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Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now (2022)

104 points by janandonly 3y ago

genocidicbunny 3y ago
I don't like the particular focus he puts on customers not tipping well. He mentioned feeling like he's being nickel and dimed to access his tips, but that's precisely the same feeling we customers have now about tipping. I can understand why customers don't leave a big tip at a movie theater too - the ticket for the movie already paid for access to the theater, and the food prices inside are also highly marked up as is. Asking for tips on top of that is exhausting and annoying for the customers. He should have perhaps spent more time on the topic of corporate profits.
- xoa 3y ago
  So this is actually a reply to @huytersd post which I think had sort of an interesting potential angle on this I hadn't considered before and I want to steelman a bit more then the replies so far: >Meh I hate tipping culture as much as the next person but you really can’t run, for instance a dive bar, and pay the bartender $15 an hour. The foot traffic doesn’t bring in nearly enough most of the time. So I'm reading this as essentially observing that certain work roles are vastly more dynamic then others. If someone is, as the article describes, working flat out on their feet for weeks straight 8+ hours, maybe that should be $40/hour or more, many multiples of minimum wage. Conversely if it's an absolute dead period where mostly people are just sitting around (and free, and perhaps even should be encouraged, to do other enjoyable/productive stuff on their phones/tablets/computers), and the business is effectively paying for warm bodies to be there just in case, minimum wage would be fine. Tipping kind of, in a hacky way, could sort of capture this, where ideally if business is booming people get paid more (potentially lots more) and if not the wage automatically decreases. However, for all the excellent reasons everyone has pointed out in this thread and others, tipping is a pretty poor way to do it prone to abuse and failures. But a completely flat wage might not reflect the work well enough either in practice. However I think we have a better model for this: sales commissions (be it direct, real estate or the like). There pay is also tied directly to the flow of money, but while not perfect it's much more empowering. The workers are agents. What if instead of tips the law mandated that businesses could opt into a model where yes they can pay a somewhat lower basic wage, but then 25% of all sales themselves went to the workers. Nothing for customers to think about, it's built into the price, but pay also then gets tied very closely to output and revenue. Business employment costs would naturally rise and fall with the revenue flow. There'd still be lots of work for this, America's very broken health model ties in, other complaints as well. But I think that "certain industries would benefit from formalized protected dynamic pay while others are best with static pay" might have something to it, if more fair and empowering methods can be found. Though I'm no expert so there may be holes here!
- doublescoop 3y ago
  This is a theater that has waitstaff that take orders and bring food and drinks to your seat as you watch the show. Don't want to tip, even though it's baked into the wage calculation? That's fine. The author is just pointing out that market forces means that folks aren't going to stay in those jobs.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > even though it's baked into the wage calculation? Then it should be next to the price on the menu: $x + minimum $y tip.
    - Erratic6576 3y ago
      Shouldn’t they have to pay taxes if they printed it like that?
      - mynameishere 3y ago
        You can't avoid taxes by not printing something.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        I don't believe retail sales tax applies to tips in most (any?) states.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        Ekaros 3y ago
        Why not? Why shouldn't sales tax or whatever tax also be fully paid for each received tip? It is not like other business gets to avoid taxes.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        In principle: the money goes completely to the employee(s) being tipped, so it doesn’t make sense to tax the business for money it doesn’t receive.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I think it's an understandable focus: as a service worker, his most immediate recourse is to the people whose money he's handling. (That doesn't make your point about corporate profits wrong.)
  - 1000100_1000101 3y ago
    Whose money is he handling? The 1000 people whose $20 he's handling, many of which he likely won't see again for months, or the 1 boss whose $20,000 he's handling daily and sees daily. I think it would be easier to reason with one consistent boss than 1000 new strangers daily... but the boss punts it up to "corporate" and they say no. Instead of pleading with the public to tip more, everyone should just leave. See how "corporate" enjoys paying rent and movie screening fees on a theatre that brings in $0 due to having no staff. Either they shut it down, which is fine, none of the workers were happy there anyway, or they start paying a decent wage, allowing breaks, allowing meal breaks, and allowing vacation like any reasonably humane job.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I don't think this guy sees his "boss." He sees a general manager who makes roughly the same amount as he does. The point you're making is essentially correct (in terms of where the actual wealth and power is), but he still has no recourse against that power.
- m463 3y ago
  I think the tipping system is kind of a scam that the employer benefits from, then gradually feels entitled to as theirs.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Most people feel entitled to the value of their labor; tipping is merely the incidental mechanism that yields that value. Put another way: we don't have any reason to believe that the author is abstractly "pro" tipping, only that he (shrewdly, like most people) recognizes tipping as a local optima that he has no real control over as a service worker.
    - changoplatanero 3y ago
      The only way to reach the global optimum of no tipping and higher wages would be for customers to start to refuse to give tips.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. Tipping is pernicious precisely because it doesn't have a real disincentive in a culture that's already normalized it. The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change.
        jstarfish 3y ago
        > Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. [...] The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change. The day unilateral legislation gets enacted will be the day restaurants replace most of the wait staff with ordering kiosks and automated drink dispensers. Waiting on government to fix your problems is a fool's errand.
        changoplatanero 3y ago
        It indirectly punishes the business because it raises the minimum salary that workers will accept to work there
- Glyptodon 3y ago
  I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. So is tipping if you get food brought out to you by a server... with the caveat that usually this goes along with paying after you eat, which maybe isn't the case here and might lead to no tipping. I do agree a movie theater is an unusual place to complain about tips, and even though distributing them via prepaid card is complete scumfuckery, it's not the central problem.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    > I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. Actually, this kind of relates to the example in the article -- spending $100+ on tickets and food/drinks and only tipping $2. If the drinks only made up, say $20 of that, then a $2 tip is not unreasonable. That works out to 10% tip, which I think is acceptable for the amount of service provided.
