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#177 Dec 07 2012 at 5:42 PM Rating: Good
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#178 Dec 07 2012 at 6:39 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
In the case of a waiter earning tips, their wage is based directly on the cost of the goods sold (cause it's a percentage of the cost of a meal).


If that were true, for every restaurant promotion would reflect on the employee's salaries, but they don't, because there's a line where the profit being made exceeds the accumulative money necessary to pay the staff. That's how EVERY OTHER BUSINESS works. Restaurants are no different.

Gbaji wrote:
Thus, instead of him having to constantly assess whether his employer is making enough money off his labor that he can justify asking for a raise, his wage automatically goes up based on the "value" of the goods/services he's providing. That's why he's less likely to care about the base wage level, and why it's ok to have that base wage level lower than the standard minimum wage.


That explains why employers and employe have no issue with it. That doesn't explain how it is "ok" to have the base wage level below the National min.

Gbaji wrote:
I get that you keep saying this, but you've yet to give a good argument for why that is the case. If waiters are satisfied with their total wages, then that's a fair wage. Passing arbitrary rules to force them to be higher is unnecessary.


Because it's then no longer the national min. wage. People working at sweatshops and illegal immigrants are as equally satisfied earning nickles and dimes a day along with their employers. Does it make it ok? Just because both party members are in agreement, doesn't make it "ok". That concept applies to many things in life.....

Gbaji wrote:
Again, you keep saying this, but haven't supported your claim.


WTFRU talking about? Unless there's a gratuity included, it's optional, not guaranteed and therefore inconsistent.

Gbaji wrote:
Tips are part of the total cost of a meal at a restaurant.


Read above. You even stated that I could be the "cheap skate" that skips out on a tip. How is that possible if the tip is in the meal? I do not have to tip anyone anything. The only thing that I'm required to pay is the price of the meal. If the "tip" is included and not mentioned as "gratuity", then it isn't a tip, it's the price of the meal. The meals (to include drinks) are what makes you money. So EVERYTHING comes from meals if you want to look at it like that, to include your base wage, electricity, water, furniture, etc. However, if you look at it like that, you can't arbitrarily differentiate the $.20 going towards your wage from the $.05 going towards your tip, the electricity, the water, the furniture, T.V's, cable/sat, etc.

The food is given a value based on the ratio of worth vs what people will pay and you sell the food at that price. Once you earn enough money to make profit, THEN and only THEN do you give people raises, buy more furniture, add better/more T.V.'s etc. Doing it the other way will only increase your chances of failure. While you might be able to pull it off, it is not a business move that I would believe most sane people would want to do. I would wager that most people would like to make a nice profit before investing or expanding.
#179 Dec 07 2012 at 9:11 PM Rating: Default
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:

Um... Because we're talking about pay for wait staff? As you say, the chef gets paid more already.
You stated that we factor in tips based on what we think we should pay for food.


EDIT: Since this aspect of your confusion pops up later, let me clarify here that we're talking about the cost of the meal, not the food. If all I was buying was the food, I'd go to the supermarket and buy it there.

Yes. Why would you think otherwise? I know this is hard for you to grasp, but the consumer of a product doesn't care if the product costs $1 with $99 of taxes/tips/licensing_fees/whatever, or if the product costs $100 with no other costs involved. From the consumers point if view, he spends $100 to buy the product. More importantly, from an economic point of view that product costs the consumer $100 to buy. So if the meal I eat costs $20 plus $2 tax plus $3 tip, it costs me $25 dollars. Why? Because it actually cost me $25. When considering whether to purchase that meal, I'm going to compare the value of that meal to me to what other things I could spend $25 on in the economy. That's why the tip cost matters (and sales taxes as well).
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I countered to say that the money we decide to pay for a meal is completely irrelevant to the tip that we give a waiter.


I know you said this. But you are wrong. We decide to pay the full price the meal actually costs us. I'm honestly puzzled why you keep trying to argue otherwise.

Quote:
A supporting statement is that the work that we acknowledge waiters for doing has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the food, so why are you calculating the tip before hand in your spending money if it's based on the value?


