Restaurant workers quit at record rate

If this industry literally cannot afford to pay people a living wage, if no one wants to work for them and they can't remain profitable by making working conditions better, then they just shouldn't even exist.

Any sane economist that has to solve for the constraint "everyone has to provide for themselves" aka the mythical republican "responsibility" would first start by creating enough jobs to reach full employment. When you leave everything up to responsibility you also have the duty to provide everyone with the ability to live up to their responsibility.

Society as a whole doesn't benefit from exploitation or unsustainable businesses.

They are. It takes time but they are. I work in a business that is having a hard time hiring entry level healthcare workers because Walmart and Amazon warehoueses is now paying $15-20/hr when it was only $12 pre-covid. Walmart and Amazon would only raise wages if they truly had a labor supply issue, which they do, we all do.

the problem is the restaurants are seeing fewer customers due to the pandemic so they can't raise wages, while the upper 1/4 or so of the population hasn't been financially impacted by the pandemic and housing and rents have continued to climb. restaurants can't raise prices in this situation and they can't raise wage, which squeezes the workers who are now not putting up with it any more.

return to work means continued increase in housing prices and if restaurants fully open they're going to have to pay more and that means that those wage and rent increases for the businesses will have to get passed on as rising prices.

if there's a switch to remote work then that will make cities more livable again at current wage costs and menu pricing. you lose some disposable income from the seriously high wage earners that have left the city, but they'll mostly take the distortion of the housing market with them while the bulk of the population that makes less than $150k will have more left out of salaries to eat out at the restaurants.

short term the effect of popping housing bubbles would be recessionary, of course, but it'd act more like Volker's popping of the 70s stagflation bubble, give it 5 years and the "new normal" of consistent housing prices would take over.

And who feels that pressure the most? Service workers, who had jobs in the cities, sure, but didn't reap any of the economic benefits of all that urban wealth concentration. They're overrepresented in the population who fled, which means their jobs are now underserved.

Long term, this will probably just be viewed as a correction to a few overpopulated urban cores. We'll find equilibrium again, though not at the same state as before.

But regardless, the fix here is the same: pay more for the jobs and you'll find people willing to do them.

Actually a lot of industries have this problem.

I was a smartphone tech. I repaired phones. You know when a majority of our business was done? On weekends and holidays. Whenever my GF had a national holiday, I had to work because it meant the people who put off fixing their phones will take that day and come it for a repair because it was way more convenient than during or after their working hours.

I also had to work until 7pm every night for the same reason. My owner was banking on people coming home from work and stopping, so we stayed open an extra two hours. Some days I had five people in my office. Other days? Maybe one or two. But those two hours generated a lot more revenue than you probably think over the course of a month.

Even if we make an assumption that it IS a zero sum game (and that there are no other jobs), then we're into a wildly different conversation around how we deal with allocating finite resources in a culture that supports property rights, and no one is going to solve that in a hacker news comment chain.

I don't know how to express this but it frustrates me a great deal.

Money is akin to a video game. It's not real. It's just a token that allocates work. It doesn't decide how much work there is. People decide. You can spend the same dollar an infinite amount of time and thereby create an infinite demand for work.

Therefore work becomes a philosophical or an existential problem. We work for our own benefit to satisfy our needs and desires. To do so we have to do "productive" work, meaning work that helps someone else satisfy their needs and desires by proxy. What if you have already done enough to meet the basic needs of everyone? Yes, we are reaching the edge of humanity. The realm of philosophers. Why do we live? To work? We already worked enough to live. Beyond this point all activity including work is meaningless. When you accept that life itself is meaningless then so is the work that you do to sustain yourself.

How have humans dealt with this in the past? They did wholly pointless work. The pyramids weren't built because they were needed, it's because rulers decided to build them. Another way is to simply start a war. Once there is urgency, politicians are ready to spend whatever it takes, no matter how pointless the war. The Chinese just build infrastructure and housing even before there is a need or purpose.