    - Glyptodon 3y ago
      Yep, agree with you.
- abeppu 3y ago
  I get the frustration with tips for things that are low-touch. When you go to a place that doesn't have waiter service, or you get a prepared item to go and the cashier who you interacted with for 5 seconds turns around tablet that asks for a tip, I'm annoyed -- but this is a place that lets you order an customized cocktail, and have a waiter bring food to your seat. If you think the food is overpriced, don't order it.
- jkestner 3y ago
  This is probably why Alamo Drafthouse (that theater) now just automatically adds an 18% service fee. The point of the article is to engender empathy for the worker's situation, not necessarily to diagnose or solve the problem. But you might as well go back to "Why do we have this stupid system in the US?" and the answer is Emancipation. https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/ https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    This is better, but I still don't like these %-based fees, because they're still hiding the total fee. How many people are going to sit there, calculate how much the things they ordered will cost total, and then calculate what the service fee is going to be for their order? Few if any. So while this does eliminate the uncomfortable interaction of tipping the staff directly, it doesn't solve the 'hidden fee' aspect of it. Just raise your prices 18%. If you're terribly concerned that people are going to balk at the raised prices, you can put a little explanation in your menu: "You may have noticed our higher prices since the last time you visited. We have raised our prices and eliminated our service fee. Now the price you see on the menu is the price you pay, no tips or additional fees!"
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  The theatre gets no part of the ticket sales. For the first few weeks that the movie plays, all the proceeds from ticket sales goes to the movie studio. Every dollar to keep the doors open (and pay the staff) comes from sales at the concession stand. The last movie where theatres made a profit from the ticket sales was The Full Monty.
dogleash 3y ago
> The combination of working this front-line service industry job and my last gig running a state labor department has led to some interesting observations. It's always funny when I'm acutely reminded how disconnected well-to-do people can be.
- fishtacos 3y ago
  What is funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. Every one has their limits, but well-to-do people working low paying jobs (in his case, personal and external factors) are a good indicator how much discrepancy exists in terms of work effort v. minimally accomodating income comes their way in return. Thus the worker shortage and BS argument that people don't want to work. Blue collar work deserves a living wage. Austin, at least in the area he works in, has an average of 110,000 USD/y, yet the workers can barely survive living with roommates 40 minutes away. That's 80 minutes of your life just driving in addition to menial income - average that out and it's even worse. Texas is embarrassingly low in its minimum wage laws. Why is it acceptable for a base wage of 2.13 USD/h for waiters when considering the cost of living has increased across the board in every way? Where does the disconnect lie here? Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? You are exhibiting what I would consider an elitist mentality.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    >Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? It has been a long time since the minimum wage decided anything, even in Texas. And in states that have not updated their minimum wage, it is because the voters are not voting for leaders that will raise the minimum wage. And those same voters are sending Senators and Representatives to the federal Congress, where again, they do not raise the minimum wage.
    - fishtacos 3y ago
      The minimum wage is a factor in relative wage offering, even if it doesn't decide everything. The employers' argument ends up being "well, we're paying double minimum wage, so those who don't like it are lazy, entitled people." The problem here lies in a living wage that's decided by living costs in any geographical area, not the absolute wage itself. You are eggregiously conflating thw two.
TomK32 3y ago
Previous discussion with 444 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023074
arolihas 3y ago
We're supposed to tip at movie theaters?
- mcphage 3y ago
  Well, if the movie theater has bartenders, then yes—you tip bartenders, and other wait staff. If it's just someone selling snacks behind a counter, then I'd say no.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - njovin 3y ago
    Imagine that I go to a movie theater and order a soda and a beer. The cashier pours the soda into a cup from the fountain machine. The bartender pours the beer into a plastic pint from a tap. Why is the bartender deserving of a tip in this scenario?
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      The "stupid" answer is because it's customary in (much of) the US to tip a bartender, even if that bartender is just serving you a beer. Tipping is both economic and customary in nature; you'll find that most people agree that the economics that encourage it are dumb, but that the dumbness of those economics doesn't make changing customs easy.
      - smelendez 3y ago
        The scenario where you have a mix of customarily tipped and untipped food service workers in the same venue is especially weird, though.
    - jkestner 3y ago
      The tip is not for any particular effort. It's just an inefficient way to pay the bartender a living wage. The employer should do it, but while I vote for higher minimum wages, lower cost of living, and back the Alamo Drafthouse unionization efforts, I also tip because I recognize that's part of the true cost of the labor, and I can afford to.
lwhalen 3y ago
This is wonderful. "Professional politician gets real job after getting run out of town on a rail for Covid tyranny, realizes 'gee, working for a living is tough!', tries to cash in on that sweet, sweet, substack blogging-money" We truly live in the wildest timeline.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I'll respond to the only substantive part of your comment: this looks like a guest post on someone else's blog, so he probably isn't making any money on it.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Covid tyranny?
- jjulius 3y ago
  >... after getting run out of town on a rail for Covid tyranny... This feels disingenuous. McCamley ran the department responsible for overseeing unemployment claims, and it was death threats related to those unemployment claims that prompted him to leave town. I'd be genuinely curious to see if you have something that ties this to COVID specifically. >... tries to cash in on that sweet, sweet, substack blogging-money Kinda hard to do that when you're essentially the guest commentator on someone else's Substack, though, no? >We truly live in the wildest timeline. Yeah, timelines where people flippantly throw out factually incorrect hot takes are pretty wild.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
> Staff rely on tips because wages are not at a living level Fucking lol. > Crap like this is so demoralizing Yes, but not because people don't tip. > because workers need the money to live Yet the capitalist who don't want to pay a living level wage is totally not the reason workers need tips.
- fishtacos 3y ago
  What's the difference? The end result is the same for the worker.
  - njovin 3y ago
    The difference is that the by allowing business to pay under minimum wage (in some states), the business get to create an adversarial relationship between the staff and the customers, and blame the customers when staff don't make as much money as they'd hoped. This is IMO bad for everyone's happiness. Servers get upset with customers for not tipping enough and customers get to feel pressure and anxiety over tipping. Compare that to a world where the employer has to actually pay their employees their full wage (like literally every other industry), and now you have predictable wages and less friction throughout the dining experience.
