Alternative headline:
“Capitalist special interest group perplexed to discover that humans generally possess the capacity for empathy.”
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I would be even more willing to pay higher rates at restaurants if said establishments agreed to pay their workers a decent wage and abolish tipping.
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The first such establishment in the US was opened in Boston in the 1760s by a Frenchman called de Julien. It was called “Julien’s Restorator,” thus giving us a nice etymological snapshot…
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Go to Dahlia Lounge in Seattle. The owner’s a nice guy, I know his mom.
Even aside from the ‘pollsters horrified to discover subjects less dreadful than they are’ factor; this seems like an odd one to be surprised by.
One effect(often outright stated to be the desired result and a good thing) of paying workers effectively nothing and forcing them to make it up in tips is that they have a strong incentive to at least emulate amicable interactions with the public; well above what you can get merely by tyrannizing your call center drones.
Plus, unlike ‘customer service’, these service workers usually deliver tasty food you don’t have to cook and also booze, rather than being there to drag you into a quagmire if you try to resolve some billing nightmare.
How could a population precisely targeted by “provides food and alcohol; livelihood depends on their rapport with you” possibly poll unsympathetically?
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Exactly! The reason the prices /appear/ low is because you have to garnish them with tips. Whether you walk out having spent $50 on food and $10 on tips, or $60 on a meal, you’ve still paid $60 to eat.
Are people really that bad at maffs, or do resteraunters just believe they’re that bad at maffs?
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Particularly odd given the “do you want the guy handling your food to be healthy or not?” consideration.
As the good Mr. Sinclair was allegedly somewhat dismayed to discover, you don’t have to give a damn about the misery of your food-servitors to care about the squalor that might get smeared on your meal during prep.
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Based on the number of techniques(across a wide variety of industries; basically all of them when you count the financial products sold alongside actual goods) for providing a low sticker price or initial interest rate with…just a few small compromises down the line…I’d be inclined to suspect that they don’t merely ‘believe’; but ‘know’.
(There’s the additional factor of giving the consumer a feeling of greater agency or control, as with placebo buttons: sure, in practice, the “not a dick” requirement is ~20%; but you aren’t squirming under the dead hand of the printed price list, man, you are choosing to incentivize the waiter according to your valued assessment of their performance. Like a boss.)
Ohh… the other NRA.
How is it a minimum wage if employers don’t have to pay it? Surely it’s just an optional wage at that point?
I would have no problem with “restauranter.” But if one is giving it a French ending, one should use the French word.
We’ve gotten to the point that if a word is pronounced incorrectly often enough and for long enough, it gets a place in the dictionary as a “variant.” I’m waiting for the dictionary debut of “nucular.”
Is there a way to tell if a particular restaurant is a member of this association, and then not eat there? I suppose you could ask them. Let’s vote with our dollars !
Surprise, language is a living construct!
Back on topic: Does “the NRA is a terrorist organization” still apply in this context?
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to be fair, just because 30% of people SAY that they wouldn’t be willing to pay more does not mean that the wouldn’t actually be willing to SPEND more when they visit a restaurant.
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Labor laws in the U.S. dictate a minimum wage for tipped employees; this way, if the employee doesn’t get any tips, they are paid at least something. I don’t recall off the top of my head if employers are required to bring it up to standard minimum wage if the tips fall short or not.
Personally, I think that there should be one minimum wage, and gratuity is just added on top of it.
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If the employee doesn’t make enough on tips to reach minimum wage, the employer is indeed required to make up the difference.
edit: I have no doubt there are no end of shenanigans available to get in the way of living up to this requirement.
I suppose having a single minimum wage for everyone is a bit too socialist for the US. People might get the idea that their jobs are no less important than anyone else’s or something…
This. I would love to go into a restaurant knowing that I can fail to tip for shitty service while knowing the employees won’t starve, while having the option to really reward great service.
Except that this might cause tip jars to show up in lots of other areas too. I would view with apprehension the arrival of tip jars for the DMV or TSA.
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