Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Sadly this one only covers Sweden but you can look up what restaurants have signed the contract with the union. This guarantees fair wages and working conditions. The law in Sweden is pretty free so there exists unions that are supposed to talk to the companies and get an agreement on what is fair both ways.
I found it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndTipping/
I think the bigger issues are at play whether it's is the fact that minimum wages need to be adjusted, a more modern solution is needed to replace minimum wages, whether a job in question is simply suitable for a human to perform (in this case a doorman, they don't really have them where I live so I don't know their purpose), or maybe children (even adults) need to be taught better money management skills.
I personally think that an area for quick improvement would be helping folks with managing their money. Anecdotally, I know people who haven't paid more than the minimum on student loans because they that they will automatically be forgiven in 20 years. On a $40k loan, they have easily squandered away a down payment on a house or money they could have otherwise put in their 401k.
However, I'd like to start with two labor patches (in the same set).
1) Pro-rate all benefits (with 3/4ths of median 'full time' work hours as full time).
2) Eliminate that tip as part of wage 'loophole'.
That is interesting. As I understand it now, the way tips are factored into wages, it benefits the employee more so than the employer. Society loses because the employee is supposed to report tips so they are taxed, the employer loses because they still have to pay minimum wage, and the employee wins because they are paid minimum wage and get their tips tax free.
Maybe I'm just being dense, but how would this elimination be beneficial?
Employers of workers in customarily tipped jobs can and do use tips as a performance metric, so if the employer has to top up your tips to minimum wage, it probably also means you are also losing your job. This also motivates overreporting tips.
Not tax free. Your employer reports 8% of your total receipts to the IRS as income. It's likely less than you make in tips, but you still pay some tax.
2. The "teach better money management skills" has really nothing to do with this problem, but is continually trotted out as some sort of solution. If you don't have enough money, there's no "managing" it. This isn't an avocado toast problem, it's a wage issue.
Additionally, the incentives are a moving target. For example, with the federal government threatening to end forgiveness plans, can you blame someone for not taking advantage of the option with the potential they will be stuck with the bag, plus interest? Same goes for home ownership incentives, charitable giving incentives, and so on. If the incentive could be gone one day due to the massively complicated and political game that is the tax code, I can hardly blame someone who doesn't have money for a financial adviser for not taking advantage of those programs.
I made no claim that $7.25/hr is a livable wage. That is the current federal minimum. Employers are required to pay the minimum, if they aren't, they're breaking the law.
Money management is certainly no silver bullet, however, it plays a role. If you net $13k/year then you have to manage that money so you don't spend more than $13k/year. Most would agree that it is extremely tough to live on $13k/year. No matter the difficulty the money still has to be managed.
In my student loan example, if you have a loan schedule of 30 years @ 6% you will pay $46k in interest on a $40k loan when only paying the minimum of $240. That same loan if paid off @ $440/mo, nets you $33k over that time period. Here you would manage your money so that you can pay as much as possible on that loan as often as possible.
Making more money doesn't solve money issues, it just covers them up. Saying that there nothing to be done because the amount spent is greater than the amount earned seems rather foolish. I'm not saying that in any given situation there exists an outcome where you can manage spending less than you earn, but managing money wisely will always improve the situation.
The problem is that calculating such an amount is more than tricky. Consider that inflation changes "constantly" or whether newly enacted bills are factored in. From my quick research, it appears as though the affordable care act made the assumption that minimum wage already factored in mandatory health insurance.
Now consider what does it mean to say a person is "living." Are you living if you have a roof over your head and food in your stomach? Is the food being considered, the same meal morning noon and night, or a variety of foods? If you are making minimum wage are you eligible for SNAP (a.k.a.food stamps)?
What about access to the Internet, OTA television, radio broadcasts, or entertainment of some sort? Biologically none of these are needed to live, but I bet an argument could be made.
I agree with you that no one should work for minimum wage, always the maximum. I think simply raising the minimum wage amount is treating symptoms of bigger issues.
Tipping in the service industry in the US is part of the culture, which has been historically difficult to change by declaration.
