Restaurant Equity Charges

[catherine]

My son, the restaurant server, was just telling me that in one of the popular restaurants they have decided on a tip pool where the tips that servers get would be pooled and then distributed equally across servers, bus people, kitchen staff, and even chefs.

There must be some details that his "source" is not clear on because this is really unfair. Server base pay is $5/hr. And yes, I agree that anyone, kitchen staff or server, who isn't getting a decent hourly wage, should get one, but I don't understand how cutting server tips in half is going to help employers find help, unless they hire robots.

[ApatheticNoMore]

We even have a combo Mexican/Chinese place which I think is hilarious.

that is apparently a common thing, perhaps due to Chinese immigration to Mexico but who knows (maybe that place just does good business), so I wondered since a bunch of such places seem to exist, is it fusion cusine, but apparently mostly not. And then there is Chinese Peruvian food.

[Rogar]

In my waiter days back in the Precambrian era I always though waiters made a pretty decent wage with tips, relative to the skills required. It probably depends a lot on the popularity and turnover of the place. Tips were an incentive to be faster or more polite or organized. We gave a percent of tips to bus people for a similar reason. Matter of fact, I'm sort of surprised there is a wait staff shortage because the pay was so decent. But that was a while back.

Routine kitchen help earned less and one could argue the job required fewer skills, but was a hard job. Chefs or head cooks were well paid. I suspect by today's standards kitchen staff were underpaid or were not earning a living wage. It would not make sense to me to share tips with kitchen help, but their fair wages should be up to the owners/managers.

What our news has covered on restaurant staff shortages is not so much on pay, but that many of the tourist areas have seen such a huge rise in real estate prices that workers can't afford the high cost of housing or rentals. A recent article about one of the popular mountain town tourist destinations featured workers who were camping in public camping areas because they couldn't afford housing.

[ToomuchStuff]

Never had a full fledged "waiter" job. Was a server and had a local famous place (Stephenson's), that one of the owners wanted me to go to work for him/them and leave my restaurant job (at that job, I did everything). I fed him his last meal, as that night he had a stroke and lived in a coma type state until he passed.
I stayed where I was at, and saw many of those that worked for Lloyd, worked and paid their way through college.
Thankfully, our base pay was setup as more, because I was rarely tipped, as I was mistaken for one of the owners, or thought to be their kid.
Now, I have recently talked to a kid, that switched restaurants, going to work for $20 an hour as a prep cook.

[razz]

In our area, local restaurants helped a lot of teens learn to work together to a standard and put themselves through post-secondary school. DH and I always tried to support their efforts with our tips. It was a win-win-win approach.

[gimmethesimplelife]

One thing as a long time survivor of the hospitality industry that I am hoping for as a result of Covid and the seemingly wholesale reevaluation of the entire concept of working to begin with - I'd love to see restaurant prices go up say 15% with ALL staff (front and back of the house) getting a wage within spitting distance of being livable and not fear based survival which is so common in this industry. Seriously, my story getting out of the business is somewhat rare - though right now it's not as unachievable at least here locally as it has been for years - not a day goes by when I am not grateful to have moved out of restaurants/hotels/resorts.

Right now changes are coming to hospitality big time. Example? The current CEO of Hilton is stating that pandemic related service cuts will be permanent, and that the hotel business will emerge from the pandemic a higher margin business, achieving this partly through less labor cost. Two specific areas of cutbacks - forget daily room cleaning - it's not happening. Untold number of housekeepers have been permanently let go. And in F and B, less on site dining and many hotels scrapping room service entirely.

The business is not going to be what is once was going forward, even if profitability returns (speaking from an employee perspective and slightly from a traveler perspective). Rob

[iris lilies]

I think daily cleaning of hotels rooms is dumb anyway. I think daily changing of sheets and towels in hotels is a ridiculous waste of resources.

[gimmethesimplelife]

I think daily cleaning of hotels rooms is dumb anyway. I think daily changing of sheets and towels in hotels is a ridiculous waste of resources.

Fair enough - but what of all the laid off housekeepers, estimated to be an average of age 45? (I read this online an a hotel industry blog). I'm not entirely is disagreeance with you here, IL, just to be clear, but I do believe that daily housekeeping became an expectation in the 50's and 60's as the standard of living increased and more people had time to break away and use the new Interstate Highway System to travel. Daily housekeeping made one feel special I'm told until it became expected - it was as if you were truly on vacation as someone else was dealing with cleaning up/picking up.

I agree that it is a bit of a waste - but once again to some it's an ingrained expectation. Rob

[catherine]

Fair enough - but what of all the laid off housekeepers, estimated to be an average of age 45? (I read this online an a hotel industry blog). I'm not entirely is disagreeance with you here, IL, just to be clear, but I do believe that daily housekeeping became an expectation in the 50's and 60's as the standard of living increased and more people had time to break away and use the new Interstate Highway System to travel. Daily housekeeping made one feel special I'm told until it became expected - it was as if you were truly on vacation as someone else was dealing with cleaning up/picking up.

I agree that it is a bit of a waste - but once again to some it's an ingrained expectation. Rob

We went to NJ last month to visit our grandkids (oh, I guess we saw our son/DIL, too, LOL). We stayed at a local hotel, and the second day I walked in to the room, and saw no one had made up the bed. As most of you know, I'm a frequent "flier" and while working, stay in hotels probably a week out of every month, so my default response was, "what the heck??" After a few moments I tied together the used sheets with COVID.

That being said, when hotels started going "green" and giving us deals like free coffee if we agree to not have our towels changed every day I was ALL IN. So, after they sort out the difficulties in having to reduce labor, I think eliminating daily housekeeping is a positive outcome of COVID.

[iris lilies]

Fair enough - but what of all the laid off housekeepers, estimated to be an average of age 45? (I read this online an a hotel industry blog). I'm not entirely is disagreeance with you here, IL, just to be clear, but I do believe that daily housekeeping became an expectation in the 50's and 60's as the standard of living increased and more people had time to break away and use the new Interstate Highway System to travel. Daily housekeeping made one feel special I'm told until it became expected - it was as if you were truly on vacation as someone else was dealing with cleaning up/picking up.

I agree that it is a bit of a waste - but once again to some it's an ingrained expectation. Rob

Yes I have twice now run into that “ingrained expectation. “Just recently was a couple weeks ago when I went to a flower show event and stayed in a nice motel.They had little signs in our rooms saying they wouldn’t change towels and etc. unless we ask for it. One of the flower show ladies complained about no clean towels. I told her there was a sign in a room but she had not read it.

Another time, years ago, We stayed in a hotel for a flower show event and one of my compatriots complained about the new—then— option of not changing sheets. She sound like a spoiled princess. She said when “I pay for a hotel I expect to have fresh towels and sheets every day.” Ok Princess.

I can’t live my life in order to keep people employed liked housekeepers at something I don’t value. I am far more likely to patronize restaurants (which I did during Covid) and tip well because that is an industry and service I value.