15 ms·

I'd prefer a serverless restaurant even if the price was exactly the same as with the full-service. It's like the difference between an old-style Taxi and an U

I'd prefer a serverless restaurant even if the price was exactly the same as with the full-service. It's like the difference between an old-style Taxi and an Uber, with the latter you just get up and go when you're done. The whole dance of flagging down the server to request the bill, get the bill, oops the server disappeared before you could pull out your card, wait for 10 minutes while they are off exploring Narnia in the kitchen cupboards. Finally they come to take the card and disappear again, what should have taken 30 seconds is now at 15 min+, hope you're not missing your show... ah, finally they're back! Now try to figure out the tip line, with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in your head while your house is burning down. Waitstaff-less high-end restaurants expand the audience and frequency of visits of people who can now enjoy these better-than-Chipotle dining experiences. Much like Uber, which doesn't only cannibalize existing providers but actually creates a whole new category of short rides that you would never have previously considered using a Taxi for.

67_45 8y ago
This is not a substantive comment to make but calculating a tip is very easy. 15 percent of course is that standard amount. That is 10 percent plus 5 percent. Finding ten percent is as easy as moving the decimal over one place. If the bill is 15.69 ten percent of that is one dollar and 56 cents. Call it 1.50. we know that five percent is half of ten, so just divide that number in half and add it. So half of 1.50 is .75 and 1.50 plus .75 is 2.25. it's very easy.
- mjevans 8y ago
  Part of the problem here is the 'tradition' of tips being a portion of the staff's wage. I'd prefer to see the 'tip' build in to the prices, workers paid a living wage, and any tip being purely an optional thing for great service.
  - refurb 8y ago
    I think if you asked a lot of server’s they prefer the below-minimum wage based plus tips to a “living wage”. I know plenty of servers who pull in an equivalent hourly wage of $30 on a good night. They’d get screwed if tips went away and they were paid a living wage of $20 per hour.
    - mjevans 8y ago
      There are also the performers that do very well, compared to the vast swaths of starving artist types. If there is a minimum wage, no field should have an exception for it; that includes the labor working at places that aren't having a busy night with expensive meals. This is also about benefiting the customers; simple transparent pricing. No variable things added later. I also want /taxes/ to be included in the advertised price (at least on the local menus; national / widely targeted ads should include large text disclaimers)
      - cglace 8y ago
        They get paid minimum wage if their wage + tips do not equal minimum wage.
        mjevans 8y ago
        My customer facing time was in a different industry, HOWEVER, that is not what I heard. The jist was that the /minimum/ wage was what the worker was required to take home, tips inclusive, and that if they couldn't clear that bar (the restaurant had to pay them more) they were retrained and/or otherwise moved around until they either could or quit on their own.
        cglace 8y ago
        Sure, they may be fired or moved around. However it's the law that they must make at least minimum wage for the hours worked. https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
    - 8y ago
- Retric 8y ago
  Except you did not actually calculate 15% which would be 2.35.
  - 67_45 8y ago
    That was intentional when I rounded off 6 cents.
    - Retric 8y ago
      You mean 10 cents. A little more than 6 * 1.5
- hsitz 8y ago
  Maybe it's because I'm in the 50+ age category, but I think tips are confusing for a different reason. Yes, of course, it's trivial to calculate a percentage of an amount. The confusion is in deciding what percentage to give. 15% - 20% is standard, and always has been, for a full service, sit down restaurant. The tip makes some sense, based on the service given to you, some level of tip being roughly commensurate with the amount of service. But what percentage am I supposed to tip in a restaurant where I order at a counter, bus my own table, and merely have someone bring the order to my table? (FWIW, some McDonalds now do this, yet nobody would ever tip at McDonalds.) What about if they come around and fill my water? What if I order at a counter but they still bus my table? Moreover, in many places (coffee shops, ice cream shops) there is no wait service at all, the person at the counter merely draws a coffee or scoops some ice cream, yet tips are apparently still expected. Am I really supposed to tip 15% just for someone to scoop me an ice cream cone? Which leads me to another question that has bothered me since way back in the day: Why are bartenders tipped so richly simply for pouring a drink? 15-20% has long been standard for full-service. For lesser service I don't understand why anybody would be expected to tip the same amount. Am I missing something? I gather the younger generation might not think of things in these terms, but why not?
