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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

This is so ridiculous that I assume it is intentional sabotage. Isn't the whole idea behind unionization that we can get beyond tipping?

https://archive.ph/v1tpo

>In addition to an overall raise, representatives from the store are asking Apple for higher pay over a larger slate of holidays, including the day after Thanksgiving. The union is also seeking to expand vacation pay and available time off based on years of service. And it wants to extend paid bereavement leave from 10 days per occurrence to a maximum of 45 days a year and for the policy to include pets and close friends.

45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!

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Americans love pets, to the point of not getting evacuated from Hurricane Katrina when ordered to leave their pets behind. This trend has only compounded in recent decades, with the mainstreaming of emotional support animals and the like. So if bereavement can apply to non-kin friends, pets are arguably not a far stretch behind. Not to mention pets are often a substitue for children, as can be seen in cities like San Francisco.

"Isn't the whole idea behind unionization that we can get beyond tipping?"

Every time this comes up on Reddit people in the food service industry say they do not want to get rid of tips.

That's because complaints about tips are bald-faced lies. Tipped employees make much more with tips than they would otherwise, doubly so because cash tips are chronically unreported to the IRS. Income numbers are skewed across the board because the US's service industry participates in blatant tax evasion.

I think tipping is an archaic Americanism that should be replaced by living wages or family wages, as much as anyone. But, oh no, not tax irregularities from service workers.

>tax irregularities

Tax evasion*

Taxes are already progressive. You don't get to decide what you pay or don't pay, it's already incredibly little.

My impression is that for whatever wage level is provided, there will still be a vocal minority (majority?) that will demand tipping as a practice. There is a strong presumption to see it as a free boost to wages rather than just substituting an upfront price for an after-service fee.

Oh I completely understand why they like tips. I have a feeling all of these new IRS agents are going to crack down on it though. It has to be pretty easy to track now that most tipping happens digitally via the POS system.

> 45 days a year for pet bereavement? If it includes goldfish, I'm in!

This is a bad read of this.

While 45 days is ... huge, the inclusion of pets and friends is almost certainly a result of companies who refuse to let anyone grieve when their friend dies.

As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.

If some exceptional edge case comes where someone abuses the system for goldfish, that's worth the cost if I can grieve when my dog of 7 years or my best friend of 25 dies.

Sorry for your losses. On the other hand, if my employer offered 45 days of paid time off under certain conditions, I'd do my best to maximize that benefit.

There's an argument on either side - many companies/employers offer 6 months paid parental leave after a child is born (for both parents), but I haven't seen many people maximizing that benefit by having a child every 12 months.

lmao (honestly) at the humorous implication that buying a goldfish per year and mourning its demise for 9 weeks in cancun is comparable in effort or commitment to birthing and raising a child.

I am almost certain that pet bereavement will require the pet to be an emotional support animal or require some sort of proof of relationship.

If you worked for a company that actively treated you well, I imagine, in general, you'd want to treat them well in return and wouldn't exploit their kindness beyond need.

Such companies are few and far between, though. Very few. Very far between.

Does anyone maximize the use of sick days? Family care leave? Parental leave? Who is depraved enough to abuse bereavement time?

>As someone who has lost _way too many_ people in the last 18 months and only 1 of them being immediate family, having those others considered not worth mourning according to the company is just repulsive.

The judgement is not that the others are "not worth mourning", but rather that it's not worth having an employee who is going to spend a sufficiently substantial fraction of their overall tenure on bereavement leave, and at some point you have to tell them to either work or quit. Which is of course trivially true, eg. the goldfish case.

This gives me the vibes of a list of requests made by a committee with feel good rules where all suggestions are valid and you don't get what you don't ask for.

The marginal cost of putting a tipping screen in the payment flow is close to zero. If one person tips for the whole year, it's pure profit.

Yes, it might annoy customers, but I have a hard time buying the idea that people will go buy a Samsung phone because Apple stores ask for a tip.

I've seen online checkout pages for e-commerce stores asking for tips now. Not even for custom products or commissioned art or anything but just straight-up factory made products like motorcycle parts and electronic goods.

There are always marginal customers who are barely hanging on, and already angry with Apple for whatever reason, and seeing a tip screen may finally throw them over the edge. Imagine an example where someone came in for a warranty repair, got told it had some very minor water damage, and so it was not covered, and now has to pay $499 for a repair they feel should have been free (let's assume the water "damage" has nothing to do with the issue) and the payment screen for the repair says "add a tip?" I could see that person never buying a new iPhone, or at least never stepping foot in that store again.

While the scenario you’ve outlined can- certainly happen, I think some studies have to be carried out to really determine tipping as the final insult to tip irate customers over the line into lost business.

Personally I don’t regard it as such a severe affront. To me, modern payment flows are such a bloated mess of screens that I’m half surprised Apple Stores don’t already have a tipping screens. If it wasn’t tipping, it’d be an appeal to donate to the St. Jude’s Children Hospital or to the Ronald McDonald fund. When supermarkets and fast food joints have all of these extra payment screens, a tipping screen at an electronics retailer doesn’t trigger me any more intensely.

Is this right? No. But it’s the state of payments, and it’s easy enough to tune out. Just another way how every vendor is trying to squeeze every last drop from consumers.

The marginal benefit of putting a tipping screen in the payment flow is close to zero. If one person during the whole year avoids the creepy store that demands tips, it's pure loss.

(iphones can be purchased online, btw)

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