Huh? You're paying for the meal, not just the food. That includes the service, the decor, and everything else. Why the hell do you think people pay much more money to go out to eat than to buy the exact same food as take out? You're playing semantic games now. I'm talking about the consumers purchasing decision. If you decide to go out to eat, you are making a decision to pay the full cost of that action. That includes the tip you're going to pay.

Do you even have a reason for making this absurd distinction? Yes, the service and the food are two different things, but they both add to the price of the meal. And guess what? Customers will make decisions about whether to eat at a given restaurant based on the total cost of the meal. So anything that increases that total cost will influence that decision. Thus, paying the waitstaff a higher wage (regardless of how that is derived) will impact total sales. Again, this is why waiters at top end restaurants can earn more than those working at Denny's. And guess what? It's not just the service. You can be the best darn server in the universe working at Denny's, but you wont earn as much as a mediocre server at a $100/plate restaurant.


The point is that the better servers gravitate to the better restaurants because the owners of those restaurants know that they need the best servers if they are to justify the high prices they are charging for the meal. No one will pay $100 for a meal at Denny's no matter how good the service. Get it? This also means that the server's salary will tend to increase based on the servers skill at his or her job. Also, the employer will be forced to pay the server more in these situations because if he doesn't, his competition will, and people will stop attending his restaurant. As I've said repeatedly in this thread, all three factors (desire for employer to make the most money possible, desire for employee to make the most money possible, and desire for the consumer to pay the least amount possible) all conspire to makes sure that people get paid what their labor is actually worth.

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It doesn't matter if the chef gets paid more. If that's the best steak that you've tasted, you should tip the Chef, because s/he is the one who cooked it, not the waiter. You tip the waiter for servicing you. If you're going to tip the waiter because your food was good, why not tip the person who greeted you at the door and gave you a seat?


I'm not sure how that's relevant at all to the discussion we're having, but sure. If you really want to go wander back to the kitchen and hand the chef some money, go for it. Kinda doesn't have anything to do with the question about whether it's fair to have waitstaff pay based on a lower minimum wage.

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Gbaji wrote:
The question is whether it's unfair to pay less than minimum wage for waitstaff who earn tips. My opinion is that it's not inherently unfair at all.


No, that is not the question. The question is why are people allowed to be paid under the National min. wage?


Um... Because they are waitstaff who earn tips which makes up for the lower minimum wage. See how I've already moved past the really dumb question and on to the one we're actually discussing? Was this really a question to anyone? I thought it was a given in the topic itself?


Quote:
My concern is simply based on the fact that employers shouldn't be able to pay less than the National min. wage because then it isn't National Min. wage.


Seriously? That's.... ridiculous. I'm sorry, but it is. That's like saying that poor people should pay higher taxes because the national tax rate is 35% and no one should be allowed to pay less than the national tax rate.

Oh wait! That doesn't make sense because there are multiple "national tax rates". Just like there are multiple national minimum wages. In this case, there is a separate minimum wage for wait staff. Silly me for assuming that you actually had an opinion on the existence or level of said minimum wage. But since your only concern is people getting paid less than the legally defined minimum wage, and that isn't happening in this case, then I guess you have been arguing for a page and a half over absolutely nothing.


Wow. You really don't have an opinion of your own?

Edited, Dec 7th 2012 7:26pm by gbaji

Edited, Dec 7th 2012 7:31pm by gbaji
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#180 Dec 07 2012 at 9:25 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:

Sigh. No and no. Let's assume that's correct. Let's also assume that we have three continuous shifts of 100 employee working at our fab, every day of the year. That's 8760 hours, times 100 employees, times the total dollar/hour. This gives us a total labor cost of $16,644,000 for the fab in the US and $7,008,000. So you save $9,636,000 per year in labor costs operating your plant in Taiwan versus in the US. Great, right? That's a freaking drop in the bucket that is lost in the whitewash of yearly expenses Smash. The materials costs that get run through the plant will be somewhere around $100M/year. Differences in costs to ship materials in or out of the plant will have much more impact on the bottom line than the labor cost.


No. They won't.


