car. And for every migrant worker, there’s a kid in India who lives of off what he finds in the landfill. That migrant worker and kid are making far less than $2-$4 an hour plus tips, and working harder than you’d be willing to do for the same amount of money.
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It’s not a convenience, as already stated it’s commerce. Is anything that I could conceivably do myself, but pay someone else to do a convenience? When was the last time you slaughtered your own chickens for dinner? Oh, never? Well then, paying the butcher is just a convenience.
Which honestly, I actually agree with. But it’s totally irrelevant. Even if it is simply a convenience, I’m still paying for it, and someone is still taking my money for it so it’s commerce.
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And I love how anyone who doesn’t immediately jump on the pity wagon, or has the audacity to question the wisdom of why tipping servers is mandatory but other low wage (and often higher skill) jobs are not tipped is labeled cheap!
It is possible to be generous, and recognize that a system is broken.
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I don’t remember ever saying it was not commerce. I merely stated it was a convenience.
[quote=“Mike_Hanrahan, post:175, topic:5743”] Is anything that I could conceivably do myself, but pay someone else to do a convenience?.
[/quote]
According to 2a, it is:
…which is what I was contrasting to this next word, shown here, defined in #3:
You’re displaying an odd understanding of the nature of food service and a tipping relationship with a server. Nobody has even tried to counter your argument that food service is unskilled labor, since that’s completely beside the point. People who can walk around, carry things, give and receive oral and written instruction, and can bear to get along reasonably well with the general public can work as waitrons. As you keep stressing, it requires no special training or expensive education or inborn talent or anything. But it’s not always a particularly easy job, nonetheless. One spends nearly all of one’s shift on one’s feet. One has to balance multiple plates full of food. One has to remember who gets what. One frequently needs to deal with demanding (and sometimes unreasonable and occasionally downright sociopathic) customers with the same outward cheer and grace with which one deals with one’s favorite customers. It’s a frequently backbreaking, exhausting, and occasionally humiliating job. Sure, nearly anyone can do it. Not quite as many people can stand to do it for very long.
And as a customer, one’s server is one’s primary interface with the establishment. The server seats you, makes you feel comfortable and welcome, sometimes offers recommendations, and puts a face on the eating-out experience that is hopefully more pleasant than punching buttons at an Automat. The server brings refills, offers dessert, checks the status of one’s enjoyment, and is there to make adjustments and fix mistakes, if any. The way I look at it, the restaurant provides me with a sheltered place to sit and food for me to eat. The server provides me… service. And so I pay my check for the food and add my tip for the service. If it’s noticeably superior service, I’ll tip above my customary 20%. If the service is lackluster, I won’t come back, and if it’s actively bad, I’ll say something. But if someone is bringing me my food and making at least a half-assed effort to help me enjoy it, I’ll tip well.
Of course I get that restaurants are crooked for paying their tipped employees less, and that they’re abusing their employees as well as the trust of their customers (many of whom still do not know that tipped employees can legally be paid less than minimum wage in many states). And that needs to change.
But if it ever does change, whether or not it results in the abolition of legal tipping, I’m still gonna tip. I like superior service and a friendly attitude, and I’m happy to pay a bit extra for it. The server’s job satisfaction is an issue between the server and the restaurant, and not really any of my concern. But the server’s interaction with me is definitely important to me, as I’m perfectly aware through firsthand experience of the difference between putting on a reasonably pleasant face while performing the bare minimum of service to the customers, and putting in the effort and attitude to really make a customer feel happy and welcome. I will reward the latter, since I’m not about to rely upon the restaurant itself to do so.
Therein lies much of the difference between, say, busboys, dishwashers, and servers. Dishwashers are given dirty dishes, and they have to make them clean. There isn’t a hell of a lot of a “personal touch” they can bring to the job: either the dishes are clean or they’re not. Cooks, on the other hand, should be rewarded for their excellent work, and I’ve gone out of my way to do that on occasion. And I’ve also tipped gardeners, automotive mechanics (rarely, since so many I’ve met seem to be dishonest that I do 95% of my own service), even a plumber once. I like being able to reward someone who goes a bit above and beyond. But as for the expectedness of food-service tips, well, it doesn’t bother me overmuch. I’ve never stiffed or undertipped anyone, so I’ve never had anyone complain about receiving a tip they thought was too small. But if I ever did, I expect I’d be a tad offended too about someone’s sense of entitlement. And yet in my 43 years of life, it hasn’t happened to me yet.
And yet I still don’t have a problem with the food truck dude who called out the cheap Glass, Lewis employees. If I were one of the cheapskates, I’d be mortified for being called out about it, but I would also strongly suspect I had it coming. $170 in orders with nothing at all going into the tip jar is arrant cheapskatery, and if I’m gonna save my nickels thus and someone calls me out on it, I’m gonna swallow my outrage and take the reputation hit, since I damn well earned it.
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I love how everyone automatically assumes that glass lewis and co phoned up the guys boss and ranted and screamed. For all we know it could have just been a phone call to say “Uh, sorry, we didn’t realise tipping was appropriate here, we’ll be sure to do it from now on, but by the way one of your employees is posting unprofessional stuff on twitter, you might want to have a word”.
Which is what he did. You do NOT badmouth customers AND NAME THEM and expect not to be disciplined. We don’t know if this was his first offence, we don’t know if he had a habit of insulting valuable clients, we don’t know if he was just a shitty employee and this was the final straw.
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And definitely tip at this kind of food truck, where the folks working there are putting care and effort into preparing your lunch, but are probably still making minimum wage if that. It’s an “artisanal” food truck offering elaborate, hand-crafted grilled cheese sandwiches with multiple expensive cheeses, meat & grilled onions and hand-prepared condiments. A lot of work goes into making this food, and it’s presented and sold as a product of thoughtful sourcing and preparation.
I noticed, too, that the prices for the sandwiches are rather low ($6.50-7.50), especially considering the nature and prep of the food, and that we’re talking Manhattan. Add to that, that it’s rude and disrespectful to fail to tip the people who’ve just carefully prepared your meal. Finally, GlassLewis is the type of company that regularly drops $30, the equivalent of a fat tip on this order, 10, 20 or 30 times over for business dinners, which are tax-deductible anyway.
The whole incident’s pretty distasteful. (Yeah, I said it.) Everyone behaved pretty poorly. Including the worker, who should recognize the unhappy fact that rich folks frequently tip abominably or not at all, and reward them with the traditional artisanal loogie and a big shit-eating (or shit-lacing) grin the next time they show up to hog the line, make the other customers wait, then waltz off like the stingy little graceless bastards they are.
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If they’re ripping you off, they’re probably ripping off their staff as well. I try to avoid such places.