Here, I'll do it. I'll prove that there is no lack of work and it is purely a political problem: Climate change prevention requires the creation of a huge amount of jobs. Yes this one sentence is a bomb. How does more work, research and technological progress make us poorer? It doesn't. The whole climate change denial/skepticism thing can't be explained by economics because we will end up better off by preventing climate change and I am not even talking about the benefit of preventing climate change. Just the benefit of creating more work. The powerful combination of economics and climate should make any capitalist immediately support the effort.

The only people who actually benefit from denying climate change are those directly working in the fossil fuel industry. Germany once gutted 100k jobs in the renewable industry to keep 20k coal jobs alive. It's 100% not about economics.

I personally haven't worked in a restaurant, but I see how the staff and chefs are always running around, doing 20 things at once. Stimulants use like cocaine and amphetamine is endemic in the industry as well, probably for that reason.

As a restaurant worker, the pay is usually terrible as well. So while some super rich corporation won't lose millions off of your mistakes, you can lose your job and be forced to live off of your inexistent savings. That sounds very stressful to me.

Your assessment for what constitutes stress seems to be, at best, highly subjective.

The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a “stepping stone” while they get their careers on track.

Knowledge work does look different from physical work, but you can work hard at both; you need to work hard at either to be successful.

As for why hard physical work is so valued - only a century or two past, it was the only practical method to prevent the starvation for yourself and your family. Knowledge work being a viable means of survival (for non-nobles) is pretty new, all things considered.

Even my own parents never really understood how knowledge work could be as valuable as getting out and working with your hands; and they were born in the early/mid 1900's.

Historically, the people doing "hard work" were peasants, serfs, and other lower-class people.

The people doing "skilled work" were the educated sons of nobility, and later of wealthy merchants.

An awful lot of the unhealthy and destructive dynamic in our modern work can be traced to feudalism.

It really boils down to how much money a business can make from your outputs. A line cook makes the business less money than someone building an AWS service. This is not a law of nature, just the status quo.

Wait until they learn about passive income and proper usage of leverage!

It comes from well-paid workers also liking to pretend that they are hard workers. It's required for the moral superiority.

Because the labor theory of value seems intuitively true,

Unfortunately it does not reflect the reality of how humans exchange labor.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

Equally true of software development, systems/network administration, etc. It can totally suck, or it can be a source of joy, growth, and profit, all depending on where you're workin' and who for. Some of the best jobs I've had in both industries have been almost like "gettin' paid to play" because the whole crew was doin' stuff they already enjoyed doin' and doin' it for a boss that knew how to motivate in positive ways and how to join in and be part of the fun of it all. That plus a paycheck and benefits? Why would anyone ever want to go back to a shit job after knowing good jobs exist out there.

Software development is done from a laptop, in whatever air-conditioned room or office you'd like.

Restaurant work is, by definition, hot, loud, and surrounded by people who treat you like a servant.

You could take two people who have the exact same "knack" for each profession, and one of them would still be much more miserable.

It just sucks more to be in a restaurant than it does to write code. I think that's kind of tough to argue.

The analog in software is working for a surveillance company versus architecting your software to cut out needless middlemen.

FTR I also think the social safety net should be bare minimum existence, for a single person something like a bunk bed, 3 minimum nutrition meals (simple food like beans, rice etc not steaks...), clothes from a thrift store etc. -- It's more complex when kids are involved because you have to consider that you're essentially growing the future generation so have to consider the repercussions of underinvesting in formation.

This bare minimum would still leave lots to be desired and thusly incentivized (such as money for weed and a tv/netflix) ... But they'd have the time and basic support to do something contributing that only humans can do (at the moment at least) .

Example; There've been some pretty positive things happening around community gardens in some places (when they're not being attacked by self-appointed neighborhood Nannies that don't like to see people gathering together around something beneficial).

Example 2; I remember "maker" clubs and similar community groups doin' lots of really fun activities that benefited more than just the group itself (free community virus cleanups, operating system install parties, community LAN parties - everyone's welcome).

