It's a shame that the comments here are laser focused on the tipping parts of the article, and not the bigger picture items. The author outlines the struggles of getting service jobs filled in high CoL areas, the vicious cycle of turnover in these jobs, and all the commenters here want to discuss is the 2 paragraphs on tipping.
Is it the only aspect of the article that most on this site can relate with? I take it most have not worked service industry or it was a very long time ago.
I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people.
What's always disappointing to me is how for many the first instinct is "lazy young people" while often times the exact same people espouse "the free market". It seems to me that often times the same people really only care about low taxes for themselves and making away with regulations that annoy them, rather than truly embracing the mechanism and tradeoffs that come with a free market and for sure don't understand the circumstances needed to make the market effective to work towards a given goal.
Besides the author’s v points about the poor working conditions, I was struck by the points about transit costs. I am curious how much of the current labor situation in the US can be explained by the combination of 1) geographic wealth segregation —- richer consumers clustering together while generally poorer service workers have to live far away —- and 2) high gas prices / underdeveloped public transit. At some point as both of these factors increase, there should be a big drop off in available workers. Is this consistent with the pattern we are seeing?
Indeed. The part about getting your income on an ATM card with mandatory fees no matter what you do seems like the best anecdotal example of how fucked things are for the little guy these days.
For what it's worth, the usual "high school jobs" are not a problem when done by actual high schoolers as side gig to fund phone, beer, weed and gas. They don't need to pay rent, food or health insurance so what would be a non-living wage for an adult is luxury money for high schoolers.
The problem is when actual adults who have to take care of adult things (rent, food, health insurance, car payments, ...) have to resort to entry-level jobs as a result of economy crunches or various forms of discrimination. For a long time employers took advantage of such employees and ran them to the ground... but now that retirees follow the "societal contract" and actually go and retire instead of blocking places for the young to rise, employers are in a bad crunch.
Well, the point is that these jobs don't create that much value. They're only worth so much, and the only skill required to do them is to put up with the misery. If you argue that all jobs must pay a "living wage", then jobs like this will just cease to exist and high-school kids won't be employable.
I see that many are fixed on tips, but I found it quite shocking to read about long queues of people on the Christmas day and people quitting on the Christmas Eve. In many European cities, the streets are completely empty and almost all shops (maybe a local supermarket would open from 10:00 till 14:00 on a Christmas day after being closed for the Eve) are closed both on the Christmas Eve and the Christmas day.
That is probably because he was working at a movie theater. Seeing a movie at a theater on christmas is a bit of a tradition for a lot of people here, for some reason.
It's less extreme than in europe but in the US also most businesses will be closed or have reduced hours on those two days, and would expect much less business even if open. Movie theaters are an exception.
Just give it time until europe reaches late stage capitalism. Yes, they didn't have as many neoliberal waves eroding the social fabric in name of capitalism.
> When I was a 16 year old kid working as a “Courtesy Clerk” for Albertsons Grocery store, we got a 15-minute break for every 4-hour shift and an hour lunch for an 8-hour shift.
Yes. One of the big problems we have now is that companies are either reframing their work Uber-style to get around regulations or flat-out ignoring them. Going after violations like that or e.g. the endemic wage-theft at small businesses like restaurants would be a great use of civic money since most of the people affected by lax enforcement have limited power to push back.
Sounds to me like a lot of "customers" in the US are just a55holes and anyone who has to work with them regularly is right to just stop.
I'm sure a little common courtesy in everyday interactions is all it takes to make workplaces enjoyable; and a wage that allows you to stay warm and fed while working a _single job_ will get most people back to work. It's really a very low bar to set, I'm surprised this is even such a debated topic, it's sad.
My wife used to work at a 7-11. Those folks get abused by the people that get abused by everyone else. It was bad.
She was fortunate, in having a good manager (the franchise owner). Some local franchises actually got busted for using slave labor.
There’s a site on my regular rounds, that has stories about bad customer (and staff) interactions, called Not Always Right: https://notalwaysright.com/newest/
When I worked at a call center doing technical support, customers would often get frustrated. But as soon as they crossed the line into unprofessional, I informed them I was hanging up the call, and did. Why would anyone in a service based industry put up with customers throwing tantrums? The manager should immediately march out, give them a refund, and tell them to leave.
My personal opinion: it's not crazy to tip much more generously during COVID. This is not a normal time for businesses or employees. (NB I am not a tipped worker. I am a grumpy old engineer.)
"The myth that Americans, and especially younger Americans, aren’t willing to work is flat wrong."
