Because remember, the woman in the story had two problems:
First, customers were harassing her employees.
Second, she didn't know about it until there were numerous incidents.
Not second-guessing the reporter is also much better than the alternative. Even if there is some abuse (like any system has), the fact that the staff can avoid dealing with people they dislike by claiming a yellow will mean that most abuse will be with yellows, and thus fairly inconsequential in the big picture.
> The color system is elegant because it prevents women from having to relive damaging stories and relieves managers of having to make difficult judgment calls about situations that might not seem threatening based on their own experiences. The system acknowledges the differences in the ways men and women experience the world, while creating a safe workplace.
If the server decides that I don't look right, they can choose not to serve me and I have to wait for a manager to serve me?
You know that Denny's lost a $54 million lawsuit over this practice, right? Racial profiling in the hospitality biz is very real.
So, no, even if we (weirdly) stipulate the idea that creepers are a protected class, the Denny's situation is not comparable to what's happening here.
"In 2015, the Washington Post examined tipping culture in the US restaurant industry. Looking at a survey of 1,000 servers, 34 percent responded that they believed black diners to be "very bad" tippers, in comparison to white diners who 98 percent believed to be "average" or "above average" tippers."
"In the first study where white servers believed black diners were "very bad" tippers, over half of those who responded said they "don't always give their best effort when waiting on black customers.""
I absolutely loved your optimism and single-step, hand-wavey-approach to solving racism, though.
"In a world where nobody's racist, nobody will be racist! It's perfect!"
And it's notable that approach runs counter to all of the retaliation-based approaches that this society currently seems to enjoy.
Yeah I like that part. Maybe the customer is having a bad hair day, maybe they are autistic or homeless. There is no need to kick them out or confront them if they haven't said or done anything bad. Just have a way to quickly pass the handling to someone else and move on.
Assuming you did mean the former, I find it fascinating that your comment went from not looking right to racial profiling which seem completely unrelated.
What made you think of that?
The point is, if you interpret the policy properly, it's plainly obvious that a server can label someone a yellow (for any reason) and choose not to serve them.
Lots of servers have preconceived notions about who is going to tip well.
That's sort of how these systems perpetuate isn't it?
Maybe if you just had to just stfu and deal with serving everyone, you get the opportunity to realize that X person isn't bad and actually does tip.
> Maybe if you just had to just stfu and deal with serving everyone, you get the opportunity to realize that X person isn't bad and actually does tip.
That's the current situation though, right? Seems like it's not working.
For someone in the industry that you're/we're in, I'm a little bit surprised by your level of optimism; in this case, that a loosely-defined social system works as intended when almost always strictly defined encoded systems (software, hardware, legal, etc) do not. Either the intended system is not accurately defined or it didn't expect everything.
Almost all of my peers/coworkers in infosec are extraordinarily pessimistic, see the flaws first, and from very far away.
The entire restaurant business is propped up by investor money and artificially low wages. We have a large multiple more restaurants than we actually need because it serves Wall St. and the government ("job creation").
Such a change could put 80% of the industry out of business in maybe a year.
And worse, the places where people have smaller dine-out budgets are also where all of the low-wage chain restaurants are clustered. All of those youth and unskilled labor jobs in the suburbs are pretty much in restaurants.
It's inexcusable that people in restaurants are being exploited for their labor, but I think we absolutely have to figure out an alternative before putting them out of work.
If you give wait staff a normal wage, restaurants have to have more workers on hand when it's less busy and there are more other labor laws regarding wage and hour minimums that they'll lose exemptions from.
Over having the manager serve people? Do you have some reference that explains what you're referring to?
In practice, if the manager sees that server X often/always calls yellow on group Y, it becomes the manager's job to educate, train, or fire server X.
The problems with the described practice are pretty apparent if you've ever a) worked in tipped food service or b) been black.
And that wouldn't have to be a consequence of this policy. It would, however, require the manager to be as prompt as the server. This should be possible to do if they're paying attention to the issue, because the manager should be handling far fewer tables than a server.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-05-25/news/mn-62027_1_civil...
Alas, the actual examples aren't fully enumerated (to the tune of some 4,500 complaints). The syntax of "slow service" in the cited examples is in seating customers.
Imagine getting a code yellow from a line cashier while doing your groceries, because she doesn't like the way you look. So she calls her manager and he has to ring you up, while everyone else is looking at you with daggers in their eyes. She can't say to you WHY she called them, because code yellow means "you look creepy." But hey, you wait their five minutes for him to finish the order while she takes a smoke break.
Any time someone describes something as elegant, they usually are wrong. Real life is too messy for elegant solutions.
> But hey, you wait their five minutes for him to finish the order while she takes a smoke break.
...
> Real life is too messy for elegant solutions.
Real life is too messy to expect any system to map perfectly to all situations. To do so is to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Even in the best case, where the cops show up, talk to the guy, cite him (or something) and leave, something like touching/grabbing a staff member or making inappropriate comments is going to be really hard to catch or prove in a court... Having your manager go up to the table and calmly tell him that it's time to go is going to be way less likely to disrupt other customers.
And last, what restaurants have you been to that have CCTV? Fast food, definitely, but I don't remember the last time I sat down for a nice meal out and noticed security cameras on the walls. This produces an atmosphere similar to calling the cops into your restaurant: you're implying that people who go there are sketchy enough to deserve being surveilled or brought in by the authorities at any point.
I’m scary good at spotting cameras though. It’s a weird skill.
In fact, I’m at a fancy restaurant at a yacht club in the Cayman Islands right now and spotted 2 cameras.
People have weird ideas about what the police do. Much as they'd like to pretend otherwise, they aren't referees or mediators.
It's not even criminal between employees, even if it's your boss. Fireable offense, yes. Civil tort, maybe. But nobody is going to jail.
On another note, I was delighted when I read the word "Homeroom" - I've only eaten there once, but it's such a fantastic restaurant! I have to go back next time I'm in the area.
Agree a set of escalating code words or actions that mean something like "take care", "come help me with this situation" and "we are leaving now, no questions asked."
Give everybody the power to make these signals and ensure that everybody else reacts immediately.
We all sense danger differently, and the best way to avoid problems is to work as a group, and to trust the people who you are friends with.
Wow, that's incredibly sexist. Could it simply be those specific managers that didn't recognize the problems? It's not all men! I stopped reading here because it's obvious she has a severe bias and is blind to it.
Oh jeez the lack of self-awareness
Could you cite that, please? The bit you quoted above says her system doesn’t rely on mens’ judgement. It makes no claims that they aren’t capable of doing it right. It’s a system independent of that question.
Because women never, ever expect these systems to affect them. If some guy refused to serve women because they looked like bitches, he'd be fired. If some women refuses to serve men because they look unsavory and have a creepy vibe, well, you get a nice article in the wapo and knowing nods.
Too much reputation, or finally enough?
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
There are a number of ways to get around paywalls, I for example use a firefox extension called "bypass paywalls".