I'm sure that if enough positive activities were presented to society as a whole, you'd just naturally find a growing percentage of humanity doin' good things for each other that used to be considered "work" at some point in the past before whatever "safety net" made it unnecessary to do for survival's sake anymore. People might even still do some of those things at a higher level of quality than others and net themselves some personal gain out of it.

Problem is that humans aren't willing to cooperate with one another enough to even approach any sort of Utopian ideal, and they're often too ready to jump at all the reasons such a thing is "impossible" without being willing to even consider any ideas that might lead to it bein' a reality.

The Restaurant workers had portable credit card stations to ensure they didn't have to run back and forth to a central register. The garbage trucks had automated arms for picking up trash bins. A busy restaurant had ~1/3rd the staff of a similar restaurant in the US. This compares to my condo association which recently hired snow shovelers who don't have a snow blower because they were cheaper than the ones with a snow blower!

There is no employment crises in Switzerland, and by simple inspection I'd believe that the American service/labor sector could absorb the 3-6x improvement in productivity present internationally without an existential crises.

You work to be able to afford nicer clothes, more vidya games, fine whisky, more-comfortable retirement when you do stop working, vacations, better school for your kids, a nicer house with a view, and so on.

The carrot remains the same, the stick is just somewhat smaller.

Let's say you got $20k/yr[0] for free. Do you think you could live comfortably on that? Would you be willing to work to improve your comfort level?

[0] full time US minimum wage with no time off is about $15k/yr

People with literally billions of dollars of wealth still devote time and energy to earning more. I don't think its a stretch to think that people who merely have enough for tolerable food, clothing, shelter will continue to do so.

'cept with 20 million CS degrees, the software industry would boom - more code, more customized, bespoke software for every firm, presumably increasing productivity and output and thus, increases wealth.

Not to mention these people may also "stumble" upon something great by being entrepreneurial.

So it'd be strictly better to have 20 million CS degrees holders, vs 20 million hospitality workers.

I'm not sure more corporate concentration would be a better situation.

I assume "closing down the restaurant and retiring" means they will sell the restaurant (or at least the property), but I am not sure to be honest?

Even in the best of times restaurants are the hardest business to run successfully. These are not the best of times, and (as always) it isn't clear what the future will hold.

In addition, type of food matters a lot. A place that sells 'cheap slop on a plate' has lot less price flexibility than a boutique that sells fancy sushi.

I could get a "burek" (pastry with cheese) for 2eur, it's cheap, it fills you up, and you continue with your day.

Or I could order a pizza delivery... pizza used to be in the 6-8eur range if you lived near the restaurant, so for 12, 13 eur I could get two pizzas delivered to my home.

Then "the plague" came, the local pizzeria was closed, delivery was taken over by "app companies" (wolt here), they charge percentages of the food price + delivery cost, so the price of the pizza has gone up to 9-10eur (to cover the wolt fee), and with the delivery fee, we're talking 20-22eur for two pizzas. After the reopenings, the prices in the restaurant are the same as on wolt + with drinks, we're talking close to 30eur for two pizzas and drink.

If bureks cost 2.5eur or even 3eur (50% higher), they're still "cheap", and people will buy them. With pizza going from 12, 14eur to 20-25eur, I can make a huge amount of very good food at home, and saving 15eur to eat healthier makes it worth it.

TLDR: at some price point (that I currently feel we're at now, with some foods atleast here), it isn't worth it anymore to eat out. Everybody might rise their prices, but less people will eat outside, lowering the overall profits of everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax#/media/File:T...

$9 or $9.50 for a beer is the most you can charge in some places. You'll suddenly put people off if the beer is $10.

What you can do is charge $9 for a 14 oz beer (previously 16 oz), which is roughly like charging $10.28. Can only do that trick once, though. Or you can increase the size to 24 oz and charge $14.

Tipping can still take place. It just doesn’t need to be obligatory. It’s the difference between a culture of servitude vs a culture of service.

One reason several of them have mentioned is that many customers are happy to regularly tip much more than 20%, and this is often correlated with the highest spending customers. Making it a non-discretionary 20% puts an artificially low cap on how much they earn from the customers that pay the most. At one time some customers would leave extra cash on the table after paying the "no tipping" bill, but no one carries cash anymore.