It's not really a myth, but also can't be universally applied. When a very large percentage of jobs are like this, there's not much alternative. It's you want to work and deal with it, or you don't want to work. Option 3 would be that you want to work a "good" job, but good luck finding one!
People don't want to work shitty jobs. I'm a software dev and I'm tired of the corporate BS and lies. I don't want to work. If this is a "good" job then I don't have hope that anything will be better. I can't wait to retire.
- older folks retired or never re-entered workforce after COVID
- employees, for the first time in ~20 years, understand they can quit their job today and get hired somewhere else tomorrow
- corporate won't raise wages because "they're already too high", ignoring any variation in the location's cost of living
- teenagers have more options/entertainment available to them today and don't want to seek out traditional employment. The author's "their parents are rich" line has some nugget of truth to it unfortunately. Plus they don't want to be yelled at by angry entitled customers.
Specific to the author's situation:
- a business that would not traditionally rely on tips (a fucking movie theatre) relies on tips much to the detriment of the employees
- tips are dispensed on a scam debit card (IMO should be illegal),
Excellent article. Shame so many wealthy people are cheap on tips. Always round up on the tip - the people relying on them need that extra $1-5 dollars more than you do. And if you can't afford those extra few dollars than what are you doing going out in the first place?
Tips should be reserved for exceptional service. People should be ashamed of going to restaurants that don't openly advertise "we pay a fair living wage, tips not necessary".
It dismays me how many wealthy people I know that flat our refuse to tip. I end such friendships, as those people are monsters, waiting for an excuse to toss others away.
Um, way to be incredibly classist. "If you can't afford to support someone else, why are you treating yourself to a luxury of any kind?"
Everyone needs luxuries sometimes. The solution to tipped employees not getting enough money is not to bully people who can't comfortably afford higher tips out of going out; it's to a) encourage unionization, b) eliminate the separate "tipped minimum wage", and c) raise the minimum wage in general. Or, y'know, implement UBI.
I used to work crappy jobs too and they sucked really bad so I dedicated my life to getting the next slightly less crappy job. More qualified people move out and new people move in and the pipeline stays full. If the service you are selling has any value then valuable people will work there.
The problem is that nobody in their right mind would see a movie in a theater these days. Your only customers are people who are all a few cards short of a full deck.
You don't reach the top levels of government and media by having real world experiences. You get to top levels by playing the networking and politics game.
> While there have been complaints from employers that workers “don’t want to come back to work” just wanting to “stay on unemployment,” data shows that isn’t true. States that stopped increased unemployment payments early didn’t see much if any change in employment numbers. Child care was hard to get before COVID. The pandemic has increased shortages, building huge barriers to women who may otherwise want to get back into the workforce. The most recent reports show the shortage isn’t from “lazy young people who don’t value work like older generations do (and get off my lawn while you're at it).” It’s from older people who have opted to either retire early or simply aren’t returning to work.
Someone finally said it better than me. All of the discussions of "worker shortages" around Unemployment Benefits have either been incoherent nonsense, or political points cloaked in fake economics.
The article isn't surprising at all. Workers rights are very poor in the USA. The people that are the worst off when this is the case is the lowest ladder of workers and service industry is in that camp.
If you want these industries to stay open you'll need better workers rights. For example allowing such a poor minimum wage when tipping. Things like at-will working and such like don't help here either. At the drop of a hat any one of these employees could be fired so I doubt any of them will stay under poor working conditions.
I'm also surprised movie theatres are open on Christmas Day.
That's an excellent article that I think highlights a big chunk of the explanation for the recent labor shortage.
While I'll admit I experienced a quick mental blip on the notion that someone might expect me to tip an amount that's a function of movie tickets plus food and drinks in a counter-service situation, I think it's a spot-on observation that workers on the low end of the wage spectrum have a sea of options and won't be putting up with what amounts to abuse, even if it's not an entirely intentional act on the part of management.
The article tracks very well with what I've heard from employers and employees that it's not just about wages. The author was clearly happy with the gig when things were going well.
But when it's Christmas (or maybe when there's something fun happening this weekend that sounds better than cleaning feces from a movie theater seat) during a labor shortage and everyone is overworked, the low wages combine with literally every other damn downside about what can be a truly thankless job to form a crystal-clear and perfectly legitimate plan to achieve the perfect holiday schedule. A worker can simply quit, enjoy their holiday, and later go find a job that's probably going to pay more and/or offer better working conditions.
It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
This is yet another obscure benefit of UBI and/or comprehensive social safety nets in general (and on a smaller scale, getting rid of tipping as a cultural practice).
Employer abusing you? You have options. Employer allowing customers to abuse you? You have options. And not only when there's a temporary shortage of what you're offering the market.