Yes. They will. See how easy it is to counter a really poor argument. How about providing some actual examples or numbers to back up your position. You know, something like break downs of shipping and material consumption costs at some kind of plant in relation to the cost to pay the folks working there?

Your position is so staggeringly wrong, that there is no defense for it. I can only assume that's why your entire arguing methodology consists of just repeating "I'm right and you're wrong" over and over and hoping nobody notices.

Want to know why labor is insignificant to many offshoring decisions? Because in the aforementioned fab example, it would have taken three times as many years to construct and 2.5 times as much money to build the same plant in the US. Ignoring the time factor (which is significant all by itself but harder to directly calculate), just the 150% increase in total fab construction cost means that for labor differences to equal that difference would require that the fab operate for 150 years (with no major refit or rebuild costs). The major considerations had nearly nothing to do with ongoing labor costs. It is absolutely not about trying to find ways to ***** over employees. That's the Marxism talking.


Do it the other way around though, and labor differences don't matter either. If somehow the US decided to be really friendly to fabs, and it would only cost half a billion to construct the same fab in the US, then that factor would offset 50 years off lower labor costs in Taiwan. You'll build the fab in the US, bringing jobs and economic benefits to all.

The problem (well, one of them) with the liberal economic approach is that it involves trying to take an increasingly larger share of a shrinking pie in order to maintain revenue. As you increase taxes, tariffs, regulations, and yes wages as well, you increase the likelihood that new ventures will occur outside the US. This decreases the number of jobs and the tax base causing a loss of revenue. The liberals then respond by increasing taxes, tariffs, regulations, etc on the employers left in the country. Which causes more jobs to flee, which reduces the size of the pie, rinse and repeat until the whole economy grinds to a crashing stop.


The correct answer is to remove barriers to job creation. Make it profitable for people to create jobs in the US and they will. It's that simple.

Quote:
Yeah. Remember what I said about the word "academic"? No matter how many people keep repeating the same wrong economic assumptions they were taught in school it doesn't make what they're repeating correct. Look at actual cost breakdowns sometime, not the imagined models that college professors pass on to their students as fact.

Good idea. If only fortune 50 corporations paid me absurd amounts of money to do that I could have stopped working and stayed home and raised my kids by now.


And yet you can't give a single dollar calculation which supports your argument. I'd think someone who claims to do this for a living would be able to snap one off the top of his head. Yet the only example you came up with I was able to trivially show proved my point and not yours.

If people actually pay you for your advice in these matters then either you lie like crazy when posting on this forum or you are really really bad at your job.
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#181 Dec 07 2012 at 9:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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#182 Dec 08 2012 at 6:55 AM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
Where the hell did I say that? Of course it's about money. My point is that labor costs alone are not always the biggest factor (I would argue they are rarely the biggest factor). Regulations and taxes affect the amount of money you can make. Other cost factors (like infrastructure, construction, power, etc) all affect the bottom line as well. All of those are about money. You're not paying attention to what I'm writing. Nothing in the paragraph you quoted suggested that money isn't the biggest factor.


Gbaji wrote:
Yes. But do you get that many things affect how much money you can make. Customer satisfaction affects how much money you make. Efficiency of your operations affects how much money you make. Electricity costs and downtime percentage affect how much money you make. Transportation and shipping costs affect how much money you make. Licensing costs affect how much money you make. Tax rates and tariffs affect how much money you make.

Trying to simplify this whole thing down to employers always attempting to decrease labor costs no matter what ignores a whole host of factors, many of which can (and often are) much larger than those labor costs.

.....

. There are a host of other factors to consider.


Almalieque first on the topic wrote:
I'm just not buying it. What I see are employers realizing that their employees are making extra money in tips, so they decided to pay them less. World wide, employers are always looking for ways to get more by paying less. Hence the whole shipping jobs overseas, sweatshops and illegal workers.


Gbaji's response to my comment above wrote:
True, but you're implying that this is some sort of exception, when it's not. The customers are always looking for ways to get more by paying less. The employees are always looking for ways to get more by working less (or less hard). That's the nature of a free market. All the forces are working for their own best interests. It's more than unfair to condemn just one part for this while ignoring the rest.

