And the waiters only earn that “princely sum” in pre-tip salary because California doesn’t let restaurateurs get away with the BS of paying people sub-minimum wage (less than $3/hr currently) if they’re in jobs where tips are a thing.
That Wolfgang Puck guy is so full of it his eyes are brown. $120k? Gimme a break. Even in LA at the ritziest places, I bet it’s maaaaybe 80 to 90k with tips.
20% tip on the bill might be worth a bit of money, but I doubt you are actually serving all that many people. I bet the turn over rate of a table is very slow as well.
I don’t know if that would get you close to 120k a year.
Alstein
1911
Rich folks do tend to tip more, I’d say it’s possible they make up to 120.
RichVR
1912
At random due to particularly wealthy and generous customers? Sure. From every customer, hell no. They are not making $100,000 a year in tips.
They… They don’t. At least not consistently. In fact, I am sure there are a few studies that probably show they tip less. Probably a lot less.
Haha hahahahaha. Haha. No.
Edit: I see y’all beat me to it. Being in the industry, I can assure you that rich folk do not tip well (in general, as mentioned- you might get an occasional generous customer, though).
Mostly, I find that the best tippers are… other relatively low-paid industry folk. Who also tend to go out for food/drinks more often, at least in the Before Times. I’ve often thought that there’s a pool of money that just floats around in the restaurant system, getting tipped and tipped and tipped again, never doing any actual economic work, heh.
RichVR
1915
I feel, and I may be wrong, that the best tippers in high end restaurants are the average persons that see it as a once in a while special time. A guy taking his wife or girlfriend for a birthday or anniversary. They save up and they count on tipping well. A rich person sees it from a different angle. I come here all the time, fuck the tips.
CraigM
1916
I’d ammend this with a slight alteration.
The best tippers are people who are currently, or previously, in low paid industries especially gratuity based compensation ones.
So says the former server who is now an engineer. I will tip well. Because I remember being on the flip side of that.
That said the tip based compensation model has all kinds of perverse incentives built in, is terribly exploitative to many, and really should be abolished.
That’s what I thought originally, but I saw a Marketwatch study saying otherwise, which surprised me.
Marketwatch is pro-business, but it’s NPR so I doubt they’re too hacky.
And fully agreed on the tip model being bad.
I’ll let the correction stand with no qualifications.
Quoted for truth.
Do you mean marketwatch or marketplace?
Everyone seems to link to this article.
I feel like relying on self reporting, in this case, is flawed.
I’d been wanting to order a Qdoba burrito all week. But every time I tried in the app, it said online ordering isn’t available. I normally order ahead and then drive down to pick it up because I try to limit my lunch break to 30 minutes.
I finally bit the bullet and drove to Qdoba at lunchtime to get a burrito the old fashioned way. I asked them what was up with their app and they said ordering at their location was disabled due to inadequate staffing.
Basically every fast food joint in the Seattle area is throwing up huge “we’re hiring” signs and the pay is at least $15/hour with all sorts of benefits.
Oh, yeah, the woman also apologized that there was a small price hike in my burrito that wasn’t reflected on the menu.
Menzo
1921
I believe that the worker shortage is real - we need to get kids back in schools/camps and that hasn’t happened everywhere quite yet.
I also believe that businesses are going to use the “worker shortage” to raise their prices whether they’re actually experiencing a worker shortage or not.
Menzo
1923
Lots of business owners are totally unprepared to live in a world where they have to compete for workers. They just have no concept of what it means to not have hundreds of potential wage slaves lining up at their doors for every job opening.
Unfortunately we’ll be back to the way it was in no time, with employers, the State, and media all aligned on sending the message that employees dare not demand higher wages since they are lucky to have a job at all.
It all depends on how well the economy goes. No one has to be a hospitality worker if there are other good paying jobs available.
This is interesting, 97% of black workers don’t want to return to the office fulltime. Much higher than the 79% for white workers.
as a corollary, there’s also this:
I can say that a lot of bullied kids have also thrived with online learning due to feeling safer.
[IMO, Presidents get too much credit or blame for the state of the economy, but mildly interesting nonetheless.]
RePuBlIcAnS aRe BeTtEr FoR tHe EcOnOmY
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-02/trump-s-gdp-growth-was-the-worst-since-the-great-depression
(Link not rendering)
GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover
The pandemic was partly to blame, and there are some measures that make his record look better. But it was not a stellar performance.
This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance. There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results may be felt long after he’s left Washington. Still, it’s a widely used metric and Trump was downright obsessed with it, so here goes.
The writer makes different adjustments (to account e.g. population growth) but here’s the straight numbers (NB: Carter and Reagan. lol. The aggrandizement of Reagan really (did) warp perceptions of him; in other news, Earth is round.)