Sure this is technically correct according to the way the law is written but it ignores the reality which is that a large group of criminals ignore the law on a daily basis and face no consequences. Wage theft is MASSIVE and widespread across America especially for low wage workers, who often rely on tips (but it even effects high wage workers too!). More money is stolen in the US through wage theft than all other methods combined. Business owners (especially small business owners) steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit (oh I guess we just lost your last paycheck, sorry, we'll get it to you soon I promise), stealing tips, intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum, refusing to pay legally mandated overtime or refusing to allow legally required breaks or a variety of other ways owners can use their power to illegally extract unpaid labor from their employees.
The solution is to abolish tips and require business owners pay their workers fair wages, or help the workers bargain collectively to ensure this themselves.
* steal from their employees by not paying them when they quit * intimidating employees into not reporting wages under the minimum * refusing to pay legally mandated overtime * refusing to allow legally required breaks
I'm owed between $20,000 and $40,000 by two (New Zealand) employers in particular, who refused to pay for or record my extra hours worked, and one of them threatened me with physical harm if I went to the government watchdog.
One of them was a small business, the other a multimillionaire. It was the latter who paid less than the minimum every day I worked, and demanded I work as many free hours as he could force me to. It's not just physical harm with him, because he also promised to destroy my reputation around town if I so much as stepped out of line.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for not resigning on the spot. I know.
You are beyond naive if you really think that because these laws are on the books they’re not being routinely and widely flouted or ignored.
If you really find it hard to be true that employers will try to spend less on employees, you’re not capable of participating in this discussion because you lack even basic familiarity with the real world.
I tried to get a labor lawyer to intervene but the total losses weren't enough for them to bother litigating. They sent a demand letter and it was ignored.
Next option would have been small claims but I didn't have the time or inclination to fight it anymore at that point. I can't imagine a waitress would fare much better.
As long as a shady employer keeps their take below $10k, it seems they are untouchable.
According to the most recent census data I could find (2015), there are approx. 27M businesses in the US[1]. Assuming half those businesses are wage thieves, that would mean 13.5M businesses are currently in violation of the the law. The DOL can place a $10k sanction on the business owner for a first infraction[2]. This would then mean that the US gov't stands to make $135B by placing sanctions on these businesses. To catch each business, let's say it costs the DOL $2500/business. After looking into each and every business, they would run a total of $67.5B. Now they have made $67.5B after all expenses have been made. To put that in perspective, the US gov't has put aside $9.7B for the DOL in 2018[3]. As you might figure on your own, $67.5B is nearly 7 (6.9587628865979381443298969072165 if you want to be super accurate) times the DOL's 2018 budget. Now if you mean to tell me that the gov't is going to leave that sort of money on the table, then you and I need to figure out how we benefit from this.
You might well be thinking something along the lines of "The gov't is inefficient, etc. There is no way they could reclaim all that." You're right this is definitely a perfect world scenario, but even if they could only claim 1%. That still makes up a 10th of next years DOL budget. For the gov't , these numbers only get better as more businesses commit these crimes.
Now we have to look at this from the perspective of a business. Again there is only roughly 27M in the US. To make it fiscally responsible to take the $10k bet of sorts the business must save at least $10k/violation, obviously. For the sake of this argument let's say violations are handed out per person per month. ((404)7.25)+(((3024)-(404))(7.251.5)) = $7250, that is how much you make at minimum wage including overtime... If you worked literally every hour of every day for a month (30 days, technically). So if we assume the business thinks a person is going to report the violation, they are better off just paying minimum wage upfront. Let's reel this in a bit and say you work 40/wk/mo in overtime. ((404)7.25)+((404)(7.25*1.5)) = $2900. So now the business definitely comes out ahead. They would risk $7000 by trying to save, what, $1000? Remember, this is an extreme case, not everyone is going to work 80 hours a week. Even if a business isn't more likely to hire another person to cover your 40 hours of overtime a week, they can only save $580/mo compared to the $10k/violation.
I know that there are businesses that will literally do anything under the sun to make a buck, but I find it hard to believe that even half of businesses would go against some of the math above.
[1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/econ/susb/2015-susb-...
[2]: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/elg/minwage.htm#Penalites
[3]: https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/FY2018BIB_0.pdf
A report from the Economic Policy Institute[1] found that minimum wage violations affected 17% of workers in the states surveyed (the ten most populous in the US) and averaged $3,300 per worker who was affected.