Places that net $40/hr have enormous difficulty hiring right now. These are not poorly paying jobs but the broader lifestyle is pretty terrible even at good restaurants, made even more terrible because of the employee shortage.

One overlooked issue is that many restaurant workers in the big cities are originally from "flyover country". When the restaurants closed during COVID, a large number went back home. I was talking to a waitress in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa a few months ago and she had just moved back after several years working in New York City restaurants.

The owners always had to withhold taxes from their wait staff, just as your taxes are withheld by your employer.

The difference is that since almost all tips are now on credit cards, the business owner doesn't need to assume the % sales to withhold, and withholds based on virtually all of their employees tips.

The end result is that the wait staff can't commit tax fraud by not reporting tips. The business owner didn't have to report cash tips, only withhold based on a % of sales. They still withhold on % of sales if actual tips are less than the % of sales.

That said, gifts totaling under $15,000 are non-taxable.

The bottom line is that it is the workers making the choice you disagree with, in pursuit of their own self-interest. It would be one thing if choosing one policy over the other was revenue-neutral to the restaurants and workers, but empirically that is not the case.

The only thing preventing restaurants from changing their prices is the 'penguin on an iceberg' issue. You may be correct in raising your prices, but if other restaurants are willing to lose money longer before they raise their prices your business may suffer/fail because of it before the rest of the market changes their prices/wages.

$665/40=$16.63

The financial incentive to not work is strong. Add in 40 extra hours of free time...

1. Most waiters don't get health benefits 2. Most waiters don't get retirement plans 3. Most waiters are at the whim of the restaurant managers 4. There's only so many tables you can turn in a shift, and tips average under 20%. 5. Most waiters don't get any PTO

Say you have a four-top that has meal service of $120 (booze tips usually go to cocktail waitresses, wine goes to waiter). An average section for a "good" steakhouse will have no more than 5 tables per waiter; otherwise service sucks.

So each table earns the waiter $24 in tips. With 5 tables, that's $120 per turn. High end steakhouses don't turn fast; again, the appeal is having a long, hearty meal. So maybe 2.5 turns on a good night. That would be $300 in tips. But then you have to tip out. Busboy gets $25 (helps you turn faster, helps with some service), dishwasher gets $10 (should get $100), hostess gets $20 (so your section gets sat promptly), and at least $50 for the line cooks who are the real stars. Now you're done to $195. That needs to be reported as income, so it gets held back by mgmt for tax.

You get 3 good shifts a week, and 2 crap shifts. After a week you've made $195x3 plus $125x2 for a grand total (pretax) of $835/week. So your gross is $44K. I'm ignoring the base hourly wage because it's usually nothing.

$44k isn't bad money. It's above the nationwide median, but considering all the downsides, it's not "a good living." If you get sick, tough shit you lose out. If the chef jacks up the menu, you lose out. And it's a young person's gig. People want their waiters to be young and attractive, not balding and showing grey hairs.

We have similar issues up in Charleston, with my girlfriend ‘s restaurant in an HCoL (Mt. Pleasant) really struggling to find staff beyond the 16-26 “living with mom & dad” crowd where HCoL is little of a factor.

I would add I have at least a half-dozen friends in BoH that intentionally (an)used our state pay benefits for a free vacation to smoke weed and play X-Box though sadly citing it as their first vacation in a forever. There’s definitely a problem a multi-faceted problem here.

"My understanding this year is that popular restaurants require reservations 60+ days in advance." >> This is what a shortage looks like. Long lines and empty shelves. People who are willing to pay the advertised price, but can't because there isn't anything to buy.

"started reducing hours due to labor shortages." >> Meaning that there is more demand for labor than supply at the current price (wage). The supply curve for labor moved down, causing a shortage of labor at the current price. That's a 'shortage' as perceived by businesses that don't want to pay the actual market clearing price/wage.

In your example, a labor shortage is leading to a restaurant shortage. In both cases caused by changes in the supply and/or demand curves (down and/or right, respectively).