    - fishtacos 3y ago
      NO s**. That was my point. I apologize for the directness here, but you are out of touch with reality. If there is no political will to increase baseline wages for service staff, then the end result is exactly the same - employees will blame bad tippers because of the (what should be abnormal) tipping culture in the US, and are dependent on employers for their hours of work, so they'll lay blame wherever available. I waited tables at semi-high-end restaurants. Worked doubles opening and closing from 10a to 12p... averaged 11/h on the busiest nights after carrying trays upon heavy trays for what felt like hours on end. I KNOW what I'm talking about from personal experience. I didn't mind the work, shift-leader, blah blah blah. I had colleagues walking away with 15 bucks TOTAL after a 5 hour shift, but it was averaged out to at least 7.35/h bi-weekly, so you can imagine the end result. It's not sustainable. It's denigrating.
TuringNYC 3y ago
The problem is that wealthy liberals and conservatives are in on a long-con against the American worker class. They want to pretend Inflation doesnt exist or has been conquered (e.g., https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?s=20 https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?s=20) but refuse to reconcile that against fundamental numbers -- you cannot make ends meet with the current minimum wages. ZIRP has been disastrous for everyone except leveraged asset owners (i.e., the wealthy). Assets inflated in price, rents rose commensurately, and we all pretended things were OK because of ZIRP and "fixed" it with further leverage to maintain affordability.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  I feel like a focus on minimum wages is misplaced, it's hiding the real problem that is the value of labour has been diluted. The minimum wage should be set based on determining the rate a sound minded well informed advocate could negotiate for the work. That is preventing exploitation. It should not be used to try to set a living wage, because as we have seen, this just leads to the COL increasing for everyone... Leading to a greater concentration of wealth as the average person now has less ability to save.
metadat 3y ago
(2022) Edit: @fishtacos, haha.. now I can't delete it because you replied (;
- fishtacos 3y ago
  Read above.
cibyr 3y ago
(2022)
- fishtacos 3y ago
  TX still pays 2.13/h for wait staff + tips, with a guarantee of bi-weekly guarantee of 7.35/h if tips don't make up for it. 2023 is still the same.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Texas (and other places) gets a lot of labor complaints too for stiffing this. https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...
    - fishtacos 3y ago
      I waited tables before, during and slighly after college, in TX. This was well-known, but am glad it's at least reported, even if not addressed. The entitled replies here are embarrassing.
      - tomrod 3y ago
        For me, I'm antitipping culture, but realize the only way it changes is when the servers, line cooks, cashiers, and hostesses as a working class group get fed up and demand better. Until then, it's a revolving door, and vested interests target to make customers and wait staff angry at each other.
        fishtacos 3y ago
        Correct - this rests on employers, but for those dependent on employers for a job with no say but "GTFO if you don't like it" will blame whomever is stiffling their wages - in this case, crappy tippers IN ADDITION TO the minimum wage. However, given the spurious type of work this involves, employers have the advantage, so the employees have no recourse but to blame any one they can, including bad tippers. The tipping culture in the US is disgusting by modern standards of society, but there is no mechanism to unionize wait staff, or kitchen staff, dishwashers etc. included.
icameron 3y ago
What is this referring to in the article? > The benefit situation is no better. Workers get to see free movies when theaters aren’t busy, and get half off of meals purchased while at work. But that doesn’t help when you need to see a doctor or get a prescription (Thank you Obama for your Care). Wasn't the cornerstone of the Obama plan a mandated health insurance by employers, but it was gutted by the next opposition congress?
- dataflow 3y ago
  Yeah I came to ask a similar question, I'm confused what this had to do with Obamacare.
- bink 3y ago
  I assumed he was referring to the ability now for people to buy individual healthcare plans that are subsidized by the government, whereas they couldn't before. But I admit it isn't very clear.
- djur 3y ago
  The ACA employer mandate is still in place (it's the individual mandate that has been zeroed out). Maybe this guy isn't a full-time worker?
  - ellisv 3y ago
    That's the trick – keep the employees below avg 30 hr/wk and 130 hr/mo to keep them classified as part-time instead of full-time.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    Most service industry people I know aren’t full time for this very reason.
- gurchik 3y ago
  If I recall correctly, the ACA only ever required employers with 50 or more full time employees to offer coverage to their full time employees. As I understand it, this mandate was delayed a couple times but it eventually stuck. But that is moot considering a huge portion of workers in the food service industry don't meet that criteria (either not full time or the employer has fewer than 50 employees) so they don't get any employer coverage. I'm not sure what the author meant by the "Thank you Obama" comment - is he criticizing the ACA for not going further with the mandatory coverage, or is this just a reference to the "thanks Obama" meme?
JohnMakin 3y ago
> Labor is supposed to have value. A good days’ work deserves a good days’ pay. Society by and large does not believe this. If you dig into it a little bit, asking why fast-food workers and the people that serve them their starbucks shouldn't make more money, the answer always boils down to "I need people that serve me to be socioeconomically inferior to me"
- not-my-account 3y ago
  > "I need people that serve me to be socioeconomically inferior to me" Do you actually think people think this way? I’ve never met anyone who thinks like that.
  - JohnMakin 3y ago
    Go ahead, ask someone to explain why a guy at starbucks "deserves" to be making less than a living wage, it boils down to this. There's no real argument for it. If you ask them why they shouldn't make more, they'll typically say something like "it's not meant to be a career" or some nonsense about inflation. Yet, society still needs people to pour coffee or serve fast food, so by arguing against a living wage in this manner you are actually arguing that people with menial service jobs should be poor by merit of the type of work they do. Granted that isn't a perfect 1:1 with what I said, but the attitude is definitely there. Why else would someone be so vehemently against a person making a living wage?
    - not-my-account 3y ago
      The question as "why does the guy at Starbucks deserve to be making less than minimum wage" assumes the counter-party agrees that the guy at Starbucks deserves this. In reality, (I assume that) the people who disagree with you don't have malice for poor people, but are seeing different levels of the economic stack. I would bet (I'll put money down) that they'd argue a mix of labor supply/demand and regulatory arguments, and that they're NOT just hoping to put down those who are economically less well-off. It's important to actually understand your counterparties if you actually want to improve things. EDIT give this a go https://depolarizinggpt.org/ https://depolarizinggpt.org/