[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from...
Even if customers end up paying the same price in the end they are not thinking about the cost of the tip when ordering their food. They are just looking at the price on the menu.
I agree that there are problems with a cashless society. I just do not see the end of tipping as one of those problems.
> changing from a tip-based system to just having a higher base salary does not sound so terrible
Of course it doesn't. But that isn't what's happening. Instead, they get paid the same base salary and don't get tips. And the profound disinterest in problems like this is why more and more people resent Silicon Valley rather than look up to it.
Why do people expect tech companies to fix this problem? Tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
Other industrialized countries are doing fine without tipping, and some of those countries still rely on cash. What do you think doormen and bartenders in those countries do?
> tech companies did not invent tipping and tech companies did not create a system where certain professions rely on tips.
No, but they did break the existing model whereby workers received tips, without thought how for what an alternative looks like. And it happens time and time again, like enabling the gig economy without considering what happens to the benefits and job security of those forced into it. And each time the industry as a whole throws up its hands and says "society needs to fix it" rather than engaging proactively.
Like I said, people resent Silicon Valley. Maybe not the majority yet, but it's on the rise. Before long Silicon Valley will replace Wall Street in many people's perception, as it helps to concentrate wealth to the haves and away from the have-nots. Those of us working in the industry ought to be concerned about that.
The reason the tech industry will almost certainly not wind up with the negative image that financial companies suffer with is that people actually like the things new technologies do. People prefer Orbitz to dealing with travel agents. People prefer email to postal mail. People prefer downloading to buying CDs, and they prefered CDs to vinyl, and they preferred recorded music to buying sheet music and learning how to play an instrument. Despite decades of complaints by all these various affected stakeholders, people still have a positive opinion of the tech industry, because at the end of the day they see tangible improvements in their lives.
I did not propose this strawman at any point. I merely said that tech companies should be actively engaged in solving the follow on problems from their creations, not that they shouldn't be allowed to create things.
There are a few limited cases where it makes sense to force companies to deal with negative impacts of their technology -- environmental pollution comes to mind. For the most part, society simply has to adapt to change, because change is the story of human progress. Some jobs may be lost, some people may be inconvenienced, but saddling every innovator with the responsibility for those negative outcomes (yes, that is what it means to demand that they be "actively engaged" in finding the solution) will only serve to freeze our society in time.
"Hey! We created this great, convenient new method of paying for things, you should sign up to process all your payments through it"
"Wow, looks fantastic. I'm signed up. One problem, though: you can't tip people through it like you used to be able to."
"Oh, goodness, yes, that's a problem alright. A real bug in the system. Someone should do something about that. Anyway, I've got to go, good luck getting that fixed!"
Actually getting your hands on cash money is surprisingly hard in my country though, ATMs are rapidly vanishing.
The solution is not tipping, the solution is applying the law and closing loopholes.
[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/08/26/en-colere-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digicash
That said, what makes you think having a cash-oriented society guarantees tipping? There are industrialized nations that still rely on cash but where tipping is not ingrained in the culture; my experience in Japan was that if I left a tip people would assume I had made an error in my arithmetic or forgot my change.
I agree that privacy is a problem with going cashless. Let's ignore tipping and instead focus on an actual problem.
Cash provides for people in a lot of ways that digital money can't or never will. Tipping, getting paid under-the-table, drug purchases... can digicash benefit all these people? Those groups should stay with cash, the amount of OpSec required for digital alternatives is too much...
Why the obsession with replacing everything with technology when sometimes the old system works fine?
How is that more convenient? You've a pipe dream if you think one option is more convenient for everyone
Are you a GNOME UI designer?
Just think about how a great a deal tips are for waiters. 10-20% of gross revenue is huge.
What cashless tipping does here is take away the ease of under-reporting.
My experience traveling is that places like France with legally mandated tip amounts have very inconsistent service quality. It can be good, but it can also be very bad. And when a server decides to make your service bad, there is nothing that you can really do about it and nobody will care.
I would not have complained if there were no tips and our salaries were increased a bit to compensate.
