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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

At least tips are expected. It's the 5% "employee support fee" that annoys me because it's a hidden fee, and it's not clear how it relates to tips.

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It's related to tips in that, I'm gonna deduct it from the tip if they pull that on me.

Never heard of that, sounds funny. :-)

There's a restaurant I've given up on for one of those fees. It's not on their PDF menus at all, nor the HTML ones. Just a nice little surprise when you go there. Fuck you. Pay your employees out of my bill, or go out of business, but don't tell me I owe 4% more for "kitchen support".

Much like restaurants that want to charge the customer for credit-card fees. Oh, you want to do that? I'll show you why restaurants were among the first to adopt credit payments even with merchant fees: because when you pay cash, some employees steal. And they steal a lot.

The card costs them money to process, so they tack on approximately that amount. And you can opt out by paying cash. Seems fair, though maybe the card price should be default.

Cash costs money to process, too. I want the manager to have to run to the bank several times a day to get fresh change and deposit cash, tearing out their hair from frustration, for imposing such an annoying requirement.

Oh that cash isn't going to the bank, at least not all of it.

No, no, definitely not. I'm talking about the parts they can't hide as easily.

Cash is also preferred in food service, because it's easier to cheat on taxes. When you're paid a tip in cash, with no paper trail of what that amount was, the reported earnings on the tax form is merely a suggestion to tell the truth.

My favorite local restaurant has a 3% card surcharge and a 10% cash discount, so like, 14.4% card surcharge. Yeah, probably for tax reasons. (This isn't why they're my favorite, their food is just really good.)

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