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
It completely blows my mind that some magical expected tip amount is baked in to make an already abysmal minimum wage even lower. Pure skulduggery.
hahahacorn 3y ago
Since it has recently come to become a major personality trait. I can't help but notice the bullshit of 20-40 minute commutes in traffic being "normal". Good public transportation, smart mixed use development, and generally reducing car dependence could be a very large factor in mitigating the pain of this employment. I did appreciate the author mentioning how tired they are after moving for 6.5 hours straight. I worked 3 years in the service industry as a food runner, I still remember my busiest shift being a 5 hour lunch on Memorial Day when we had 3/5 runners not show up. Easily the most chaotic (and profitable) shift I've ever worked. I did ~35k steps in the 6 hours I was working, while carrying comically large food trays around half the time. But, I almost made more money/hr than I currently do as a senior software engineer in the Bay Area, lol.
lacker 3y ago
The author has a curious background. He left his role as a cabinet secretary after a report found that his department misspent 250 million dollars. The governor issued a press release that said he was leaving but didn't say why. And then afterwards he claimed it wasn't related to the financial scandal, it was because he was getting so many miscellaneous death threats? https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2021/04/16/new-mexico-workforce-solutions-secretary-bill-mccamley-steps-down/7256638002/ https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2021/... https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/former-new-mexico-cabinet-secretary-says-threats-safety-concerns-prompted-departure/article_c463a782-b99d-11eb-aeb9-cb7cab76bf69.html https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/former-new... It sounds to me like he got fired due to scandal but they agreed to make it a "no comment" sort of thing instead. It looks like he is out of politics now, which explains why he is cryptically starting over his career as a bartender. Well, anyway, I hope he finds a better job.
- timeagain 3y ago
  On the other hand, sometimes you just have to do what feels right. I quit tech to work in a cafe, and you could definitely paint my story as failing to make it in tech. But from my perspective I was just tired of burning out pouring my heart into something that doesn’t care at all about me. Some of his comments in the article re: getting stressed about policy he has no control over makes me think he was having a bad time as well. At the very least, knowing how politicians are and how this man writes, there surely must have been a disconnect between him and many of his peers.
  - dwaltrip 3y ago
    Are you still working at the cafe? How do you like it?
- blovescoffee 3y ago
  Do you think the governor should have said "He's leaving because the great citizens of this state who elected me are threatening to kill this man and his family?" I would leave that job too.
polski-g 3y ago
I love how almost every commonly referenced social problem goes back to high housing costs. Every city in the US needs to be turned into Manhattan.
AlbertCory 3y ago
Am I the first one to point out that movie exhibition is a lousy business? This place has wait service, which is kind of a desperate way to avoid the aforementioned problem. Movie theaters everywhere are closing because the economics suck; people prefer to watch movies at home, now that viewing quality is excellent and the movies all come to streaming after a couple months, and the audience ruins the experience for everyone else anyway. A better example would be a regular sit-down restaurant, which is sometimes a decent business (although most of them fail anyway). It's also easier to analyze profit & loss.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  Additionally, for the first few weeks that a movie is being shown at the theatre, 100% of the ticket sales goes to the studios. The entire source of income for movie theatres is the concession sales. I rarely watch movies in theatres because far too many are just remakes of something else. One of the 3 movies I saw in theatres this year (Landscape with Invisible Hand) was shown in one theatre in my state on Sunday morning. The tiny theatre release was just so that they could qualify for awards. I do not subscribe to any streaming services.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Thanks, yeah, in the South Bay (SF area) we've lost almost all our independent movie houses. That place where this guy worked will be gone in three years, or else trying some other gimmick.
jacknews 3y ago
"if employers continue to pay low wages, withhold health, child care, and other benefits, refuse to be flexible with scheduling, don’t give breaks, etc… workers will quit. And they will go to employers who will." The problem is this ends up as a race to the bottom, and even the good employers end up paying poorly because 'market rates'. Good working conditions need to be enforced in law, not by market forces.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
egberts1 3y ago
Wait, what? Since when did we start tipping movie employees?
DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
To summarize: 1. Bad wages 2. Not enough time off 3. Rude customers The solution to #1 is obvious but expensive. The solution to #2 is to hire more people, which is obviously difficult, but raising wages to solve #1 would probably help here too (I'm guessing they don't even want paid time off, just time off, so there's probably some additional expense involving more people but not strictly wages). #3 seems a bit trickier. Corporate home office can't do a lot about the public being jerks. The only thing I can think of is empowering staff to kick people out for bad behavior, but that realistically that means hiring security staff or calling the cops a lot. Of course I'm just speculating, I don't see any of this changing anytime soon. Clearly there are still plenty of customers at this theater, which is what the company cares about most. Until a staff shortage starts hurting profits nothing changes.
- thewildginger 3y ago
  Also benefits like healthcare which was mentioned. The squeeze of mandating private corporations as healthcare insurance providers and being so deeply involved in a matter so private means it is a field ripe for customer/client exploitation. The Lords of the land that are large business owners and corporations have had an economic shift, where the laborers have a tiny edge compared to the recent past in the form of less laborers and more wage competition, and they're not even organized in the US! The fact that this alone can disrupt the ecosystem of capital so drastically that a labor secretary became a bartender and the largest unionized workplaces have to give record concessions to the labor unions speaks to this systems glaring flaws.
  - DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
    Providing healthcare would essentially be a big increase in pay, so chalk that up to #1. Although I would much rather we have universal healthcare through the government.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  > 3. Rude customers Most people believe that the cure for this is to require every person in America to have to work a customer-facing retail position by the time they're 20. Oprah gave us the "talk to the manager" as some sort of hack to get what you want. Instead, those customers should be fired.
jwsteigerwalt 3y ago
Businesses need to make decisions for robustness, reliability, and longevity. Finding a model to maintain a consistent labor force (even if there is high turnover) is part of that responsibility. I was waiting to cringe at the end when the suggestion was a minimum wage or union solution and pleasantly surprised that was not the conclusion.
Woodi 3y ago
Pls. explain to me how "minimal state payment per h" is: a) not payed b) tips are counted in ??