You could also go farther upstream to the housing market and say that because the supply curve of housing moved down, house prices went up, and that caused labor's supply curve to move down accordingly.

All of these things ultimately mean fewer things and less stuff, at higher prices.

Indeed. Many small businesses can't even afford sponsoring a sick leave directly AFAIK. At my location (in Europe) you pay a part of your monthly wage to the social security fund and once you get sick it covers your salary in the amount like if you kept working (and also pays you basic pension once you get too old).

How do you pay for it?

Will it be run by the same entities that are having so much trouble balancing Social Security and preventing Medicare fraud?

Automation is coming regardless.

The notion that a deli would simply close up shop because they couldn't hire people at a wage they deemed reasonable means they either couldn't be bothered to try higher prices/quality - or for some reason they are unable to (e.g. high debt service costs). The building sitting empty and idle costs the business money, so it's surprising they don't at least try something.

I've worked retail before (Apple Retail, Genius Bar specifically, so probably one of the more decent and better paid retail jobs in the grand scheme of things), and dealing with customers was one of the primary reasons I changed careers.

You only need so many people looking down on you because of nothing other than your job, to make you want to do something else.

Like, There was a cultural shift some decades ago, and as corny as it sounds, the shift in culture began when we went from having a "Personnel Department" to "Human Resources" - resources are something you often extract and use up, to the point we have a special way to call out resources that are renewable.

As much as I hate the "words matter" phrase, I think here they clearly do, as they've clearly subtly altered peoples thinking about people who work for them, and their disposability.

If you (general - not you) think you could improve how you treat people, please work on improving, but most people here are probably fine and have nothing to feel guilty about.

Conservatives will block any rise in the minimum wage, but couldn't completely block additional unemployment benefits.

Progressives would back a rise in the minimum wage, but had to deliver on relief for the unemployed working class, so they did just that.

The secondary effect of rising wages was probably only something that conservatives were expecting.

If you get X money per month of unemployment and X+20% to work, then yeah, if it's not a fulfilling work (and let's be honest, what work at that price is fulfilling), you'll rather stay at home. Once the "free money" dries up, people will be forced to take the shitty jobs too, but due to many failed businesses, there will be even less jobs available, and this skews the jobs-vs-workers ratio, making wages even lower.

Making it easier (and cheaper) to start a business would create more jobs, raising the price of work, and replace the shitty jobs with better one (in terms of pay and conditions).

This is true, but obviously the rate at which this happens will matter.

In 1900, 41 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. Due to increasing use of technology, 70 years later only 4 percent of the labor force worked in agriculture. If that loss of jobs had happened in say 20 years instead of 70 years, it obviously would have been a much more painful transition.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44197/13566_ei...

Labor force participation has been falling for a long time as labor sellers (employees) fail to find an adequate price for their labor from employers (the buyer). Many economists assumed this was the fault of the labor seller for not having skills attractive to buyers. It's also possible that in certain segments employers were using labor in-efficiently, or simply miss-pricing the value of a worker.

Which is a long winded way of saying that a higher minimum wage may bring more labor into the market, while simultaneously forcing businesses to leverage automation to improve the productivity of said labor.

So I guess restaurants that sells food are having a hard time, but restaurants that sells a service have a different story to tell.

[1] See how in the first case it's "to eat in a restaurant" and in the second it's "to go to a restaurant". To me that's the big difference : when you are here to fulfill a natural need (eating), you don't want to pay a lot for it, while you are here to have a nice time out, you will gladly pay more.

If everyone raises wages, they have to raise prices. For the restaurant, this means they have to charge more for the same service, and they have to pay more for their supply chain (because they also increased their prices).

For the worker, that means they will pay more for things and services they need/want, because every other business will suffer from the same issues and be forced to raise their prices.

All this to say, the worker's purchasing power decreases if everyone raises wages, and that is the definition of inflation.

Others will change their product offerings to maintain margins.

And some will misjudge the situation, or were too close to the bone to survive in this environment and fold.