And at least in this context (service industry), the main competition for business is the guy running a similar restaurant just down the street, so can we lay off the whole "shipping jobs overseas" rhetoric?


This was never exclusively about "labor costs" as demonstrated by my original comment and your response. I stated that employers always wanted more for less and that's why they ship jobs over seas. You countered with that was true but employers weren't an exception to the rule. Then you said that McDonald's employers would pay their employees 100k a year if they could. However, doing so, contradicts the first statement. If the employers are always trying to get more for less, as you agreed, then they will only pay the waiters just enough to keep them working, not go over into their profit.

I'll go ahead and tie this together... So, therefore, the price fluctuations of the meals have more to do with the sales of the customers and less to do with the staff. As long as the staff is getting paid just enough not to quit, the employer will NOT give any unreasonable or unrealistic raises. They will only give raises just enough to keep satisfaction high. So, by enforcing the employer to pay their staff at the National min. wage, will not cause a successful business to raise their prices of products, but to cut into their profits. If an employer decides to raise prices to counter that profit loss, that's a choice made, nothing mandatory to stay successful.
#183 Dec 08 2012 at 10:43 PM Rating: Default
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Zymunn wrote:
T What you can't seem to understand is that the govt says earned income not payed income. Again why an employer must make up the difference if a server is earning under the federal minimum wage which is hourly.


What you can't seem to understand is that tips ARE EXTRA, not wages from an employer. Tips are extra money given by customers out of kindness that are not required nor standardized. So, therefore, your hourly wage (earned income or paid income) from a specific employer should not include tips because you were not paid that by your employer, but given that as a gift from the customers. Since the government still taxes gifts, prizes and wages, you're not cheating the government. However, allowing a gift to count as earned income from a salary is a loop hole that can be taken advantage from both sides. Especially since there is no paper trail.
#184 Dec 08 2012 at 10:51 PM Rating: Good
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Almalieque wrote:
Zymunn wrote:
T What you can't seem to understand is that the govt says earned income not payed income. Again why an employer must make up the difference if a server is earning under the federal minimum wage which is hourly.


What you can't seem to understand is that tips ARE EXTRA, not wages from an employer. Tips are extra money given by customers out of kindness that are not required nor standardized. So, therefore, your hourly wage (earned income or paid income) from a specific employer should not include tips because you were not paid that by your employer, but given that as a gift from the customers. Since the government still taxes gifts, prizes and wages, you're not cheating the government. However, allowing a gift to count as earned income from a salary is a loop hole that can be taken advantage from both sides. Especially since there is no paper trail.


Actually, that's one of the reasons why they do. It increases taxable income.

Tips are not 'extra' for servers. large tips are, and they ostensibly have a backstop of the minimum wage should they have junk tips. But having the small wage + tips with a minimum wage forces the server to at least pay taxes on tips up to the minimum wage.
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#185 Dec 08 2012 at 11:22 PM Rating: Good
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Timelordwho wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Zymunn wrote:
T What you can't seem to understand is that the govt says earned income not payed income. Again why an employer must make up the difference if a server is earning under the federal minimum wage which is hourly.


What you can't seem to understand is that tips ARE EXTRA, not wages from an employer. Tips are extra money given by customers out of kindness that are not required nor standardized. So, therefore, your hourly wage (earned income or paid income) from a specific employer should not include tips because you were not paid that by your employer, but given that as a gift from the customers. Since the government still taxes gifts, prizes and wages, you're not cheating the government. However, allowing a gift to count as earned income from a salary is a loop hole that can be taken advantage from both sides. Especially since there is no paper trail.


Actually, that's one of the reasons why they do. It increases taxable income.

Tips are not 'extra' for servers. large tips are, and they ostensibly have a backstop of the minimum wage should they have junk tips. But having the small wage + tips with a minimum wage forces the server to at least pay taxes on tips up to the minimum wage.