104 points by janandonly 3y ago

I don't like the particular focus he puts on customers not tipping well. He mentioned feeling like he's being nickel and dimed to access his tips, but that's precisely the same feeling we customers have now about tipping. I can understand why customers don't leave a big tip at a movie theater too - the ticket for the movie already paid for access to the theater, and the food prices inside are also highly marked up as is. Asking for tips on top of that is exhausting and annoying for the customers. He should have perhaps spent more time on the topic of corporate profits.

xoa 3y ago
So this is actually a reply to @huytersd post which I think had sort of an interesting potential angle on this I hadn't considered before and I want to steelman a bit more then the replies so far: >Meh I hate tipping culture as much as the next person but you really can’t run, for instance a dive bar, and pay the bartender $15 an hour. The foot traffic doesn’t bring in nearly enough most of the time. So I'm reading this as essentially observing that certain work roles are vastly more dynamic then others. If someone is, as the article describes, working flat out on their feet for weeks straight 8+ hours, maybe that should be $40/hour or more, many multiples of minimum wage. Conversely if it's an absolute dead period where mostly people are just sitting around (and free, and perhaps even should be encouraged, to do other enjoyable/productive stuff on their phones/tablets/computers), and the business is effectively paying for warm bodies to be there just in case, minimum wage would be fine. Tipping kind of, in a hacky way, could sort of capture this, where ideally if business is booming people get paid more (potentially lots more) and if not the wage automatically decreases. However, for all the excellent reasons everyone has pointed out in this thread and others, tipping is a pretty poor way to do it prone to abuse and failures. But a completely flat wage might not reflect the work well enough either in practice. However I think we have a better model for this: sales commissions (be it direct, real estate or the like). There pay is also tied directly to the flow of money, but while not perfect it's much more empowering. The workers are agents. What if instead of tips the law mandated that businesses could opt into a model where yes they can pay a somewhat lower basic wage, but then 25% of all sales themselves went to the workers. Nothing for customers to think about, it's built into the price, but pay also then gets tied very closely to output and revenue. Business employment costs would naturally rise and fall with the revenue flow. There'd still be lots of work for this, America's very broken health model ties in, other complaints as well. But I think that "certain industries would benefit from formalized protected dynamic pay while others are best with static pay" might have something to it, if more fair and empowering methods can be found. Though I'm no expert so there may be holes here!
doublescoop 3y ago
This is a theater that has waitstaff that take orders and bring food and drinks to your seat as you watch the show. Don't want to tip, even though it's baked into the wage calculation? That's fine. The author is just pointing out that market forces means that folks aren't going to stay in those jobs.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > even though it's baked into the wage calculation? Then it should be next to the price on the menu: $x + minimum $y tip.
  - Erratic6576 3y ago
    Shouldn’t they have to pay taxes if they printed it like that?
    - mynameishere 3y ago
      You can't avoid taxes by not printing something.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I don't believe retail sales tax applies to tips in most (any?) states.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Why not? Why shouldn't sales tax or whatever tax also be fully paid for each received tip? It is not like other business gets to avoid taxes.
        woodruffw 3y ago
        In principle: the money goes completely to the employee(s) being tipped, so it doesn’t make sense to tax the business for money it doesn’t receive.
woodruffw 3y ago
I think it's an understandable focus: as a service worker, his most immediate recourse is to the people whose money he's handling. (That doesn't make your point about corporate profits wrong.)
- 1000100_1000101 3y ago
  Whose money is he handling? The 1000 people whose $20 he's handling, many of which he likely won't see again for months, or the 1 boss whose $20,000 he's handling daily and sees daily. I think it would be easier to reason with one consistent boss than 1000 new strangers daily... but the boss punts it up to "corporate" and they say no. Instead of pleading with the public to tip more, everyone should just leave. See how "corporate" enjoys paying rent and movie screening fees on a theatre that brings in $0 due to having no staff. Either they shut it down, which is fine, none of the workers were happy there anyway, or they start paying a decent wage, allowing breaks, allowing meal breaks, and allowing vacation like any reasonably humane job.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I don't think this guy sees his "boss." He sees a general manager who makes roughly the same amount as he does. The point you're making is essentially correct (in terms of where the actual wealth and power is), but he still has no recourse against that power.
m463 3y ago
I think the tipping system is kind of a scam that the employer benefits from, then gradually feels entitled to as theirs.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Most people feel entitled to the value of their labor; tipping is merely the incidental mechanism that yields that value. Put another way: we don't have any reason to believe that the author is abstractly "pro" tipping, only that he (shrewdly, like most people) recognizes tipping as a local optima that he has no real control over as a service worker.
  - changoplatanero 3y ago
    The only way to reach the global optimum of no tipping and higher wages would be for customers to start to refuse to give tips.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. Tipping is pernicious precisely because it doesn't have a real disincentive in a culture that's already normalized it. The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change.
      - jstarfish 3y ago
        > Not really. That only punishes the worker, not the interested business. [...] The only real solution is unilateral legislation, without waiting for the culture to change. The day unilateral legislation gets enacted will be the day restaurants replace most of the wait staff with ordering kiosks and automated drink dispensers. Waiting on government to fix your problems is a fool's errand.
      - changoplatanero 3y ago
        It indirectly punishes the business because it raises the minimum salary that workers will accept to work there
Glyptodon 3y ago
I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. So is tipping if you get food brought out to you by a server... with the caveat that usually this goes along with paying after you eat, which maybe isn't the case here and might lead to no tipping. I do agree a movie theater is an unusual place to complain about tips, and even though distributing them via prepaid card is complete scumfuckery, it's not the central problem.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > I agree you don't tip tickets, but in the US tipping bartenders per drink is pretty standard. Actually, this kind of relates to the example in the article -- spending $100+ on tickets and food/drinks and only tipping $2. If the drinks only made up, say $20 of that, then a $2 tip is not unreasonable. That works out to 10% tip, which I think is acceptable for the amount of service provided.
  - Glyptodon 3y ago
    Yep, agree with you.
abeppu 3y ago
I get the frustration with tips for things that are low-touch. When you go to a place that doesn't have waiter service, or you get a prepared item to go and the cashier who you interacted with for 5 seconds turns around tablet that asks for a tip, I'm annoyed -- but this is a place that lets you order an customized cocktail, and have a waiter bring food to your seat. If you think the food is overpriced, don't order it.
jkestner 3y ago
This is probably why Alamo Drafthouse (that theater) now just automatically adds an 18% service fee. The point of the article is to engender empathy for the worker's situation, not necessarily to diagnose or solve the problem. But you might as well go back to "Why do we have this stupid system in the US?" and the answer is Emancipation. https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants-civil-war/ https://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurant...
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  This is better, but I still don't like these %-based fees, because they're still hiding the total fee. How many people are going to sit there, calculate how much the things they ordered will cost total, and then calculate what the service fee is going to be for their order? Few if any. So while this does eliminate the uncomfortable interaction of tipping the staff directly, it doesn't solve the 'hidden fee' aspect of it. Just raise your prices 18%. If you're terribly concerned that people are going to balk at the raised prices, you can put a little explanation in your menu: "You may have noticed our higher prices since the last time you visited. We have raised our prices and eliminated our service fee. Now the price you see on the menu is the price you pay, no tips or additional fees!"
Tangurena2 3y ago
The theatre gets no part of the ticket sales. For the first few weeks that the movie plays, all the proceeds from ticket sales goes to the movie studio. Every dollar to keep the doors open (and pay the staff) comes from sales at the concession stand. The last movie where theatres made a profit from the ticket sales was The Full Monty.

