7 ms·

Meet the busser who’s worked at the same pancake house for 54 years

• Arnt 8y ago
  http://archive.is/xbUSC http://archive.is/xbUSC
  • huhtenberg 8y ago
    Thanks. Being in the EU, here's what I get: Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
• draw_down 8y ago
  “...and still makes minimum wage”.
  • joezydeco 8y ago
    ...with tips. The article mentions this comes to about $14/hour for Loggan. Almost every restaurant server in America makes below the minimum wage, this is allowed by law since their tips almost always take them back above the minimum. https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
    • denimnerd 8y ago
      better way of saying it is that they make at least minimum wage or tips plus small amount
    • rileymat2 8y ago
      > Almost every restaurant server in America makes below the minimum wage, this is allowed by law since their tips almost always take them back above the minimum. https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. So, every server by law does not make below minimum wage. (If this is always enforced, not sure)
      • jandrese 8y ago
        And it is a good thing restaurant owners are a highly ethical bunch that wouldn't try to stiff their employees... This would be just about the easiest form of wage theft possible, and wage theft is already a huge problem. If I were a waiter I would not put much faith in that law.
      • Bjartr 8y ago
        The enforcement isn't the problem. When I've brought this up in the past I've been informed that the common result of a server not making enough in tips to cover minimum wage is that they are fired rather than the employer choosing to continue to employ them and cover the difference.
      • imgabe 8y ago
        There are also 7 states where there is no separate tipped minimum wage. Servers make the full minimum wage + tips.
      • spacehome 8y ago
        You will hear cases of the tips+$2.13 not making the minimum wage, but it's very rare. Americans generally tip quite well.
        • pattisapu 8y ago
          This happens more frequently than most realize because of illegal tip sharing arrangements imposed by employers, who take a portion of the tips earned by the employees. Some tip pools among regularly tipped employees are okay; what is unlawful is the house or managers taking tips from tipped employees, either for themselves or to pay kitchen staff, etc. A rider buried in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 makes this practice illegal. Department of Labor regulations had already prohibited this, but now we have a statute. Further regulations are to be implemented that may complicate things. Let's see.
      • gcb0 8y ago
        guess how many days of employment a server will have after the restaurant have to fill in because he could not make the cut on tips. it will be one or two days before they are sacked, either because the place have more servers than it need for the traffic or that one server is upselling less than the others. in anyway, your argument on the letter of the law is pointless (at least on the anecdotes I know about, would love to se actual nation wide data on this), becuase it changes nothing. either you live on tips, or you are unemployed.
    • paulcole 8y ago
      This hasn’t been true in years, AFAIK. If paid wage plus tips is below federal minimum wage, the employer is required to make up the difference.
    • draw_down 8y ago
      I just thought it was an interesting omission from the headline.
• jamespetercook 8y ago
  "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." Is this their attempt at GDPR compliance?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • dazc 8y ago
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HyG0Ev78ChsJ:www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-othea-loggan-0831-story.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HyG0Ev7...
  • paulcole 8y ago
    It’s not an attempt– it is GDPR compliance. What about the page you’re seeing is not in compliance?
    • zazen 8y ago
      I'm sure that what he's saying is that this is a feeble way of complying, not that it's non-complying. The site has apparently chosen to simply block European users, and then to display the insultingly evasive and insincere corporatese message that GP quoted. If the site doesn't wish to take on the burden of complying with the GDPR in a meaningful way that allows access, they should say so honestly.
    • mjewtoo 8y ago
      The page it self might be compliant (not recording IPs/session cookies/etc) but the law still applies on any data collected on EU citizens that might be visiting abroad. That's why a GeoIP block is not a real fix.
      • bryanrasmussen 8y ago
• overcast 8y ago
  If the guy loved what he was doing, then that's more than the majority of people can say about their jobs. Money definitely does not make people any happier.
  • T2_t2 8y ago
    Do you mean does make people happier, or doesn't?
    • overcast 8y ago
      Does not. Updated!
  • tolien 8y ago
    His colleague on dialysis would probably be happier with full insurance rather than relying on Medicare though (or could maybe have got preventative treatment before needing dialysis, who knows). The focus on take-home pay misses the other parts that don’t show up on your pay slip.
  • badpun 8y ago
    I didn't get the sense that he loves what he's doing. It's more like the job is manageable and he does not see any better alternatives.