It's not a coincidence that people see tipping as a hold over from slavery and class systems.
Every time you see people saying that you can't give people healthcare or they won't want to work they're actively saying they want to trap people in these situations by removing their leverage. If you can't provide a service to the public without abusing your employees and threatening to withdraw their families healthcare, maybe we'd all be better off if you went out of business and someone else provided that service in a different way. Because that is uncivil.
> And with the stock market at an all-time high, corporate profits soaring, and CEO pay exponentially higher than their workers, execs can afford to share the wealth a bit.
Executive pay makes up a tiny fraction of the total salary expense of a large corporation. Even redistributing the entire salary of the CEO among workers will have no impact whatsoever.
> was recently “promoted” to an assistant manager position) works another job as a hairdresser. She once told me she recently worked 12 days straight between the two gigs.
Texas has another interesting labor rule, movie theaters are considered entertainment, so they are not required to pay over time. The result of this is that companies will happily schedule you for unlimited hours, as there's no penalty for going over 40 hours each week. I ended up working 60-90 hours a week in a movie theater, 7 days a week for.... three to four weeks at a time for almost two years. 12 days straight was entirely normal in my twenties. Two days off in a row was a rarity, and meant that money that month was going to be tighter than normal.
Imagine how much more reasonable politicians and appointees would be if they had to serve 1 year in a non government, non ngo paying job prior to each year they served in government.
We have so many people that go from school, to being an aide to so-and-so, to being elected or appointed to serve, and they don't know how most of the people go through life.
Want to serve as a legistlator for 10 years? First work 10 years outside of the government/ngo complex.
There's a line out the door and workers are quitting because of low pay and bad working conditions? It seems like a former labor secretary would, instead of blogging about a static situation, understand that this is a self-correcting problem. If you have demand that you can't satisfy, you raise your price.
He’s not in the position to do that though. He’s a bartender. It’s clear he is advocating for higher wages and better conditions and even notes that the management of the theater tried to do so but the national chain leadership shot them down.
[+] [-] nepeckman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago|reply
I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/us/apt-cape-cod-restauran...
> The verbal abuse from rude customers got so bad, the owners of one farm-to-table restaurant on Cape Cod said, that some of their employees cried.
[+] [-] ajmurmann|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glup|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|4 years ago|reply
But then make an unpopular observation on the aryicle / topic and you get down-voted.
Humans are "complicated", to put it kindly.
p.s. Yes, I senses the irony.
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|4 years ago|reply
This sentence should be amended to “Places like this rely on people to accept low wages and low quality of life at work”.
The whole article can basically be cut down to that sentence.
[+] [-] mschuster91|4 years ago|reply
The problem is when actual adults who have to take care of adult things (rent, food, health insurance, car payments, ...) have to resort to entry-level jobs as a result of economy crunches or various forms of discrimination. For a long time employers took advantage of such employees and ran them to the ground... but now that retirees follow the "societal contract" and actually go and retire instead of blocking places for the young to rise, employers are in a bad crunch.
[+] [-] seneca|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smarx007|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|4 years ago|reply
It's less extreme than in europe but in the US also most businesses will be closed or have reduced hours on those two days, and would expect much less business even if open. Movie theaters are an exception.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hogrider|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|4 years ago|reply
Shouldn't this be enforced by law?
[+] [-] acdha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayoutthere|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruined|4 years ago|reply
many states go no further, including Texas, which explicitly does not require break time
[+] [-] zivkovicp|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure a little common courtesy in everyday interactions is all it takes to make workplaces enjoyable; and a wage that allows you to stay warm and fed while working a _single job_ will get most people back to work. It's really a very low bar to set, I'm surprised this is even such a debated topic, it's sad.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
She was fortunate, in having a good manager (the franchise owner). Some local franchises actually got busted for using slave labor.
There’s a site on my regular rounds, that has stories about bad customer (and staff) interactions, called Not Always Right: https://notalwaysright.com/newest/
[+] [-] ngngngng|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tom-thistime|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
It's not really a myth, but also can't be universally applied. When a very large percentage of jobs are like this, there's not much alternative. It's you want to work and deal with it, or you don't want to work. Option 3 would be that you want to work a "good" job, but good luck finding one!
People don't want to work shitty jobs. I'm a software dev and I'm tired of the corporate BS and lies. I don't want to work. If this is a "good" job then I don't have hope that anything will be better. I can't wait to retire.