dogleash 3y ago

> The combination of working this front-line service industry job and my last gig running a state labor department has led to some interesting observations. It's always funny when I'm acutely reminded how disconnected well-to-do people can be.

fishtacos 3y ago
What is funny about it? He's reflecting on the low wages v. amount of work involved to make those wages worth his time. Every one has their limits, but well-to-do people working low paying jobs (in his case, personal and external factors) are a good indicator how much discrepancy exists in terms of work effort v. minimally accomodating income comes their way in return. Thus the worker shortage and BS argument that people don't want to work. Blue collar work deserves a living wage. Austin, at least in the area he works in, has an average of 110,000 USD/y, yet the workers can barely survive living with roommates 40 minutes away. That's 80 minutes of your life just driving in addition to menial income - average that out and it's even worse. Texas is embarrassingly low in its minimum wage laws. Why is it acceptable for a base wage of 2.13 USD/h for waiters when considering the cost of living has increased across the board in every way? Where does the disconnect lie here? Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? You are exhibiting what I would consider an elitist mentality.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  >Why is it acceptable that minimum wage is stil 7.35 USD/h, which decides how much the "higher" paying blue collar jobs pay in comparison? It has been a long time since the minimum wage decided anything, even in Texas. And in states that have not updated their minimum wage, it is because the voters are not voting for leaders that will raise the minimum wage. And those same voters are sending Senators and Representatives to the federal Congress, where again, they do not raise the minimum wage.
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    The minimum wage is a factor in relative wage offering, even if it doesn't decide everything. The employers' argument ends up being "well, we're paying double minimum wage, so those who don't like it are lazy, entitled people." The problem here lies in a living wage that's decided by living costs in any geographical area, not the absolute wage itself. You are eggregiously conflating thw two.

TomK32 3y ago

Previous discussion with 444 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023074

arolihas 3y ago

We're supposed to tip at movie theaters?

mcphage 3y ago
Well, if the movie theater has bartenders, then yes—you tip bartenders, and other wait staff. If it's just someone selling snacks behind a counter, then I'd say no.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- njovin 3y ago
  Imagine that I go to a movie theater and order a soda and a beer. The cashier pours the soda into a cup from the fountain machine. The bartender pours the beer into a plastic pint from a tap. Why is the bartender deserving of a tip in this scenario?
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    The "stupid" answer is because it's customary in (much of) the US to tip a bartender, even if that bartender is just serving you a beer. Tipping is both economic and customary in nature; you'll find that most people agree that the economics that encourage it are dumb, but that the dumbness of those economics doesn't make changing customs easy.
    - smelendez 3y ago
      The scenario where you have a mix of customarily tipped and untipped food service workers in the same venue is especially weird, though.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    The tip is not for any particular effort. It's just an inefficient way to pay the bartender a living wage. The employer should do it, but while I vote for higher minimum wages, lower cost of living, and back the Alamo Drafthouse unionization efforts, I also tip because I recognize that's part of the true cost of the labor, and I can afford to.

lwhalen 3y ago

This is wonderful. "Professional politician gets real job after getting run out of town on a rail for Covid tyranny, realizes 'gee, working for a living is tough!', tries to cash in on that sweet, sweet, substack blogging-money" We truly live in the wildest timeline.

woodruffw 3y ago
I'll respond to the only substantive part of your comment: this looks like a guest post on someone else's blog, so he probably isn't making any money on it.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Covid tyranny?
jjulius 3y ago
>... after getting run out of town on a rail for Covid tyranny... This feels disingenuous. McCamley ran the department responsible for overseeing unemployment claims, and it was death threats related to those unemployment claims that prompted him to leave town. I'd be genuinely curious to see if you have something that ties this to COVID specifically. >... tries to cash in on that sweet, sweet, substack blogging-money Kinda hard to do that when you're essentially the guest commentator on someone else's Substack, though, no? >We truly live in the wildest timeline. Yeah, timelines where people flippantly throw out factually incorrect hot takes are pretty wild.

justsomehnguy 3y ago

> Staff rely on tips because wages are not at a living level Fucking lol. > Crap like this is so demoralizing Yes, but not because people don't tip. > because workers need the money to live Yet the capitalist who don't want to pay a living level wage is totally not the reason workers need tips.

fishtacos 3y ago
What's the difference? The end result is the same for the worker.
- njovin 3y ago
  The difference is that the by allowing business to pay under minimum wage (in some states), the business get to create an adversarial relationship between the staff and the customers, and blame the customers when staff don't make as much money as they'd hoped. This is IMO bad for everyone's happiness. Servers get upset with customers for not tipping enough and customers get to feel pressure and anxiety over tipping. Compare that to a world where the employer has to actually pay their employees their full wage (like literally every other industry), and now you have predictable wages and less friction throughout the dining experience.
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    NO s**. That was my point. I apologize for the directness here, but you are out of touch with reality. If there is no political will to increase baseline wages for service staff, then the end result is exactly the same - employees will blame bad tippers because of the (what should be abnormal) tipping culture in the US, and are dependent on employers for their hours of work, so they'll lay blame wherever available. I waited tables at semi-high-end restaurants. Worked doubles opening and closing from 10a to 12p... averaged 11/h on the busiest nights after carrying trays upon heavy trays for what felt like hours on end. I KNOW what I'm talking about from personal experience. I didn't mind the work, shift-leader, blah blah blah. I had colleagues walking away with 15 bucks TOTAL after a 5 hour shift, but it was averaged out to at least 7.35/h bi-weekly, so you can imagine the end result. It's not sustainable. It's denigrating.