No, I do not have a lot of empathy for people who are unwilling to accept change or who think that a company that introduced some new technology should be held responsible for how that technology personally affected them. I have no interest in freezing society in time and only allowing new ideas that have no negative impact on anyone to be put into practice.
As if you are going to change the tipping culture in the US?
I use cash because there are less fees to small business, and I like privacy. You are obviously free to participate in FB or whatever privacy-compromising activity you want
That said, if Trump's proposed revision of regulations around tipping go through, I'm going to probably greatly cut back on tipping. It is one thing to reward the waiter. It is quite another to believe that the money is going to the owner of the restaurant.
Unless you are an uncaring psychopath you should pay servers in the US for bad service as well - everyone should be paid for the labor they do. If they aren't doing an adequate job they should be reprimanded or fired. That's not your job though, that's their boss's job. You don't know if they are just having an off day or the problem you had was caused by someone else.
Furthermore, most places pool tips so you're probably docking the pay of a really good server.
But if I take my clothing to a drycleaner, and my clothing comes back torn due to their incompetence, I'm not expected to pay for the drycleaning. Ditto if the valet damages my car.
The fact that someone put time in does not entitle them to my money. If I receive something of value, I give something of value. If this makes me a person that you do not wish to know, then I'm happy that I don't know you because you sound like an unpleasant person for me to be around.
And to that: a server is very rarely personally responsible for a bad experience. Restaurant service is a team effort and the service you get merely reflects how well management functions.
Also while I can't speak to why other people don't tip, the reasons why I (very occasionally) don't are usually under the server's control. Even if the immediate cause of my unhappiness was not under their control, they had the option of acknowledging the problem and offering an apology. It takes a lot to lose my tip.
Compare it to the business world, where if you ship a pallet of widgets and a few of them get damaged, you can't just tell UPS "you broke my shit, I'm not paying you." No, they delivered your shit, however subpar, so they expect payment for the trouble. If you keep withholding based on principle you'll find yourself blacklisted and have your account sent to collections.
This steak is nice, but it's not $17 nice. I think I'll just pay $14 for it.
These new tires for my car don't ride as well as the old ones. I think I'll only pay $50 for them, instead of the $75 asking price.
It was a nice concert, but I don't think it was really worth the $90 I paid. I'm going to pay $50.
There was a bit too much traffic on the bridge today. I'm going to only pay 75% of the usual toll.
If the contract has, "This is what I pay", I am willing to pay that. I agreed to it, it would be dishonest to do otherwise.
If there is no contract, I am free to choose whether or how much I pay. I err on the side of generosity. But if you spill my drink on my clothing, then fail to serve my child, then I see no reason why I should voluntarily reward your incompetence.
Incidentally even if there is a contract, you would be amazed at how much leeway there turns out to be if you have a problem.
For example if your restaurant gave me steak with Brussel sprouts served with it, I'll send it back because I'm allergic to cooked Brussel sprouts. I'm willing to pay for the meal even though I can't enjoy it, but you'd be amazed at how many restaurants will take it back, and offer me a different meal for free.
If the new tires that you just installed immediately spring a leak and I complain, you'd be amazed how many tire shops will replace them for free.
And so on. If you have a real problem with what you received, and you're polite about it, frequently establishments will try to make it right.
So in addition to worse service, you get stick with the unnecessary burden of having to calculate a tip at the end instead of simply getting a bill and paying for it. If you're paying cash it can be difficult to end up with the exact change you need to pay the tip you want, and if you're splitting the bill it can lead to frustrations when different people want to tip different amounts (or some people calculate the tip wrong).
People tip based on the following:
The amount of the bill (everyone knows that a server who carries filet mignon works three times as hard as a server who carries an omelette and a cocktail is five times harder to pick up from the service bar than a soda - facts of life)
Guilt.
Their upbringing.
The server's gender and race (really)
How attractive the server is.
Their mood.
The weather.
The noise level of the restaurant.
If the they were touched by the server.
In practice, once you actually study this stuff, tips have very, very little to do with the quality of service received. Specifically, its around 2% of the tip amount.
https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5888347/one-more-case-against-...
Service can be really inconsistent and also bad in the US too.