This entire thread is totally out of touch with reality.

Distrust in their employees coupled with excessive monitoring on consumables and the like, I think is the most common.

I've patronized, worked at, or know people who worked at places where the employees are doing everything they can to keep a business running despite the owner....often doing what they can to keep said owner from getting their hands too deep into daily operations or in contact with customers.

Yep. 1000%. If your workers need to be on any form of government assistance, you're being subsidized.

Mr. Factory Owner does all sorts of bullshit like paying unlivable wages, not having any employees working over the number of hours at which they'd have to pay benefits, and so on.

But guess who's always got enough money to donate to republican and libertarian campaigns, and has very strong opinions about 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' and how wasteful government assistance is?

Edit, I'm being sarcastic. It's glib to suggest that somehow all of these businesses can just magically raise prices. It's a complex situation.

It's not that he "shouldn't". Rather, many businesses cannot afford to both pay teenage employees $20/h, and also to not raise the prices. Some businesses can raise prices just fine, but others are not able to, as the customers will stop buying at higher price point. For example, if all groceries doubled their food prices, I'd still buy food (though maybe less than before), and likely spend more on it than I used to. However, if all restaurants doubled their prices, I'd pretty much stop eating out altogether, except special occasions.

edit: talk to any large employer and ask them about employing the younger generation. All of them will say they have no work ethic and sit on their phones the whole time. You know what else, they think they should be paid $100k/hr and be millionaires...so try managing a bunch of people with that attitude and try not to go crazy. These companies are now reaching out to the older crowd for which they used to discriminate against because the young people suck.

Also, as others have pointed out, teenagers tend to be less reliable employees. One part of that is that they don't need the job, at least in an "I might starve and be homeless if I get fired" sense. Another part is that if they're only working for the summer, they're unlikely to have time to become exemplary employees.

As a society, I agree it makes sense for teenagers to be able to pay for their own education with reasonable work. As a business, I don't think I would see that as my problem to solve directly, and probably not one I could even afford to fix even if I wanted to.

The average in-state tuition in the US (so sticking to the cheaper side) is $10,440/year. There's roughly 10 weeks of summer break, so 400 hours of work assuming a 40 hour work week. You need to make $26/hr after taxes and save every penny of your paycheck to afford that tuition bill. Average out of state tuition is $26,820/year; you'd need to make $67/hr after taxes to pay for that over summer break.

Again, those are after-tax numbers, so you'd have to make north of $30/hour pre-tax to be able to pay for in-state tuition. I just don't see that happening.

Those megacorps do everything they can to pay as little taxes as possible and get as much money out of the country as they can in the form of off-shore corporations that hold the trademarks for said corp, the US subsidiary of which pays it massive 'licensing' fees.

They're also the worst at keeping money within a local economy. They use other large corporations as much as possible for 'efficiency', but it has the side effect of meaning that said business doesn't spend money for services anywhere in the local economy. Joe Drain Buster doesn't get business from Five Guys having a grease clog; some nation-wide plumbing services company does. Maybe they contract out Joe Drain Buster, but not before taking their cut.

It gets worse. The larger the employer the easier it is for that employer to grift the local, county, state, and federal government for freebies, tax breaks, eminent domain gimmes, friendly legislation and regulations, etc.

Witness: Amazon and Walmart. Companies that generated a handful of people with unimaginable wealth who fight tooth and nail to treat their employees like shit.

Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $200BN as of a month ago. The average network for a resident of Mississippi is slightly over $17,000. That means it would take roughly 11.5M Mississippi residents to equal his net worth.

Mississippi has 3M residents.

They will raise prices because there are no competitors and lower wages because there are no alternatives. They will collude. They will extract the maximum economic value out of every community that they are in. Enjoy your nothing

sorry, I thought the store was open until it closed down and posted its reasons?

The problem with following the don't raise wages strategy and wait for your competitor to do it is if they outlast you - you reach the have to close position first.

>By not raising wages, keeping your employees and staying open you will definitely go under.

unless something changes that will make it profitable to raise wages.