  - refurb 8y ago
    When i’m doing all the work and someone at the counter just hands me food, they get a token $1 tip. If everything goes well.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I’m surprised that you are 50+ and are saying 15-20% “has always” been the standard for sit down full service. I am 40+ and distinctly remember when it was 10%. Then little by little it seemed to morph into 10-15%, then 10%ers were seen as cheap and it was 15%. Then some restaurants would “suggest” 15-18%. Now, just yesterday I was in a restaurant where they pre-calculated 18%, 19%, and 20%. It’s been inflating all my life, for no logical, discernible reason.
    - baby 8y ago
      Simpler: never tip a percentage. Tip a fixed amount. It makes no sense to me to pay more because I ordered a more expensive dish.
- austenallred 8y ago
  ...your math is wrong, so maybe it's not that easy after all
  - 67_45 8y ago
    How? My math is wrong or you disagree with rounding off 6 cents? You infuriate me. Your vague dismissal of my comment adds nothing to anything and it is wrong. The steps I outlined are totally mathematically sound. How could you possibly read that and say "the math is wrong?" How? Do you say the math is wrong to anyone who rounds numbers? You have caused me to become insane How is this flagged? Can a mod please remove this flag?
- cpeterso 8y ago
  I approximate a 20% tip by rounding up the (post-tax) total to the next $5 increment and then dividing by 5, e.g. $123.45 bill -> $25 tip. Alternately, in cities with ~8-10% sales tax, you can double the sales tax and round up.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    Why all this work? Just multiply by two and move the decimal to the left. 54 -> 108 -> 10.8. 37 -> 74 -> 7.4.
    - cpeterso 8y ago
      Everyone's brain works differently. :) I find division towards smaller numbers easier than multiplication towards larger numbers.
- biztos 8y ago
  15 percent is most definitely not the standard amount in San Francisco, unless you want some stink-eye with your dessert. In fact I don't think there's anywhere in California where 15 percent is considered normal anymore. Where I'm from (small town) nobody will be offended if you tip 15%, because you're more likely to be poor than cheap. But even there, 15% is undertipping in 2018. The math is the smallest part of the tipping problem, IMO.
- hakcermani 8y ago
  Personally for me easier is looking at the halfway point between 10% and 20%. So for 15.69 it would approximately be between 1.5 and 3.1 (1.5 + 1.6/2) = 2.3
quadrangle 8y ago
I'm not a user or support of Uber as a company, but I appreciate everything else about your post. The bizarre dysfunctional tipping tradition has so much wrong with it besides the math. Better that all employees just actually get paid reasonably to start with.
- sampo 8y ago
  The word on r/uber is that in NYC if you don't cash tip your uber drivers, you start getting 1-star passenger ratings, and some drivers don't take rides from passengers rated under 4.6 stars.
  - thematt 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure drivers don't get to see your tip until after they have rated you.
    - newacct500 8y ago
      Hence why its based on cash tips
  - walterbell 8y ago
    Next step: bot that tracks real-time history of your Uber ratings, determines when you have received a 1-star rating for "no cash tips" and creates a blacklist of drivers.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Right, but part of that is because Uber pays so little to the drivers.
    - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
      And it is in no way the responsibility of the passengers to rectify this. It is a symptom of a broken system.
smelendez 8y ago
There's a restaurant very near me. It's a New York-style pizza place: its name is Bob's Pizza (the name isn't really Bob), and it serves pizza by the slice or pie along with Italianish sandwiches and a few salads. They have great, reasonably priced dine-in lunch specials, e.g. a slice, small salad and soda. They have table service. I would go there much more frequently if they had counter service. The servers are very friendly and generally attentive, but the table service aspect just makes no sense, especially at lunchtime when it's all solo diners with limited time.