TuringNYC 3y ago

The problem is that wealthy liberals and conservatives are in on a long-con against the American worker class. They want to pretend Inflation doesnt exist or has been conquered (e.g., https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?s=20 https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1712494317024026761?s=20) but refuse to reconcile that against fundamental numbers -- you cannot make ends meet with the current minimum wages. ZIRP has been disastrous for everyone except leveraged asset owners (i.e., the wealthy). Assets inflated in price, rents rose commensurately, and we all pretended things were OK because of ZIRP and "fixed" it with further leverage to maintain affordability.

doublespanner 3y ago
I feel like a focus on minimum wages is misplaced, it's hiding the real problem that is the value of labour has been diluted. The minimum wage should be set based on determining the rate a sound minded well informed advocate could negotiate for the work. That is preventing exploitation. It should not be used to try to set a living wage, because as we have seen, this just leads to the COL increasing for everyone... Leading to a greater concentration of wealth as the average person now has less ability to save.

metadat 3y ago

(2022) Edit: @fishtacos, haha.. now I can't delete it because you replied (;

fishtacos 3y ago
Read above.

cibyr 3y ago

(2022)

fishtacos 3y ago
TX still pays 2.13/h for wait staff + tips, with a guarantee of bi-weekly guarantee of 7.35/h if tips don't make up for it. 2023 is still the same.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Texas (and other places) gets a lot of labor complaints too for stiffing this. https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...
  - fishtacos 3y ago
    I waited tables before, during and slighly after college, in TX. This was well-known, but am glad it's at least reported, even if not addressed. The entitled replies here are embarrassing.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      For me, I'm antitipping culture, but realize the only way it changes is when the servers, line cooks, cashiers, and hostesses as a working class group get fed up and demand better. Until then, it's a revolving door, and vested interests target to make customers and wait staff angry at each other.
      - fishtacos 3y ago
        Correct - this rests on employers, but for those dependent on employers for a job with no say but "GTFO if you don't like it" will blame whomever is stiffling their wages - in this case, crappy tippers IN ADDITION TO the minimum wage. However, given the spurious type of work this involves, employers have the advantage, so the employees have no recourse but to blame any one they can, including bad tippers. The tipping culture in the US is disgusting by modern standards of society, but there is no mechanism to unionize wait staff, or kitchen staff, dishwashers etc. included.

icameron 3y ago

What is this referring to in the article? > The benefit situation is no better. Workers get to see free movies when theaters aren’t busy, and get half off of meals purchased while at work. But that doesn’t help when you need to see a doctor or get a prescription (Thank you Obama for your Care). Wasn't the cornerstone of the Obama plan a mandated health insurance by employers, but it was gutted by the next opposition congress?

dataflow 3y ago
Yeah I came to ask a similar question, I'm confused what this had to do with Obamacare.
bink 3y ago
I assumed he was referring to the ability now for people to buy individual healthcare plans that are subsidized by the government, whereas they couldn't before. But I admit it isn't very clear.
djur 3y ago
The ACA employer mandate is still in place (it's the individual mandate that has been zeroed out). Maybe this guy isn't a full-time worker?
- ellisv 3y ago
  That's the trick – keep the employees below avg 30 hr/wk and 130 hr/mo to keep them classified as part-time instead of full-time.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Most service industry people I know aren’t full time for this very reason.
gurchik 3y ago
If I recall correctly, the ACA only ever required employers with 50 or more full time employees to offer coverage to their full time employees. As I understand it, this mandate was delayed a couple times but it eventually stuck. But that is moot considering a huge portion of workers in the food service industry don't meet that criteria (either not full time or the employer has fewer than 50 employees) so they don't get any employer coverage. I'm not sure what the author meant by the "Thank you Obama" comment - is he criticizing the ACA for not going further with the mandatory coverage, or is this just a reference to the "thanks Obama" meme?

JohnMakin 3y ago

> Labor is supposed to have value. A good days’ work deserves a good days’ pay. Society by and large does not believe this. If you dig into it a little bit, asking why fast-food workers and the people that serve them their starbucks shouldn't make more money, the answer always boils down to "I need people that serve me to be socioeconomically inferior to me"

not-my-account 3y ago
> "I need people that serve me to be socioeconomically inferior to me" Do you actually think people think this way? I’ve never met anyone who thinks like that.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  Go ahead, ask someone to explain why a guy at starbucks "deserves" to be making less than a living wage, it boils down to this. There's no real argument for it. If you ask them why they shouldn't make more, they'll typically say something like "it's not meant to be a career" or some nonsense about inflation. Yet, society still needs people to pour coffee or serve fast food, so by arguing against a living wage in this manner you are actually arguing that people with menial service jobs should be poor by merit of the type of work they do. Granted that isn't a perfect 1:1 with what I said, but the attitude is definitely there. Why else would someone be so vehemently against a person making a living wage?
  - not-my-account 3y ago
    The question as "why does the guy at Starbucks deserve to be making less than minimum wage" assumes the counter-party agrees that the guy at Starbucks deserves this. In reality, (I assume that) the people who disagree with you don't have malice for poor people, but are seeing different levels of the economic stack. I would bet (I'll put money down) that they'd argue a mix of labor supply/demand and regulatory arguments, and that they're NOT just hoping to put down those who are economically less well-off. It's important to actually understand your counterparties if you actually want to improve things. EDIT give this a go https://depolarizinggpt.org/ https://depolarizinggpt.org/