Above all restaurant service is a team effort and the service you receive is merely a function of the quality of management. Its insanely unemphatic to believe your server deserves a dock in pay for things out of their control.
(pdfs):
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
There are also issues where tipping can be biased due to racial or gender discrimination. Racial discrimination (I don't have a gender study handy): https://psmag.com/economics/racism-black-restaurant-waiters-...
I wonder if anybody has ever done a study with a group of waiters where on alternate days they alter the quality of service they provide but nothing else. Are their tips constant?
My experience in France, is, in fact, quite different from yours. I found the same bell curve of service that I see in the US.
If anything, the waiters in France were LESS irritating than in the US in that they tended to not interrupt you unnecessarily.
They are also the first ones to moralize people about how tipping is a must and if you don't tip, that poor waiter will be unable to make a living.
NO! The ones that get away easy in this whole scheme are the owners that have now no responsibility to pay their employees correctly.
Source: Most people i know who earn tips, are the ones who rather refuse or minimize a tip to someone else (central europe).
Profits should be split, regardless of how tips are handled.
They try to keep the cost of food at 30%, as is common in business. COG around 1/3 or less.
So when we have a really busy night, there is excess profit relative to the amount of tips.
Assuming tips are a constant percentage of sales, the amount we earn extra is proportionate to sales.
But there is a certain minimum number of sales the owner must reach to break even. At a certain volume, profit accelerates further, but tips are still relatively constant.
So my desire would be for a restaurant to split excess revenues more equitably in addition to whatever baseline wage they set.
Perhaps, but it sounds more like that your minimum wage isn't set to be a living wage[1].
That's the important part - minimum wages should be set so that someone who is working full time (~40 hours/week) should be getting enough income so that they can afford a modest standard of living for themselves and a family too.
Can I ask... Why? Shouldn't a "minimum" wage provide a "minimal" lifestyle rather than a modest lifestyle? And why should one be able to support a family on a single minimum wage?
Also, modest = minimal by the original standards.
Historical context: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage
It means being able to afford the basics: housing, food, healthcare, transport, and still being able to have enough left over to build a 'rainy day' (emergency) fund.
And the reason "modest" rather than "minimal" is because one is living, the other is effective slavery.
People who cannot afford for one moment to stop are people who are on the edge of disaster. Any (additional) misfortune that strikes - whether by their own actions or not - could send them from "surviving" to now being forced into debt, which while it might provide temporary relief, almost certainly means they are now in a downward cycle.
With a living wage, even if misfortune does drive them into debt - there's at least a better opportunity for them to work their way out.
Sure there is. In tipped professions, tips go directly to the waitstaff the day they are earned. It's what makes being a waiter a fantastic starter job when you move to a new city, say, or get kicked out of your home by an abusive spouse, or just need to make money without waiting 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. It also reduces the opportunity for your employer to cheat you out of wages earned: you settle your tips at the end of the night, in full view of everyone, instead of receiving a deposit or paycheck that may take weeks to "correct."
So the idea that tips reward performance is a joke. If I was excellent one night, a coworker who was terrible would get a boost (in average) while my take was lowered.
Im resentful that I have to pay for things as well as bribe the workers. Its disgusting.
Companies aren't going to do it out of the good of their hearts
I don't carry cash either, but I just tip with a credit card. If you don't accept tips with card, you don't get tipped. 90% of the time, there's a tip line on the credit card receipt.
But I do agree that we need to increase wages and kill tipping culture.
People should just do their job because they're being compensated fairly.
Maybe this will be one good thing about robots.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/05/study...
http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
I have actually almost entirely stopped using Uber after they made tipping part of the app. I've worked in a place with tipping, and my experience directly corroborates those links.
I can't DV, so you all can create an aggressive environment on HN if you want, but it won't help you IRL if you say this. If you want to create a toxic environment for discussion, that is up to dang.
So is the elevator operator to an extent (although that one is really more just for impression of being fancy).
Isn't that the job of a receptionist? They should definitely be getting paid more if these are all their responsibility.
Not typically, though a receptionist in a place without a doorman or might do some or all of them.
Sounds like a pretty important job. I imagine a building would want to compensate such a person pretty well in order to help keep the building secure and functioning smoothly. As they say, you get what you pay for.