[+] [-] germinalphrase|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianhawes|4 years ago|reply
- older folks retired or never re-entered workforce after COVID
- employees, for the first time in ~20 years, understand they can quit their job today and get hired somewhere else tomorrow
- corporate won't raise wages because "they're already too high", ignoring any variation in the location's cost of living
- teenagers have more options/entertainment available to them today and don't want to seek out traditional employment. The author's "their parents are rich" line has some nugget of truth to it unfortunately. Plus they don't want to be yelled at by angry entitled customers.
Specific to the author's situation:
- a business that would not traditionally rely on tips (a fucking movie theatre) relies on tips much to the detriment of the employees
- tips are dispensed on a scam debit card (IMO should be illegal),
[+] [-] phlipski|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|4 years ago|reply
Tips should be reserved for exceptional service. People should be ashamed of going to restaurants that don't openly advertise "we pay a fair living wage, tips not necessary".
[+] [-] tdeck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bsenftner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danaris|4 years ago|reply
Everyone needs luxuries sometimes. The solution to tipped employees not getting enough money is not to bully people who can't comfortably afford higher tips out of going out; it's to a) encourage unionization, b) eliminate the separate "tipped minimum wage", and c) raise the minimum wage in general. Or, y'know, implement UBI.
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d0gsg0w00f|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that nobody in their right mind would see a movie in a theater these days. Your only customers are people who are all a few cards short of a full deck.
[+] [-] fundad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitfan86|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
Someone finally said it better than me. All of the discussions of "worker shortages" around Unemployment Benefits have either been incoherent nonsense, or political points cloaked in fake economics.
[+] [-] Dave3of5|4 years ago|reply
If you want these industries to stay open you'll need better workers rights. For example allowing such a poor minimum wage when tipping. Things like at-will working and such like don't help here either. At the drop of a hat any one of these employees could be fired so I doubt any of them will stay under poor working conditions.
I'm also surprised movie theatres are open on Christmas Day.
[+] [-] FrameworkFred|4 years ago|reply
While I'll admit I experienced a quick mental blip on the notion that someone might expect me to tip an amount that's a function of movie tickets plus food and drinks in a counter-service situation, I think it's a spot-on observation that workers on the low end of the wage spectrum have a sea of options and won't be putting up with what amounts to abuse, even if it's not an entirely intentional act on the part of management.
The article tracks very well with what I've heard from employers and employees that it's not just about wages. The author was clearly happy with the gig when things were going well.
But when it's Christmas (or maybe when there's something fun happening this weekend that sounds better than cleaning feces from a movie theater seat) during a labor shortage and everyone is overworked, the low wages combine with literally every other damn downside about what can be a truly thankless job to form a crystal-clear and perfectly legitimate plan to achieve the perfect holiday schedule. A worker can simply quit, enjoy their holiday, and later go find a job that's probably going to pay more and/or offer better working conditions.
It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|4 years ago|reply
Employer abusing you? You have options. Employer allowing customers to abuse you? You have options. And not only when there's a temporary shortage of what you're offering the market.
It's not a coincidence that people see tipping as a hold over from slavery and class systems.
Every time you see people saying that you can't give people healthcare or they won't want to work they're actively saying they want to trap people in these situations by removing their leverage. If you can't provide a service to the public without abusing your employees and threatening to withdraw their families healthcare, maybe we'd all be better off if you went out of business and someone else provided that service in a different way. Because that is uncivil.
[+] [-] unmole|4 years ago|reply
Executive pay makes up a tiny fraction of the total salary expense of a large corporation. Even redistributing the entire salary of the CEO among workers will have no impact whatsoever.
[+] [-] cma|4 years ago|reply
If the Activision/Blizzard CEO's pay were lowered to 100 times median income, it would be enough to give each employee an extra $16,000.
[+] [-] hadlock|4 years ago|reply
Texas has another interesting labor rule, movie theaters are considered entertainment, so they are not required to pay over time. The result of this is that companies will happily schedule you for unlimited hours, as there's no penalty for going over 40 hours each week. I ended up working 60-90 hours a week in a movie theater, 7 days a week for.... three to four weeks at a time for almost two years. 12 days straight was entirely normal in my twenties. Two days off in a row was a rarity, and meant that money that month was going to be tighter than normal.
[+] [-] tomohawk|4 years ago|reply
We have so many people that go from school, to being an aide to so-and-so, to being elected or appointed to serve, and they don't know how most of the people go through life.
Want to serve as a legistlator for 10 years? First work 10 years outside of the government/ngo complex.
[+] [-] mhb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipython|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alistairSH|4 years ago|reply
But not before bitching high and low about lazy workers and trying to convince Uncle Sam to force the wage slaves to return to work.