Thunderstorms and Margaritas | Hacker News Reader

Thunderstorms and Margaritas

jonpauluritis.com

22 pointsjppope13 comments

> Not one bartender in sight would take cash, and put it into the system in 30min when the power was back.

That's actually understandable. If they were able to do that, then they could pocket some of the cash, and so they were almost certainly told by management that if they were ever caught serving a drink without entering the order into the accounting system first, they'd be fired.

(c.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30237457)

Conversely, currently being in charge of a small to mid size organization that has customer facing parts…. We have “no internet “ and “no electricity” ways to process - at least for a time.

A large concern in a no power situation would probably have been safety / trip hazards as well.

Conversely, I know someone who was once “unable” to leave a restaurant because their power was out, and they wouldn’t let people leave who had an open bill.

> "then they could pocket some of the cash"

The bartenders can do that anytime they receive cash anyway. There is no difference.

> "they were almost certainly told by management that if they were ever caught serving a drink without entering the order into the accounting system first, they'd be fired."

No restaurant I've ever worked for would fire someone for doing their job... I've probably had this exact scenario happen 5+ times while working as a server/bartender (no electricity). I've even worked at restaurants that didn't use electronic POS systems. When the electricity goes out sometimes we take cash, sometimes we'd bust out the manual processing for credit cards (there are manual ways to process credit cards). There are many many scenarios on a daily basis where you may NEED to skip putting things into the system- e.g. you need a managerial adjustment, or you buy someone a desert for their birthday.

On the other side of the table, from the ownership/ management side... having a restaurant not operate when it is possible INCREDIBLY expensive. If an owner came in and watched people purposely not processing orders they very well might fire the staff who wouldn't do their jobs for inclement weather.

> so I nabbed 2 margaritas off the drink mat and left a $20.

Stealing two drinks because you couldn't get your way doesn't really strike me as acceptable behavior in any way. Just because you left a 20 doesn't make it any better.

It is a pretty "Karen" move.

It's also fairly likely that the Margs cost more than $10 a piece, anyway. So he stole them and stiffed the bartender's tip.

Whatta guy!

We’re don’t know so it’s impossible to judge without additional information. If it was a cheap marg bar and they cost $5 each, a $10 tip is generous and helps offset possible minor inconvenience. If it was a place where one boutique margarita costs $22, then that’s just stealing and being an asshole customer, especially if it comes out of the bartender’s wages and gets them in trouble and possibly fired. Hopefully the truth is closer to the first case!

It's stealing either way! If I come to your house, take your car, and leave a pile of cash equal to the car's fair market value in it's place, are you going to be cool with that? I think we'd all agree that's theft. It's no different with a Margarita, regardless of what it costs.

It wasn't stealing. The staff abandoned the margaritas, which I explained in the story.

I commented about this in another couple of places... the margaritas were $7.50 each, Tip would be ~33%. The margaritas were abandoned- I wasn't writing that part in 70pt font because that wasn't the point of the story. Nor was the point of the story was not about the staff being awful, which they were... I worked in food service for 6 years every job from dishwasher to manager.

The story had nothing to do with margaritas, or how a restaurant should handle a power outage.

Couple quick notes: - (2) $7.50 Margaritas, 33% tip. - per the story... they were abandoned by the staff. - Maybe I wasn't clear enough about this in the story - The bartender was being a jerk.

(2) $7.50 Margaritas, 33% tip. and per the story... they were abandoned by the staff.

Adding this to the discussion: https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/hubbard1899.pdf

What an entitled prick.

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