Grocery Delivery in the Boonies

And regardless of cost and how much they deserve it. Meanwhile, they need to build up big government to support services and a few people benefiting from government contacts.

For example, our local democratic leaders are setting up hotels for the homeless, at estimated cost of 1 million each. Of course, much of the money helping the people helping the homeless.

Tipping in bars in nightclubs is OK IMO everyone know these places are pay-to-play it's not much different than strip club. Tipping in restaurants is just an annoying custom that serves no function other than to be a way employers try to save a few bucks even before the Trump administration tried to make it legal to outright take from the staff.

"FACT: Raising pay for the kitchen means raising prices. Yet in the markets that the tip-pooling rule would apply to, restaurants already are raising prices?sometimes to levels that customers have rejected?to fund ?raises? for highly-tipped service staff, because of the lack of a tip credit.

Restaurants run on notoriously-thin profit margins and have a customer base that's notoriously price-sensitive."

LOL Forbes tends to react with amazement that employees expect to be paid for their services. "But if we have to pay our staff a livable it means we can't make enough profit to do businesses"

Forbes acts like businesses have a divine right to exist, no matter how much they suck at it. Oh my God, someone wants to open another shitty restaurant, it's the second coming of Christ.

Meanwhile, on "Hotel Hell":

If we have food delivered, the tip is pre-paid on the app. I chase the guy down the street and give them another $5 or $10 in cash. They seem to appreciate that. I suppose I am abusing them. I should stop.

The gigantic-ness of our twice-a-year bonus does depend on how things are going, which they all influence. Should I stop doing bonuses too?

Are you a government worker? I mean, "worker."

Service compris is organized theft of tips. Leaving cash solves that problem, and has tax advantages.

It is unfortunate that we only tip the people we come in contact with. Some places pool and share tips with the cooks and such, but tip pooling is legally complex in the US for some odd reason.

Well, everything is legally complex.

So they don't have to be helpful, one-on-one, to real people, themselves.

Three months driving around France. Some waiters were great, some not.

Why on earth would you think they got the 15% service charge as though it was some kind of bonus or equivalent of a tip? The point of a "service charge" is what the restaurant charges because they have to pay the waiters to do their job. It is only noted on menus in case people think the price of the food or drinks is higher than they expect, or so that they know tips are not required or expected.

The restaurant gets the 15% service charge. Then it pays the waiters - just like it pays the cooks, the washer-ups, the manager, and everyone else who works there. And just like everyone else, it costs the employer significantly more per employee than just their pay - there are all sorts of taxes, insurance, uniforms, and other costs. (And if you live in a backwards country without a proper health service, the employer also has to pay for that.) The restaurant also has to make a profit. What is left after that, in a reasonably well-run restaurant, is going to be aggregated over time (so that waiters get the same pay for the same time at work, regardless of how busy the place is).

tirsdag den 24. november 2020 kl. 22.43.17 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

not the same and you know that

not the same and you know that

no I never worked for the government unless you count paying taxes

Where are the itemized prices for the food, the rent, the garbage collection, and the owner's girlfriend?

Service compris is theft of tips by the restaurant owners, and guilt reduction for the patrons.

More often, the owners keep it. It amounts to "no tipping needed."

On all the occasions when I have asked serving staff which they prefer, they have said they don't mind.

There might be several reasons for that, ranging from financial incompetence through to their being "downmarked" during performance evaluations due to "too many" not leaving /visible/ tips.

Here, tip pooling appears common in chain restaurants.

That's reasonable, when considering that my satisfaction is due to serving staff, kitchen staff, cleaning staff etc

And morally and ethically complex.

Yup. Exploitation of the workers by those with capital.

But then "underpaying" staff is the same.

Paying a fair wage for a fair day's work is preferable.

Read up on life in the middle ages, when the workers weren't exploited by greedy capitalists. Or more modern cases, Cuba and Venezuela, China under Mao, USSR under Stalin. Paradise.