refurb 8y ago
Was recently in terminal 3 of Newark airport and they had a bunch of table seating throughout the airport with tablets mounted at each seat. You could order food through the tablet from the restaurants close by. I loved the experience. You could browse the menu, fine tune an order, get a drink, then pay (with tip) on your credit card. Someone then brought your food to you in under 10 min. Seems simple enough, but Jesus it was a way better experience than a normal airport restaurant. Avoided all those problems you mentioned.
- danielharan 8y ago
  Do you remember how many language options there were? Adding many seems like a really good reason to replace humans with tech.
  - phil21 8y ago
    They have these in MSP, and it may be a bit of an exaggeration but basically "all of them" - at least enough to quiz my teenage geography nerd on flags for a minute or two. I have no idea how good or extensive those translations are, but assuming these are OTG terminals it's a pretty tightly integrated vertical so I imagine pretty good.
- sampo 8y ago
  Some of the tablet screens were really smudgy, though. So kinda gross.
- xenomachina 8y ago
  Did it ask for the tip amount before you got your service? Doordash does this, which I always find kind of backwards. Just the point of a tip to reward better service?
kylec 8y ago
I completely agree. I'm really glad more and more places are experimenting with getting rid of servers because it has a huge potential upside for the customer experience, as well as saving both the customer and the restaurant money.
gnadx 8y ago
What kinds of restaurants do you go to where these types of problems with waitstaff are common? Even in Australia, where we don't tip, it's never this bad.
Jach 8y ago
Red Robin has had the tablet thing for a few years now, you pay on the tablet and it lights up green when you're good to go, you can just leave after that. That sounds like your main complaint; personally I've eaten at enough chinese places that getting my bill from a sluggish staff and getting out has never been a big problem... I want the tablet expanded to the rest of the experience at Red Robin (and elsewhere) though -- tap my order, tap for refills, things delivered and taken away via robot... Maybe one day.
- DrScump 8y ago
  Chili's has a table kiosk. It would be fine but for the fact that many deviations (including Chili's own gift cards) fail without explanation, requiring manager intervention. And the manager inevitably fails to process the promos (free drink or chips), requiring another intervention (e.g. splitting the promo items to another check, then comping it). Every single egift card fails. And the bonus cards don't even have QRcodes, and there is no way for the patron to enter them. It's just stupid.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
There is a middle ground. In Australia, the standard for a nice restaurant is that you get full table service, and when you're finished, you just walk up to the front counter to pay. That way you get the best of both worlds.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Same in Japan.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  Can't you just always do that anyway? Especially if you invite lots of people and don't want to handle lots of money infront of your guests... (and you don't use cards)
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    In many sit-down restaurants, the main counter is just for the host to seat customers and you have to pay your server directly.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  For some reason that's a thing in America but mostly for breakfast places (Original Pancake House, for example).
closeparen 8y ago
If the wait staff had smartphones with Square, they could save two roundtrips to the table. Those readers aren’t even expensive.
Gatsky 8y ago
Be that as it may, the point of the article is that San Francisco, and by extension other popular cities that have undergone real estate booms, will eventually turn into largely empty concrete shells populated by increasingly older elites who despite their wealth won't be able to buy a bagel or dry clean their coat anymore because of unfavorable labor market economics.
- Latteland 8y ago
  On top of that, people will also not be employed anywhere doing those jobs, eventually. just like there aren't really travel agents anymore.
notyourday 8y ago
> Waitstaff-less high-end restaurants expand the audience and frequency of visits of people who can now enjoy these better-than-Chipotle dining experiences. Better-than-Chipotle dining experience is not a definition of a high-end restaurant. You at most hit the bistro-class.
lostinLA 8y ago
Wow. This comment is super hilarious!