I can neither confirm nor deny that when I earned tips, the amount reported to the IRS was accurate. However, this was in Oregon, and the minimum wage is the same for everyone, including servers.
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#186 Dec 09 2012 at 7:35 AM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
EDIT: Since this aspect of your confusion pops up later, let me clarify here that we're talking about the cost of the meal, not the food. If all I was buying was the food, I'd go to the supermarket and buy it there.
.....
Huh? You're paying for the meal, not just the food.
....
Do you even have a reason for making this absurd distinction?


Almalieque wrote:

The meals (to include drinks) are what makes you money. So EVERYTHING comes from meals if you want to look at it like that, to include your base wage, electricity, water, furniture, etc. However, if you look at it like that, you can't arbitrarily differentiate the $.20 going towards your wage from the $.05 going towards your tip, the electricity, the water, the furniture, T.V's, cable/sat, etc.

The food is given a value based on the ratio of worth vs what people will pay and you sell the food at that price. Once you earn enough money to make profit, THEN and only THEN do you give people raises, buy more furniture, add better/more T.V.'s etc. Doing it the other way will only increase your chances of failure. While you might be able to pull it off, it is not a business move that I would believe most sane people would want to do. I would wager that most people would like to make a nice profit before investing or expanding.


Gbaji wrote:
Why? Because it actually cost me $25. When considering whether to purchase that meal, I'm going to compare the value of that meal to me to what other things I could spend $25 on in the economy. That's why the tip cost matters (and sales taxes as well).


Unless you're about to spend more than what you have, then tips and tax shouldn't be a deciding factor if you get something or not. Taxes will always be there at the same percentage, it doesn't change just because you spend more money. Alternatively, tips often work the same way. So, if you're at the point where tax and tips are deciding factors then you're already spending too much money.
Gbaji wrote:

I know you said this. But you are wrong. We decide to pay the full price the meal actually costs us. I'm honestly puzzled why you keep trying to argue otherwise.
...
Customers will make decisions about whether to eat at a given restaurant based on the total cost of the meal.


Read above. If you're an anomaly, that's fine, but don't act like that's the norm. If a person has a $30 budget, that person isn't going to go to place like Chilli's and spend $10 for a glass of Coke, $13 for a dinner roll, $2.50 in taxes and $5 on a tip. If the prices of food are absurd, then they will not purchase the food, resulting in no money spent on tax and/or tips. It's the meal prices that people are concerned about. As mentioned, if tax and tips are a concern for you, then you're already spending too much.

Gbaji wrote:
Thus, paying the waitstaff a higher wage (regardless of how that is derived) will impact total sales.


That's a fallacy that would only be true if your business weren't successful. As an owner, you have options, dip into your profit, decrease the amount of money spent on items not being sold, create other avenues of revenue, buy cheaper products, increase the sale prices, etc. . The last two options should be your last resort as your profit is made by the number of product sales and not the actual price of the product. Increasing the price may very well decrease your customer base, thus reducing your overall profit.




#187 Dec 10 2012 at 8:41 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
See how easy it is to counter a really poor argument.
Sure, every argument you tend to make.
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#188 Dec 10 2012 at 5:53 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaj wrote:
Again, this is why waiters at top end restaurants can earn more than those working at Denny's. And guess what? It's not just the service. You can be the best darn server in the universe working at Denny's, but you wont earn as much as a mediocre server at a $100/plate restaurant.
.....
This also means that the server's salary will tend to increase based on the servers skill at his or her job.


The reason why waiters make more money at more expensive restaurants is because the people there spend more money. It has nothing to do with their service, but the fact that the customers spend more money. They are not doing anything more than a waiter at Chilli's. Just like baggers at a grocery store. The bagger who gets the old retired couple or money makers on paydays will get more money than another bagger. It has nothing to do with their service or the products. but the amount of money of the customer has.

Gbaj wrote:
The point is that the better servers gravitate to the better restaurants because the owners of those restaurants know that they need the best servers if they are to justify the high prices they are charging for the meal.


False. Read above. I'm not taking away any difficulty from any expensive restaurant, but to believe that a waiter at $20-$30 restaurant can't fill the shoe at a more premiere restaurant, you're sadly mistaken.