"Hey, I've never seen you before, what is your business here?"
"That's right, you haven't seen me before." Slips them $100 and walks by.
Had those organisations been shunned because of their stance on, say, religion, those banks would be accused of discrimination. Discrimination based on political orientation however is currently not protected by law. If the "cashless society" is to succeed this probably will have to change, doing anything else will only lead to even more segregation where "left-wing" financial institutions refuse to do business with "right-wing" customers.
In short, in a land ruled by law it is the law which should be the boundary between what is allowed and disallowed. As long as an individual or an organisations abides by the law their ideological standpoint should be irrelevant to financial service companies.
[1] http://www.friatider.se/nordea-st-nger-ner-nationalisters-ko...
Joke aside, you just described why blockchain ideologists hope the future will be a global, decentralized system. So no one can unilaterally deny access to your money.
Maybe the types who have an apartment with a doorman in Manhattan don't. But I (a "millenial") often go to bars and restaurants that are cash only.
Eventually, I found it was easier keep budget my "entertainment" in cash. Visually being able to see how much I have, how much I'm taking out helps. Being able to see that amount grow if I'm frugal one month feels good too.
I have friends who claim they get value from "points". But unless you're working towards a spending minimum for a sign up bonus, I've found the amount you make (2-5%) from using your credit card is less than the savings from thinking critically about which cash purchases to make.
Plus at least 2 more restaurants in my neighborhood that I like and are somewhat popular with tourists. And my barber. Really, it just comes down to the fact that I never know if I'll end up somewhere that doesn't take cards, so I prefer to have it. The bodegas where I work are also serious sticklers for the $10 credit card minimums.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/credit-cards-e...
I do so out of convenience and because everything I buy is basically on-record. Points are BS.
I've stopped budgeting entirely because I found that it reinforces the idea that money needs to be spent. Even if I tried to keep this in mind, I would often end up spending more because I would create spending limits that were higher than necessary. What I instead do is I hardly pay attention to how much money I have at a given time. With a vague idea of the amount in my checking account, I found I'm much less likely to find reasons to spend money. When I do check my statement every few times a month, I'm always astonished how much money I have left over. That almost never happened when I did everything consciously. But that's my own twisted psychology at play.
If more people carried cash, we might see fewer muggings because anyone with just cards can just call their bank and have them turn off all the cards if they get stolen.
I don't think it makes much of a difference. People used to carry cash almost exclusively and muggings still happened with regularity. The difference between now and then is that your cellphone is the first object removed from your person (which will later get fenced at a recycle-your-phone kiosk and shipped overseas), followed by a quick rifling through of your wallet looking for cards.
For debit cards, a gun gets thrust in your face, a PIN is demanded (if you aren't abducted and taken to the ATM altogether) and you get pistol whipped while they withdraw $500. It used to be done on a succession of ATMs but I don't know if the FIs impose caps on ATMs withdrawals now.
Thieves know cards can be deactivated so they'll make like Bain Capital and load them up with as much debt as possible before busting out. The primary goal is converting your plastic currency (debit or credit) into something that can't be terminated remotely (such as cash or prepaid gift cards) before you have a chance to make those calls.
Contrary to your last point, I actually find that using credit cards for everything makes it FAR easier to keep a handle on our spending, which in turn keeps things more reasonable. Having a single place where we can see almost all of our cash flow is very useful.
When I went to the States (NYC), I was surprised at how hard it is to get around without cash (restaurants, hairdressers, tolls, all cash-only or EZPass) and eventually caved in and took out money for the trip. I think America is just slightly behind the times in terms of cashlessness.
Where do you live? I'm in North Texas, and very few places are cash-only. I avoid those places. Even most of the hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurants who were too cheap to get a credit card reader finally gave in when Square became a thing.
So yeah, I support cash transactions (and spend cash as a way to give the restaurant I like a way to avoid CC fees) but very often I don't have any or enough, and need to use CC.
Cash is easier to split, too unless you want to use Venmo or something (does everyone have Venmo?).
it is worth it for me, i do have to stay vigilant but it keeps me in check with my budget at the same time. then at the end of the month I will have some extra money to pay for generous tips or a cup of coffee, or to put back in my checking/savings account. it works great for me.