67_45 8y ago

This is not a substantive comment to make but calculating a tip is very easy. 15 percent of course is that standard amount. That is 10 percent plus 5 percent. Finding ten percent is as easy as moving the decimal over one place. If the bill is 15.69 ten percent of that is one dollar and 56 cents. Call it 1.50. we know that five percent is half of ten, so just divide that number in half and add it. So half of 1.50 is .75 and 1.50 plus .75 is 2.25. it's very easy.

mjevans 8y ago
Part of the problem here is the 'tradition' of tips being a portion of the staff's wage. I'd prefer to see the 'tip' build in to the prices, workers paid a living wage, and any tip being purely an optional thing for great service.
- refurb 8y ago
  I think if you asked a lot of server’s they prefer the below-minimum wage based plus tips to a “living wage”. I know plenty of servers who pull in an equivalent hourly wage of $30 on a good night. They’d get screwed if tips went away and they were paid a living wage of $20 per hour.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    There are also the performers that do very well, compared to the vast swaths of starving artist types. If there is a minimum wage, no field should have an exception for it; that includes the labor working at places that aren't having a busy night with expensive meals. This is also about benefiting the customers; simple transparent pricing. No variable things added later. I also want /taxes/ to be included in the advertised price (at least on the local menus; national / widely targeted ads should include large text disclaimers)
    - cglace 8y ago
      They get paid minimum wage if their wage + tips do not equal minimum wage.
      - mjevans 8y ago
        My customer facing time was in a different industry, HOWEVER, that is not what I heard. The jist was that the /minimum/ wage was what the worker was required to take home, tips inclusive, and that if they couldn't clear that bar (the restaurant had to pay them more) they were retrained and/or otherwise moved around until they either could or quit on their own.
        cglace 8y ago
        Sure, they may be fired or moved around. However it's the law that they must make at least minimum wage for the hours worked. https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm
  - 8y ago
Retric 8y ago
Except you did not actually calculate 15% which would be 2.35.
- 67_45 8y ago
  That was intentional when I rounded off 6 cents.
  - Retric 8y ago
    You mean 10 cents. A little more than 6 * 1.5
hsitz 8y ago
Maybe it's because I'm in the 50+ age category, but I think tips are confusing for a different reason. Yes, of course, it's trivial to calculate a percentage of an amount. The confusion is in deciding what percentage to give. 15% - 20% is standard, and always has been, for a full service, sit down restaurant. The tip makes some sense, based on the service given to you, some level of tip being roughly commensurate with the amount of service. But what percentage am I supposed to tip in a restaurant where I order at a counter, bus my own table, and merely have someone bring the order to my table? (FWIW, some McDonalds now do this, yet nobody would ever tip at McDonalds.) What about if they come around and fill my water? What if I order at a counter but they still bus my table? Moreover, in many places (coffee shops, ice cream shops) there is no wait service at all, the person at the counter merely draws a coffee or scoops some ice cream, yet tips are apparently still expected. Am I really supposed to tip 15% just for someone to scoop me an ice cream cone? Which leads me to another question that has bothered me since way back in the day: Why are bartenders tipped so richly simply for pouring a drink? 15-20% has long been standard for full-service. For lesser service I don't understand why anybody would be expected to tip the same amount. Am I missing something? I gather the younger generation might not think of things in these terms, but why not?
- refurb 8y ago
  When i’m doing all the work and someone at the counter just hands me food, they get a token $1 tip. If everything goes well.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  I’m surprised that you are 50+ and are saying 15-20% “has always” been the standard for sit down full service. I am 40+ and distinctly remember when it was 10%. Then little by little it seemed to morph into 10-15%, then 10%ers were seen as cheap and it was 15%. Then some restaurants would “suggest” 15-18%. Now, just yesterday I was in a restaurant where they pre-calculated 18%, 19%, and 20%. It’s been inflating all my life, for no logical, discernible reason.
  - baby 8y ago
    Simpler: never tip a percentage. Tip a fixed amount. It makes no sense to me to pay more because I ordered a more expensive dish.
austenallred 8y ago
...your math is wrong, so maybe it's not that easy after all
- 67_45 8y ago
  How? My math is wrong or you disagree with rounding off 6 cents? You infuriate me. Your vague dismissal of my comment adds nothing to anything and it is wrong. The steps I outlined are totally mathematically sound. How could you possibly read that and say "the math is wrong?" How? Do you say the math is wrong to anyone who rounds numbers? You have caused me to become insane How is this flagged? Can a mod please remove this flag?
cpeterso 8y ago
I approximate a 20% tip by rounding up the (post-tax) total to the next $5 increment and then dividing by 5, e.g. $123.45 bill -> $25 tip. Alternately, in cities with ~8-10% sales tax, you can double the sales tax and round up.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  Why all this work? Just multiply by two and move the decimal to the left. 54 -> 108 -> 10.8. 37 -> 74 -> 7.4.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    Everyone's brain works differently. :) I find division towards smaller numbers easier than multiplication towards larger numbers.
biztos 8y ago
15 percent is most definitely not the standard amount in San Francisco, unless you want some stink-eye with your dessert. In fact I don't think there's anywhere in California where 15 percent is considered normal anymore. Where I'm from (small town) nobody will be offended if you tip 15%, because you're more likely to be poor than cheap. But even there, 15% is undertipping in 2018. The math is the smallest part of the tipping problem, IMO.
hakcermani 8y ago
Personally for me easier is looking at the halfway point between 10% and 20%. So for 15.69 it would approximately be between 1.5 and 3.1 (1.5 + 1.6/2) = 2.3

quadrangle 8y ago

I'm not a user or support of Uber as a company, but I appreciate everything else about your post. The bizarre dysfunctional tipping tradition has so much wrong with it besides the math. Better that all employees just actually get paid reasonably to start with.

sampo 8y ago
The word on r/uber is that in NYC if you don't cash tip your uber drivers, you start getting 1-star passenger ratings, and some drivers don't take rides from passengers rated under 4.6 stars.
- thematt 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure drivers don't get to see your tip until after they have rated you.
  - newacct500 8y ago
    Hence why its based on cash tips
- walterbell 8y ago
  Next step: bot that tracks real-time history of your Uber ratings, determines when you have received a 1-star rating for "no cash tips" and creates a blacklist of drivers.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Right, but part of that is because Uber pays so little to the drivers.
  - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
    And it is in no way the responsibility of the passengers to rectify this. It is a symptom of a broken system.