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago

It completely blows my mind that some magical expected tip amount is baked in to make an already abysmal minimum wage even lower. Pure skulduggery.

hahahacorn 3y ago

Since it has recently come to become a major personality trait. I can't help but notice the bullshit of 20-40 minute commutes in traffic being "normal". Good public transportation, smart mixed use development, and generally reducing car dependence could be a very large factor in mitigating the pain of this employment. I did appreciate the author mentioning how tired they are after moving for 6.5 hours straight. I worked 3 years in the service industry as a food runner, I still remember my busiest shift being a 5 hour lunch on Memorial Day when we had 3/5 runners not show up. Easily the most chaotic (and profitable) shift I've ever worked. I did ~35k steps in the 6 hours I was working, while carrying comically large food trays around half the time. But, I almost made more money/hr than I currently do as a senior software engineer in the Bay Area, lol.

lacker 3y ago

The author has a curious background. He left his role as a cabinet secretary after a report found that his department misspent 250 million dollars. The governor issued a press release that said he was leaving but didn't say why. And then afterwards he claimed it wasn't related to the financial scandal, it was because he was getting so many miscellaneous death threats? https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2021/04/16/new-mexico-workforce-solutions-secretary-bill-mccamley-steps-down/7256638002/ https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2021/... https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/former-new-mexico-cabinet-secretary-says-threats-safety-concerns-prompted-departure/article_c463a782-b99d-11eb-aeb9-cb7cab76bf69.html https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/former-new... It sounds to me like he got fired due to scandal but they agreed to make it a "no comment" sort of thing instead. It looks like he is out of politics now, which explains why he is cryptically starting over his career as a bartender. Well, anyway, I hope he finds a better job.

timeagain 3y ago
On the other hand, sometimes you just have to do what feels right. I quit tech to work in a cafe, and you could definitely paint my story as failing to make it in tech. But from my perspective I was just tired of burning out pouring my heart into something that doesn’t care at all about me. Some of his comments in the article re: getting stressed about policy he has no control over makes me think he was having a bad time as well. At the very least, knowing how politicians are and how this man writes, there surely must have been a disconnect between him and many of his peers.
- dwaltrip 3y ago
  Are you still working at the cafe? How do you like it?
blovescoffee 3y ago
Do you think the governor should have said "He's leaving because the great citizens of this state who elected me are threatening to kill this man and his family?" I would leave that job too.

polski-g 3y ago

I love how almost every commonly referenced social problem goes back to high housing costs. Every city in the US needs to be turned into Manhattan.

AlbertCory 3y ago

Am I the first one to point out that movie exhibition is a lousy business? This place has wait service, which is kind of a desperate way to avoid the aforementioned problem. Movie theaters everywhere are closing because the economics suck; people prefer to watch movies at home, now that viewing quality is excellent and the movies all come to streaming after a couple months, and the audience ruins the experience for everyone else anyway. A better example would be a regular sit-down restaurant, which is sometimes a decent business (although most of them fail anyway). It's also easier to analyze profit & loss.

Tangurena2 3y ago
Additionally, for the first few weeks that a movie is being shown at the theatre, 100% of the ticket sales goes to the studios. The entire source of income for movie theatres is the concession sales. I rarely watch movies in theatres because far too many are just remakes of something else. One of the 3 movies I saw in theatres this year (Landscape with Invisible Hand) was shown in one theatre in my state on Sunday morning. The tiny theatre release was just so that they could qualify for awards. I do not subscribe to any streaming services.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Thanks, yeah, in the South Bay (SF area) we've lost almost all our independent movie houses. That place where this guy worked will be gone in three years, or else trying some other gimmick.

jacknews 3y ago

"if employers continue to pay low wages, withhold health, child care, and other benefits, refuse to be flexible with scheduling, don’t give breaks, etc… workers will quit. And they will go to employers who will." The problem is this ends up as a race to the bottom, and even the good employers end up paying poorly because 'market rates'. Good working conditions need to be enforced in law, not by market forces.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

egberts1 3y ago

Wait, what? Since when did we start tipping movie employees?

DonsDiscountGas 3y ago

To summarize: 1. Bad wages 2. Not enough time off 3. Rude customers The solution to #1 is obvious but expensive. The solution to #2 is to hire more people, which is obviously difficult, but raising wages to solve #1 would probably help here too (I'm guessing they don't even want paid time off, just time off, so there's probably some additional expense involving more people but not strictly wages). #3 seems a bit trickier. Corporate home office can't do a lot about the public being jerks. The only thing I can think of is empowering staff to kick people out for bad behavior, but that realistically that means hiring security staff or calling the cops a lot. Of course I'm just speculating, I don't see any of this changing anytime soon. Clearly there are still plenty of customers at this theater, which is what the company cares about most. Until a staff shortage starts hurting profits nothing changes.

thewildginger 3y ago
Also benefits like healthcare which was mentioned. The squeeze of mandating private corporations as healthcare insurance providers and being so deeply involved in a matter so private means it is a field ripe for customer/client exploitation. The Lords of the land that are large business owners and corporations have had an economic shift, where the laborers have a tiny edge compared to the recent past in the form of less laborers and more wage competition, and they're not even organized in the US! The fact that this alone can disrupt the ecosystem of capital so drastically that a labor secretary became a bartender and the largest unionized workplaces have to give record concessions to the labor unions speaks to this systems glaring flaws.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
  Providing healthcare would essentially be a big increase in pay, so chalk that up to #1. Although I would much rather we have universal healthcare through the government.
Tangurena2 3y ago
> 3. Rude customers Most people believe that the cure for this is to require every person in America to have to work a customer-facing retail position by the time they're 20. Oprah gave us the "talk to the manager" as some sort of hack to get what you want. Instead, those customers should be fired.

jwsteigerwalt 3y ago

Businesses need to make decisions for robustness, reliability, and longevity. Finding a model to maintain a consistent labor force (even if there is high turnover) is part of that responsibility. I was waiting to cringe at the end when the suggestion was a minimum wage or union solution and pleasantly surprised that was not the conclusion.

Woodi 3y ago

Pls. explain to me how "minimal state payment per h" is: a) not payed b) tips are counted in ??