I never use cash unless I am buying marijuana (Washington state but not all stores allow cards at this time). having to manually track my cash spending actually has the opposite effect on frugality awareness for me, because I may forget to notate it, or will be more impulsive because I won't have to see it right away on any bank statements/spend tracker apps
Obviously everyone has their own preferences. Figured I would share my contrary pov!
Now, I've only encountered an elevator man once in my life in the US. But still. It never occurred to me that he should be tipped.
And that's my main problem, the ambiguity. There's no consistency in who should get tipped and how much is a decent amount. And that kind of opaqueness always hurts everyone involved but a few lucky ones.
You know, the kind where you slide the thing across and you don't have to plug it in?
Think about how an online transaction works -- punch in the number, no ID needed. Believe it or not that didn't start online ;)
Source: took "offline" payments when a retail store's power went down many many years ago.
So, even if you had cash, they couldn't take it.
But since having kids (and the invention of Venmo and its ilk), we've stopped going out with friends and splitting checks and when we do it's all digital, and now I have to give the New Year money instead of get it.
We have a house cleaner every couple of weeks that I like to tip, and lately it's been a struggle to find cash lying around for the tip. Also when I get a haircut they give a big discount for cash, and that's been a struggle too. Like the girl in the article, I just forget to go to the cash machine, it's not a priority until the time comes.
I may have to visit the ATM for the first time in a few years this holiday season to give holiday tips.
“discount” ;) Nice euphemism for tax evasion.
But I suspect the real answer is something closer to "starving and dying". :(
I'm still for localities experimenting with what the most effective use of those funds are, but when it's cheaper to ship the problem somewhere else that's what's going to happen.
I would /prefer/ a focus on diagnosing and correcting lacking medical treatment (including mental health) and re-integration in to society as a real person.
There's already a solution in place to handle cashless tips for them. They aren't responsible for the transaction fee a lot of processors pass onto the gig economy. It works relatively well, even in the event of loss of internet or power.
The laws of averages work out for an average server, I worked for 5 years in the restaurant industry and two years of that was 100% waiting tables. I averaged $24-$26K between those two years in two different states and 4 different cities. Both of those states are at the US minimum wage of $2.13/hr (for restaurant waiters).
I worked about 30-40 hours a week. We're talking ~$12-$13/hr average. It's was definitely much better than any minimum wage position I could have had.
Anecdotally, the servers I knew who complained most about the wage were also the least responsible ones with their money. We worked at a restaurant that gave you your tips at the end of the night and to many peers, the urge to spend that cold hard cash was too strong. Those responsible but just underpaid were underpaid either way; they still could usually keep it together at $12-$13/hr, still a good wage for someone relatively just getting started career-wise.
Whatever wage you made from the $2.13/hr usually just covered your taxes. Most of my deposited paychecks were less than $10 every other week.
I know that this isn't what other countries do, but it does work and keeps most families and individuals out of the poverty level. The requirements for work are relatively undemanding and most people who want a job serving get a job serving.
The system sucks but that's how it is, if you don't want to tip then you can always eat at McDonalds or other establishments without wait staff.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
Or you can simply eat at that establishment and not leave a tip.
This needs to happen in Congress.
The social understanding is that the merchant doesn't need to advertise higher prices, and the merchant and the employee get to evade taxes. The customer gets to feel like they're a big shot, rewarding people for "serving" them. In reality, it's just a big old loophole around paying taxes and having to account for the actual cost of things, while spreading around the real costs onto a collective that doesn't have enough incentive to work together to stop it.
Basic price obfuscation strategy, and it works well.
On a side note do we even need door men?
At my buddy's old place in Brooklyn the security door for the building broke. It had been broken for about 24 hours before my friend discovered a prostitute giving a john a BJ in the stairwell.
Doormen keep prostitutes from giving BJs in your stairwell, among other things.
I don't mind having to step over a dude getting a blowie in the stairwell if it saves the Chinese food delivery guy from having to stand in the cold and saves me from having to put on a jacket to go get my Chinese food.
Stuff like prostitution and drug dealers would only be 10% of the problem they are if people would stop being bothered by them out of habit.
In Northern Europe it's it something we do. Unless we want to.