>There is always convenience customers, loyal customers and opportunity customers who do not care about the 2-3% difference in price.

In a small margins business this might not be enough to keep you afloat.

There is a legal concept called "due diligence" where a party to a contract is expected to take reasonable steps to know what they're doing.

Googling "starting salaries for [my major]" is a very, very low bar for due diligence.

The posts in this thread absolving the student from making any effort whatsoever at due diligence is illustrative of the point I was making.

   Starting salary for film degree

> teenagers

Masters degree students are not teenagers.

This is what I am talking about with the entitlement society - zero responsibility assigned to the person for their poor decisions.

Specifically, stating it directly leads to wild denials, ostracisation, persecution and generally overwrought and unjustifiable discombobulation from many - as they puff about unwilling to accept it.

From a less-reticent perspective:

"On 12 July the British Government announced that it will be strongly encouraging vaccine passports for venues and events to exclude the unvaccinated from public life. Although they say this is a voluntary act of discrimination, they have explicitly stated that they retain the option to make this mandatory in the future, as they also retain the option to resume police state measures as and when they please. The French government co-incidentally announced the same measure on the same day, only going much further, barring the unvaccinated from cafes, metro etc, and mandating vaccination of health workers – which is to say, putting the unvaccinated out of work. They follow the Irish and Greek governments which have brought in similar measures, along with other countries and states worldwide.

The long-term effects of these measures will be disastrous. It will normalise the discrimination, exclusion and persecution of a section of the population.

[...]

Never underestimate how powerful the motive to retain one’s self image is. The longer this goes on and the more brutal the measures enforced the more powerful this motivation becomes. The difficulty of admitting you have been fooled is directly proportional to how much and for how long you have been fooled. Perhaps my labelling of the new regime as fascist will make it even more difficult for people to break from it, as the immediate instinct is self defence – ‘I’m not a fascist. This guy’s a lunatic, he’s calling me a fascist!’"

https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-re...

I totally agree abusive customers are a huge problem though.

Also tends to deflate the rude customer.

On the flip side, I've done enough work and seen enough to know what customer facing people put up with.

I'd really like a hybrid model that does treat the customer as valuable, then tells them to get bent as soon as they start acting unreasonable.

And we're not obligated to provide them with people desperate enough to work their shit jobs either.

but anyway, for those who do collect unemployment, job search requirements are in effect now. unemployment offices are requiring workers to apply to jobs and document their search. they cross-reference with employers and will actually revoke unemployment if job offers are declined. if restaurants still can't hire staff under these forced conditions, it's because they are simply worse than other jobs available, and perhaps even worse than no income.

The owner is under paying for the labor and the customer, in turn, is over paying for the labor.

This is due to information asymmetry.

The employer is only paying the legal minimum, in the case of tipped wages in the U.S., $2.13. The employee is expected to make up the rest of the federal/state minimum wage in tips. But that's what they're incentivized to do. If you've got a short sighted view of finances, you may think that if you manage to cut costs, that always translates to extra profit. And if you're paying a dime more than minimum wage, you can cut that cost. (Also, this is why a lot of restaurants fail, most people who run them shouldn't be running a business)

The customer is obligated by social pressure and what not to tip for the service provided. However, people in the service industry are cagey about how much they pull in, actual effort required, etc. in order to get people to tip more and more. Originally, tipping was around 10% and now we see people trying to promote the idea that a baseline tip is closer to 25%.

So the customer has no clue as to how to price the labor that's been provided to them and it is in the servers' best interest to exaggerate as much as possible to get the most tip possible. That's what they're incentivized to do.

And inbetween it all, you have the servers. Who don't want to let go of the tipping model because they can manage to get paid better than what the actual service would be worth in a fairer market.

yeah if you check the hourly earning chart, the hourly wage required for a dual earner household with 2 adults and 3 kids is only $32.29/hr.

Doesn't seem to be.

>[The living wage model] does not provide a financial means for planning for the future through savings and investment or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g., provisions for retirement or home purchases).

https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/Living-Wage-Users-Guide...