smelendez 8y ago

There's a restaurant very near me. It's a New York-style pizza place: its name is Bob's Pizza (the name isn't really Bob), and it serves pizza by the slice or pie along with Italianish sandwiches and a few salads. They have great, reasonably priced dine-in lunch specials, e.g. a slice, small salad and soda. They have table service. I would go there much more frequently if they had counter service. The servers are very friendly and generally attentive, but the table service aspect just makes no sense, especially at lunchtime when it's all solo diners with limited time.

refurb 8y ago

Was recently in terminal 3 of Newark airport and they had a bunch of table seating throughout the airport with tablets mounted at each seat. You could order food through the tablet from the restaurants close by. I loved the experience. You could browse the menu, fine tune an order, get a drink, then pay (with tip) on your credit card. Someone then brought your food to you in under 10 min. Seems simple enough, but Jesus it was a way better experience than a normal airport restaurant. Avoided all those problems you mentioned.

danielharan 8y ago
Do you remember how many language options there were? Adding many seems like a really good reason to replace humans with tech.
- phil21 8y ago
  They have these in MSP, and it may be a bit of an exaggeration but basically "all of them" - at least enough to quiz my teenage geography nerd on flags for a minute or two. I have no idea how good or extensive those translations are, but assuming these are OTG terminals it's a pretty tightly integrated vertical so I imagine pretty good.
sampo 8y ago
Some of the tablet screens were really smudgy, though. So kinda gross.
xenomachina 8y ago
Did it ask for the tip amount before you got your service? Doordash does this, which I always find kind of backwards. Just the point of a tip to reward better service?

kylec 8y ago

I completely agree. I'm really glad more and more places are experimenting with getting rid of servers because it has a huge potential upside for the customer experience, as well as saving both the customer and the restaurant money.

gnadx 8y ago

What kinds of restaurants do you go to where these types of problems with waitstaff are common? Even in Australia, where we don't tip, it's never this bad.

Jach 8y ago

Red Robin has had the tablet thing for a few years now, you pay on the tablet and it lights up green when you're good to go, you can just leave after that. That sounds like your main complaint; personally I've eaten at enough chinese places that getting my bill from a sluggish staff and getting out has never been a big problem... I want the tablet expanded to the rest of the experience at Red Robin (and elsewhere) though -- tap my order, tap for refills, things delivered and taken away via robot... Maybe one day.

DrScump 8y ago
Chili's has a table kiosk. It would be fine but for the fact that many deviations (including Chili's own gift cards) fail without explanation, requiring manager intervention. And the manager inevitably fails to process the promos (free drink or chips), requiring another intervention (e.g. splitting the promo items to another check, then comping it). Every single egift card fails. And the bonus cards don't even have QRcodes, and there is no way for the patron to enter them. It's just stupid.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

There is a middle ground. In Australia, the standard for a nice restaurant is that you get full table service, and when you're finished, you just walk up to the front counter to pay. That way you get the best of both worlds.

CaptainZapp 8y ago
Same in Japan.
Double_a_92 8y ago
Can't you just always do that anyway? Especially if you invite lots of people and don't want to handle lots of money infront of your guests... (and you don't use cards)
- jhbadger 8y ago
  In many sit-down restaurants, the main counter is just for the host to seat customers and you have to pay your server directly.
jhbadger 8y ago
For some reason that's a thing in America but mostly for breakfast places (Original Pancake House, for example).

closeparen 8y ago

If the wait staff had smartphones with Square, they could save two roundtrips to the table. Those readers aren’t even expensive.

Gatsky 8y ago

Be that as it may, the point of the article is that San Francisco, and by extension other popular cities that have undergone real estate booms, will eventually turn into largely empty concrete shells populated by increasingly older elites who despite their wealth won't be able to buy a bagel or dry clean their coat anymore because of unfavorable labor market economics.

Latteland 8y ago
On top of that, people will also not be employed anywhere doing those jobs, eventually. just like there aren't really travel agents anymore.

notyourday 8y ago

> Waitstaff-less high-end restaurants expand the audience and frequency of visits of people who can now enjoy these better-than-Chipotle dining experiences. Better-than-Chipotle dining experience is not a definition of a high-end restaurant. You at most hit the bistro-class.

lostinLA 8y ago

Wow. This comment is super hilarious!