The economic reality is that few businesses (or farms) can afford to pay more than the competitive wages, and those wages are determined by the market for labor. More immigrants willing to work cheap drive down the prevailing wages, and any business that wants to survive has to pay that much.

Well, not "any" business, but most. Margins are slim for most restaurants, and labor is more expensive than the food.

That's it, yes. If you have a system where the money staff take home /depends/ on tips - however they are distributed - you do not have a fair wage for fair day's work. You get different people doing the same job, and getting different pay, or the same people doing the same job on different days and getting different pay. Staff no longer have predictability or reliability.

I guess it is an example of a more deep-seated cultural difference between the USA and Scandinavian countries. (The UK is, as usual, kind of in the middle - with Scotland trying desperately to be more like Scandinavia, and England moving towards the USA or just down the drain, whichever is least effort for them at the time.)

Here, when you get a job, you can rely on it. You know you have the job

- you have a contract, you have rights, you have guarantees about your position, your responsibilities, and your pay. The employer can't take that away without due notice (typically 3 months at least). You have stability and predictability in life.

In parts of the USA (as always, laws vary) you can be a loyal, hard-working employee for years and then get fired on the spot for talking too loud when the boss has a hangover. And then you no longer have an income, or health care, and shortly afterwards you have no home.

Working for tips is just bringing this random variance from something that might happen at any time, to something that happens all the time.

George Monbiot can be a twit at times, but he has an interesting perspective in this article:

The key concepts are...

Where there is chaos, the government will multiply it. Where people are pushed to the brink, it will shove them over. Boris Johnson ignored the pleas of businesses and politicians across the UK ? especially in Northern Ireland ? to extend the Brexit transition process. ... Broadly speaking, there are two dominant forms of capitalist enterprise. The first could be described as housetrained capitalism. It seeks an accommodation with the administrative state, and benefits from stability, predictability and the regulations that exclude dirtier and rougher competitors. It can coexist with a tame and feeble form of democracy.

The second could be described as warlord capitalism. This sees all restraints on accumulation ? including taxes, regulations and the public ownership of essential services ? as illegitimate. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of profit-making. Its justifying ideology was formulated by Friedrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty and by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. These books sweep away social complexity and other people?s interests. They fetishise something they call ?liberty?, which turns out to mean total freedom for plutocrats, at society?s expense. ... Brexit represents an astonishing opportunity for warlord capitalism. It is a chance not just to rip up specific rules, which it overtly aims to do, but also to tear down the uneasy truce between capitalism and democracy under which public protections in general are created and enforced. In Steve Bannon?s words, it enables ?the deconstruction of the administrative state?. Chaos is not a threat but an opportunity for money?s warlords.

the Leave.EU campaign, explained that after Brexit: ?We will get out there and we will become incredibly successful because we will be insecure again. And insecurity is fantastic.?

People often mix up the state, and the government. A strong state is a good thing - a strong government, much less so. A prime reason that Scandinavian countries score high on almost all measurements of success, is that their governments are weak - they are always coalitions and compromises. That means they don't do much, and rarely make big changes. There simply isn't the same scope for such monumental screw-ups as the UK has had with Brexit from its origins in the desperation of a failing government, to its future consequences with the break-up of the UK. A strong state, on the other hand, is something people can rely on - both inside the country, and for other countries.

The job of a government is like that of a manager in a company or department - their purpose is to make sure everyone else has the resources they need to do their jobs and live their lives, and otherwise keep out of the way. The problems come when bozos like Boris and Trump think they should be in charge, and that everyone else exists to let them do what they want.

In California, an employer can fire an employee for any reason, or for no reason, and escort them out. And an employee can walk out at any instant and never come back. That's nicely symmetric.

I fire people by email. Less embarassing for everyone.

Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.

Jeroen Belleman

Agreed and agreed.

Shame the UK civil service has been marginalised, as exemplified by "don't trust experts".

If you are going to do something distasteful (even if necessary), then have the guts to do it in personally, and in person.