  • justin66 8y ago
    > Money definitely does not make people any happier. It would be a struggle to write something more patently ridiculous.
    • overcast 8y ago
      Thanks for your comment. Spend some time traveling the world, head to some developing countries outside of your consumer driven world. People are generally happier and satisfied with what they have. They work, they eat, they enjoy life with their families. As long as basic human needs are met, they don't feel the need for more. Check out the book, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
• komali2 8y ago
  >Jose Antonio Chambers, Loggan’s son, a Chicago police officer, told me, “My father is old school — never complains about nothing, never. My mother too. There were times it was hard to get food on the table, and they did not complain.” He said his father was great with numbers, that “if he hadn’t grown up in the South at that time, if opportunities had been there, he might have done something else. But he got this job, he did it well, held on to it, and there needs to be a lot of respect for someone like that.” I can't speak for Loggan. If he's happy, he's happy. Still, this smacks of, I dunno. I imagine an 1800s factory owner twirling his moustache while saying "mm yes, my workers, they don't put up much of a fuss at all!" Or maybe, a Lord looking across the fields and saying "the peasants have learned to keep their thoughts to themselves." I grew up poor and in the rust belt, then the south. Blue collar. This bootstrap republican mindset always baffled me. I could watch TV at Walmart, I saw how most Americans lived. When friend's parents would talk about how they proudly were putting in hour after hour at the same pay and "never raising a fuss about it," I'd wonder why. Why didn't it piss them off that their boss had a Cadillac while they took a bus, and yet they were both in the factory the same hours? Boss in air conditioning, friend's dad on the factory floor. It was like my class was getting off to how shitty their lives was. I had a fluke of genes or radical parents or something and so instead I got pissed off and made a fuckload of money and broke out, but all my old friends are still just there, stuck, masturbating to how good they are at being blue collar. And I run the risk of being labelled a liberal elite trying to claim I know better, because "they're happy, aren't they?!" Well, sure, I guess they gotta be! Now that I was lucky enough to get educated, I'm convinced it boils down to that. One of Loggan's family even suggested it as a reason he didn't seek more. "He didn't get much education, so maybe that smoothed things out for them." So I have all sorts of crazy theories about the rich defunding education to make sure the proles stay in line... There's a Peanuts single panel comic where one of the characters is sitting at a desk saying "Nobody is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."
• lerie82 8y ago
  even with tips, hes not making 14/hr. it says he could retire, i highly doubt that. hes uneducated, it says so in the article. why is there an article about an uneducated busser (and his busser family and friends) on here? wtf is going on... is this a pity article? i dont get it.
• rafiki6 8y ago
  You can tell that he's come to terms with his situation in life and lost any ambition. How hard did he have to work mentally to reach contentment? It's admirable but incredibly sad that him and many others like him didn't have much opportunity to explore their talents. It makes me think our goal as collective human society should be not to automate way people like this, but to let them live out their lives, ensure they will have what they need until they die, and look towards not repeating the mistakes of the past to have our upcoming generations have the opportunity to figure out what they are good at.
• gorpomon 8y ago
  I'm cautious about over sentimentalizing Loggan, or on the other side getting angry about his situation. He seems like a person who could be a pretty good manager, but just never wanted to take that step up. It's easy to pillory the restaurant, it's managers, or even the entire premise of the service industry itself based on this story, but I would err on the side of it being an anecdote than something to rally upon.
  • AstralStorm 8y ago
    Sure, because everyone over 40 is supposed to be a manager? What makes you think this man is or is not typical? (I'd err on the former side, "lifers" are common in many industries including restaurants.)
    • WorldMaker 8y ago
      "Lifers" used to be the American Working Class Dream. There seem to be plenty of cogs in the "gig economy" that still wish they'd have a shot at a good "lifer" job.
    • tolien 8y ago
      He might not have the skills to be a manager, but I’d like to think after the time he’s been there he could be doing a role that better uses his experience in exchange for more money/benefits than someone who started today. Hell, maybe he’d enjoy just doing something a bit less physical (says in TFA that he gets cramps in his hands). As you say, not everyone should become a manager. That doesn’t mean seniority isn’t a thing though.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• leesec 8y ago
  If he were manager for 54 years at the same restaurant, would the sentiment be much different? Just thinking out loud, it seems like a lot of the 'point' of this article is that he intentionally stopped progressing in his work, but it seems to me like a lot of people do that in a lot of ways, just not usually as a busser.