Gbaj wrote:
No one will pay $100 for a meal at Denny's no matter how good the service. Get it?


Because the FOOD there isn't worth $100, nor is that the target audience. You're just proving my point. People only care about the value of the meal. People don't ponder on taxes or tips, because if they are, then they are already spending too much money. I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to grasp? It's not that people don't think about those additional expenses, but they are never a factor of paying.

Gbaj wrote:
Also, the employer will be forced to pay the server more in these situations because if he doesn't, his competition will, and people will stop attending his restaurant.


Complete slippery slope. If that employer was able to higher people with those wages, people will continue apply for the job. Competition has "limitations". As long as your products are good and consistent, you will continually have customers.

Gbaj wrote:
As I've said repeatedly in this thread, all three factors (desire for employer to make the most money possible, desire for employee to make the most money possible, and desire for the consumer to pay the least amount possible) all conspire to makes sure that people get paid what their labor is actually worth.


I agree, but you are somehow applying them incorrectly.
#189 Dec 12 2012 at 8:40 PM Rating: Good
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
Customers will make decisions about whether to eat at a given restaurant based on the total cost of the meal.


Read above. If you're an anomaly, that's fine, but don't act like that's the norm.


I'm not an anomaly. Anyone who doesn't take into account the total cost of dining out, including tax and tip is an idiot.

Quote:
If a person has a $30 budget, that person isn't going to go to place like Chilli's and spend $10 for a glass of Coke, $13 for a dinner roll, $2.50 in taxes and $5 on a tip. If the prices of food are absurd, then they will not purchase the food, resulting in no money spent on tax and/or tips. It's the meal prices that people are concerned about. As mentioned, if tax and tips are a concern for you, then you're already spending too much.


Sigh. You were sooo close. If your dinner budget is $30, that's how much you're aiming to spend including tax and tip. Whether you think in terms of "I can afford to spend $30 total including tax and tip" or "I can afford to spend $30 on dinner plus the tax and tip that will involve" really doesn't matter. There will always be some comparison made by the consumer between the cost of the meal and the quality of the meal. The customer will then make a decision about whether to purchase a meal there.

What you're missing is that if my hypothetical limit is X, then anything which pushes the price over X will mean I wont by the meal. If increasing the servers salary means that my total cost increases over X, then I wont buy the meal. I'm not sure what about this is causing such a mental block.

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
Thus, paying the waitstaff a higher wage (regardless of how that is derived) will impact total sales.


That's a fallacy that would only be true if your business weren't successful. As an owner, you have options, dip into your profit, decrease the amount of money spent on items not being sold, create other avenues of revenue, buy cheaper products, increase the sale prices, etc. . The last two options should be your last resort as your profit is made by the number of product sales and not the actual price of the product. Increasing the price may very well decrease your customer base, thus reducing your overall profit.


This has got to be one of the more moronic things you've posted. Can't we assume that the business is doing everything it can to maximize profits already? I mean, I thought we already agreed on that. So none of those options work either because the business will already be doing them or it wont want to do them. The business will only pay its servers more *if* they have to in order to maintain a sufficient quality of service for their customers. Unless servers are quitting and going to your competition because you don't pay them enough, you have no reason to pay them more. If they're good enough that you have to do so to avoid losing sales because of poor service then you *will* pay the wait staff more.

You're trying to argue that there's some arbitrarily defined "fair pay" level out there that we should create and should be enforced. But ultimately the "fair wage" is based on those market forces I talked about earlier. If wait staff really can't tolerate working for a lower minimum wage plus tips then they wont work for that much. If they can, they will. If a specific waiter can find better pay elsewhere, he/she will do that. That's why waitstaff are paid more at more expensive restaurants. The expectation is that the quality of the service, food, and decor will be higher, so customers are willing to pay more. Thus the employer *must* pay his staff more. But no one expects high standards at Dennys, so they are not willing to pay as much. Thus the employer will pay his staff less. If you attempt to force higher pay via legislation, all you accomplish is making the "cheap" restaurants cost more to eat at, possibly pricing them out of the market.

At the end of the day though, total cost is the consideration. How you break it up doesn't really matter. How many dollars come out of the consumers pocket in return for what he got does.

