• ChunkMcHorkle
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    2 days ago

    If I owned a restaurant and had a repeat customer tip like shit to a known good worker, I’d loudly berate that customer in front of everybody and then ban them.

    Or – and this is just a thought – you could save the self-entitled screeching and just fucking PAY YOUR SERVERS A LIVING WAGE.

    I know this is mind-blowing, but if you own a restaurant, you don’t have to wait for any law to change. You could just do what’s right today.

    If you need a law to force you into paying workers a living wage, the non-tipping customer isn’t the wrongdoer you should be screaming at.

    The only thing worse than shitty, entitled customers shitting on retail workers is spineless managers bending over for whatever the shitty customers demand.

    They’re just embittered and fighting over the scraps you left them, not realizing they are both victims of you not paying your servers a living wage in a society that routinely authorizes the same behaviors.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      2 days ago

      I averaged $35 an hour at my restaurant in tips alone (they paid me $13 an hour to run the whole place including serving back in 2001). They could not afford me. A good server will never work that job again if they got your deal. Then you’d bitch moan and complain about bad service.

      • ChunkMcHorkle
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        1 day ago

        So fuck everyone who serves at a Denny’s or a Waffle House. You can only say that because you personally were working at an establishment where you could average $35 an hour.

        Your comment is an argument for all other servers everywhere to work at subsistence levels because you personally are in a situation where you can do well on $2.13 an hour plus tips. You’d keep everyone else at less than half that so you personally prosper, and you applaud the tipping system, born of racism and slavery, that supports it.

        This is so “Fuck you I got mine” energy when someone else making a living wage doesn’t need to hurt you at all. Just because someone else makes a living wage doing the same job does not, in itself, outlaw tipping. Nor does it bind your employer to paying the lowest living wage: your employer can still pay you above the lowest level. They don’t need a law for that.

        And I would remind you, it’s NOT my deal. It’s the owner’s deal. If they can’t afford you, work somewhere else, just as you said.

        For myself, I do not ever moan about bad service, nor have I ever left a shitty tip: if service is that bad I assume it’s because bad or absent management doesn’t know how to run a restaurant. I don’t complain, I just don’t return.

    • MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      It’s not realistic to be able to compete in an already ruthless, tight margin industry like that while also handicapping yourself in that way if nobody else is. How can you get customers to choose your business when your prices are so much higher on the menu to account for paying 10x higher wages? How do you attract good staff to work for you if their pay is capped like that? How do you stop people from calling out on busy nights like Fridays and Saturdays because they’d be making a Tuesday wage for the extra work or double that if they work somewhere else? People are generally speaking pretty dumb, so they’ll see that my burger is $18 across the street from an identical $15 burger, not understand that tipping 20% raises that $15 cost to $18, and call me a cheap bastard for charging so much more for nothing.

      New small business restaurants are already notorious for shutting down within a year or two of opening. The only ways to achieve this are with a massive starting capital to be able to withstand operating at a loss for years while proving reputation to both customers and workers, or bigger established brands doing it first to normalize it, or by raising tipped minimum wages higher legally so that every company is moving in that direction together. Or (my preference) by banning the tipped minimum wage from being separate from minimum wage in the first place.

      The whole function of a business in this system is to make money. It’s not sensible to intentionally choose to make less money. So long as we latch onto capitalism as a system, companies will largely only do the bare minimum as required by regulations in order to keep costs as low as possible while maintaining competitive pricing. The only companies that can afford to do things differently are privately owned companies that have already established themselves as major successes and can afford to buy some extra good will at the cost of growth or even a little financial loss. I don’t like it any more than you do, but this is what we’ve got until the people demand more or a different system entirely. Maybe when the boomers all fuck off and die. Who knows.

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        2 days ago

        WhY dOnT yOu JuSt ChArGe ThE cOrReCt PrIcE?!

        Says cave dweller who can’t comprehend that human psychology drives the herd and that means: yes non tipping sit down restaurants will fail and yes, i have to raise prices just to run a sale to make money because people are fucking dumb as shit.