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How much do you think breakfast would cost if that waitress was making $37/hour ?
Took 3 of us to breakfast at a local place. 86 with the tip. Not doing that again soon. Eggs and bacon. Almost a hundred for breakfast. Now that fast food is making 20 an hour sit down places have to charge more too or lose them to Micky D's.
I'm done with this game. I'm Gavin Newsom and I'm here to help.
This simple concept will change your view of the world. Focus. Ready? Businesses are not altruistic endeavors.
Businesses exist for the sole purpose of making money for owners/investors.
To add to this basic economic fact/reality, the two components of the profit that said businesses seek in accordance with their primary purpose explained in the above quote are revenue and cost -both of which are priced according to the immutable law of supply and demand.
When I say "immutable law" I mean exactly that. Supply and demand is as immutable as gravity and electromagnetism. Unchanging, always in effect, inevitable, inexorable. Oh yeah, and like all other immutable laws, that law is absolutely neutral, uncaring and unyielding.
Supply and demand do not care about how the individual feels about the wage for a specific job within a specific market. There is X amount of demand for that job, and Y supply of people willing and capable of performing that job to the job OWNER'S (employer/business owner) satisfaction, and the point where those two numerical quantities intersect is the wage. Period, the end.
Whether a person can live their life with their cost choices on that wage at the number of hours they choose to work is 100% irrelevant in the supply/demand reality.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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We enjoy eating out 1-2 times a week, and those many restaurants that have closed recently have been due to big increases in rent that along with labor costs just don't allow for a profit. One strip mall currently has both anchor restaurants vacant, and apparently the big conglomerate landlord would rather have them empty than collect lower rent. Those restaurants left are very busy, but have plenty of staff, and good service. Last weekend we had a breakfast and a dinner out, both great experiences, and I tipped 25% to help keep them going. The current "help wanted" signs I see are only at fast food, retail and oil change places.
We enjoy eating out 1-2 times a week, and those many restaurants that have closed recently have been due to big increases in rent that along with labor costs just don't allow for a profit. One strip mall currently has both anchor restaurants vacant, and apparently the big conglomerate landlord would rather have them empty than collect lower rent. Those restaurants left are very busy, but have plenty of staff, and good service. Last weekend we had a breakfast and a dinner out, both great experiences, and I tipped 25% to help keep them going. The current "help wanted" signs I see are only at fast food, retail and oil change places.
That 25% would go to the wait staff, not the restaurant itself.
Why do many on the right say, "Nobody wants to work!"
Probably because it is true. And even the ones who do have jobs spend half their paid time dinking with their phones. I see it constantly in stores, restaurants, shops, city employees, etc.
I never go into any business that expects a "tip." How about you tip me for seeing fit to do business with your establishment?
That 25% would go to the wait staff, not the restaurant itself.
It does go to the owners themselves. Instead of paying directly out of their pocket they hope that social pressures will get their customers to do the math and staff will work with no guarantee that the pressures to tip will work.
It does go to the owners themselves. Instead of paying directly out of their pocket they hope that social pressures will get their customers to do the math and staff will work with no guarantee that the pressures to tip will work.
It does not. That is illegal. If it is being done, it needs to be reported and they will be shut down.
It does not. That is illegal. If it is being done, it needs to be reported and they will be shut down.
Sure it does money is fungible just because a customer put it in a server's hand doesn't make a difference. The user still calculated the cost and might as well have paid the owners because they don't have to pay to keep staff
It does not. That is illegal. If it is being done, it needs to be reported and they will be shut down.
It absolutely does.
Taiiko's point is the tip you give is a number the restaurant owner is aware of, at least generally as a percentage of the total cost of food/drink each server handles in a shift, and the server's less-than-minimum wage is adjusted down by some percentage of that percentage, which means it theoretically ends up in the hands of the employer.
Think of it same as corporate taxes, but in reverse. Businesses do not pay corporate taxes, their customers do which is reflected in higher prices to account for the loss of revenue due to taxation. Any business where the workers not only get gratuity, but that gratuity is a societal expectation, adjusts the wage cost downward based on calculated averages of those gratuities, which means the customer is paying the wage in the form of the tip. The owner saved X by not paying according to you tipping X. You paid a portion of the owner's labor cost. You simply used the tip as the medium of exchange and the server as the middle man.
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