Edited, Dec 12th 2012 6:43pm by gbaji
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#190 Dec 12 2012 at 11:08 PM Rating: Excellent
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I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the **** home.
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#191 Dec 13 2012 at 1:03 AM Rating: Excellent
Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the @#%^ home.


Or go to McDonald's.
#192 Dec 13 2012 at 1:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
This has got to be one of the more moronic things you've posted.

Not even in the Top 100.
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#193 Dec 13 2012 at 7:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Belkira wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the @#%^ home.


Or go to McDonald's.

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#194 Dec 13 2012 at 7:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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I prefer Burger King.
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#195 Dec 13 2012 at 7:55 AM Rating: Decent
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Hell no, Wendy's all the way.
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#196 Dec 13 2012 at 8:07 AM Rating: Good
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twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesoniononasesameseedbun

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#197 Dec 13 2012 at 8:26 AM Rating: Excellent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.
When two contrarians butt heads, one will usually accidentally be right.
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#198 Dec 13 2012 at 3:26 PM Rating: Default
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Belkira wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the @#%^ home.


Or go to McDonald's.



Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the @#%^ home.


Given that I said those exact things, I'm assuming that you all didn't read my posts. Also, not factoring in your tip in your total expense before you leave != not tipping. Do you think about taxes every time before you purchase something or do you just hand them your cash or card?



Edited, Dec 13th 2012 11:28pm by Almalieque
#199 Dec 13 2012 at 4:23 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
I'm not sure how that's relevant at all to the discussion we're having, but sure. If you really want to go wander back to the kitchen and hand the chef some money, go for it. Kinda doesn't have anything to do with the question about whether it's fair to have waitstaff pay based on a lower minimum wage.


You stated that we factor in tips based on what we think we should pay for food. I countered to say that the money we decide to pay for a meal is completely irrelevant to the tip that we give a waiter. A supporting statement is that the work that we acknowledge waiters for doing has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the food, so why are you calculating the tip before hand in your spending money if it's based on the value?

Gbaji wrote:
Um... Because they are waitstaff who earn tips which makes up for the lower minimum wage. See how I've already moved past the really dumb question and on to the one we're actually discussing? Was this really a question to anyone? I thought it was a given in the topic itself?


Tips are extra. That's not money coming from their employer. That's money coming from other people. So, what if a customer feels the "Christmas Spirit" and tips a waiter $10k, can the employer now not pay their employee until they work off 10k? If so, do you think that's fair?

Gbaji wrote:
Seriously? That's.... ridiculous. I'm sorry, but it is. That's like saying that poor people should pay higher taxes because the national tax rate is 35% and no one should be allowed to pay less than the national tax rate.


I guess you don't understand the concept of constants? If it varies, then it isn't a constant, but a variable, hence the term "vary". It's very simple. There's nothing wrong with having a variable, just don't label it a constant. Is the "national tax rate" a mandate or an average?

Gbaji wrote:
Oh wait! That doesn't make sense because there are multiple "national tax rates"


Then it isn't a constant, but a variable

Gbaji wrote:
Just like there are multiple national minimum wages. In this case, there is a separate minimum wage for wait staff. Silly me for assuming that you actually had an opinion on the existence or level of said minimum wage. But since your only concern is people getting paid less than the legally defined minimum wage, and that isn't happening in this case, then I guess you have been arguing for a page and a half over absolutely nothing.
.

Read above... Once you realize the difference between a variable and a constant, then you'll understand it's impossible to have a varying constant.
#200 Dec 13 2012 at 4:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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I guess somebody missed the point.

If I, personally, order food delivered or go to a sit-down-get-served restaurant I fully plan to be tipping. If you* don't, then you are a class-A douchebag.











*Not you you just an in-general you.







Because I'm not a jerk.























mostly
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#201 Dec 13 2012 at 5:34 PM Rating: Good
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Friar Bijou wrote:
I hate to break tradition, here, but gbaji is right.

If you do not plan to tip then stay the @#%^ home.


Or takeout, that doesn't require a tip.
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