The title of the article ("He thought tending bar sounded like fun. Then the entire kitchen staff quit on Christmas Eve"), the NH submission title ("Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now") and your comment ("...joins the workforce and learns the real truth") make it sounds like the author experienced some deep revelation about the state of this kind of work.

I think the titles are a bit hyperbolic (to bait clicks, perhaps), as my reading of the article is different: I think the things described in this article are not surprising to the author and not supposed to be that surprising to the audience. I read the article a much more straightforward comment by the author to say "this is my experiences and I don't think they're unique".

Agree that the titles may distort the perception (you make an excellent point), but I was concerned about the conclusion of the article. Thank you for bringing that to light.

I also respect your reading of the article as a generalization of this predicament. This is also very helpful to reframe the article. But personally, I'm not so sure of that entirely. And that's because he's outlining tip practices, a voluntary operation, while offering no real conclusion beyond his observations (which I agree are universal) besides "please tip more." I would have also liked (unfairly expected?) someone who said "I have pretty much been in politics my whole adult life" to filter through that lens - policy enablement of the situation.

From the end of the article:

"As for customers… You want to see Spider Man? You desperately want to bring your kids to Encanto or Sing 2? And you want your popcorn, food, and drinks? Cool. But if you don’t tip or act like an asshole, taking your personal anger and frustrations on workers who don’t deserve it, workers will not be there to serve you.

"Good old Adam Smith and his invisible hand of supply and demand works both ways, and the reason why you won’t get what you want will be staring right back in the mirror."

I agree with the author: don't be an a$$hol3 is a good life principle. I actually agree people should tip, too, for good service. What I don't agree with is that, as a legislator, you should craft policy and policy enforcement around the concept of goodwill. Goodwill is a societal outcome of policy, not a requirement of policy. Especially when wellbeing through wage earning is at stake.

Also, supply and demand does work both ways, as the author says. Will policy be able to keep up? Meaning, if demand for workers increases, we should see adjustments in wages. Yet the "rely on tipping, take a lower wage" policy remains with know conditions of the system (that people might not tip).

I think you are saying that the conclusions you quoted are not really satisfying nor satisfactory. I agree with you on this. I personally think the end of the article was a bit "lazy" rhetorically, but maybe that's OK. Thanks for your comments on this, they helped my own understanding.

Supposedly he should know the ins and outs of labor law, yet he struggles to provide any applicable analysis how to solve the problems.

Obviously low pay is the biggest one, but things like lack of breaks to go to the toilet is something very solevable.

Yes! And how policy can have unintended consequence is HUGE. Why doesn't he really even mention that? It's upsetting that among the many observations that "people, tip more" ends up being the final thought and not "we created a system that affords all of this behavior, " not one that works with known conditions.

Sure, I personally think people should be more generous, but they aren't obliged to be generous, I don't really fault them for not being more generous, and if lack of generosity is a condition of the system, he doesn't really have a good argument for saying "we crafted a system knowing people aren't generous, please be more generous so our system works."

> Sure, I personally think people should be more generous

I think people shouldn't be expected to show generosity with an arbitrary subsidy.

Yes! There cannot be an expectation of goodwill, especially with policy. While I personally think people should be more generous, I can't believe that policy should depend on it. Thank you for pointing this out and I will work to be more clear.

He addresses the low wages right at the start. He also addresses shitty customer behaviour and shitty employer demands. And yes, he also touches on tipping. I think the article is pretty well-rounded.

You are right and thank you for pointing that out. He hits these areas but, in my reading, fails to fully close the loop.

I feel that policy supported wage floors for tipping isn't addressed enough, if at all. Sure, they tried to get rid of tipping, but tipping here is only a problem when a former policy maker says, "tip because the policy supports it." I don't agree that policy should be reliant on goodwill but rather policy should support outcomes of goodwill.

That's the only part I find missing, especially considering the conclusion which doesn't strongly suggest policy around labor and wages as a cause (or even a solution).

I don't think he's proposing policies at all; he's observing the problem, and explaining the problem for people who are unwilling to believe poor people. That serves an important purpose. There are plenty of other articles addressing policies.

I think he's actually going through the exercise of confirming his prior beliefs with "experience".

Too true! Yes he's now in the workforce, and it's such a shame that he NOW sees how the system works AFTER dictating/enforcing policy about it for an entire state.

And there's an implication at the end of the article: tip more, customers. Policy is fine, it didn't cause this problem, customer behavior did.

Perhaps he needs more confirmation through that experience.

There’s a difference between understanding something and groking something.

Experiencing something yourself is very different than simply reading and empathizing about something.

I can definitely see why what would be your interpretation of the end of the article, but I don't think that's what the author was trying to convey. Earlier on, under the "The first and biggest is wages" header, the author implies that the policies around tipping are a big part of the problem. But the reality is that there have long been efforts to end the practice of tipping in the US, and they have all failed. Even if there were to be a successful push to change the culture around it, it would take years, and his argument is about what is causing labor issues now.

His argument is addressed to Austinites and others in similar areas who want to enjoy activities like watching a movie in a theater, and are now finding it harder than it used to be. In summary:

1. In order to survive, lots of theaters have pivoted to models where employees serve food and drinks to customers sitting in the theater.

2. Because they're serving food this way, they can get tips.

3. Because they can get tips, their wage is $2.13 an hour.

4. At the start of the pandemic, a lot of people took early retirement, opening up a lot of higher-end jobs that had been unavailable previously, since Americans are retiring later, and high-end job growth does not scale linearly with the population. This means low-wage workers now have more options, and it's switched from an employer-favored job market to an employee-favored market.

5. Low-wage earners cannot afford to live in Austin. Workers at this theater were either teenage children of wealthy Austinites, or commuting from less expensive areas. If the job gets too bad, the teenagers can afford to just quit, and the commuters can find jobs closer to home.

6. On one day given as an example, the entire tip amount was $3.80. Since tips are split evenly, every worker got $3.80 in tips for the day. Assuming they worked 8 hour days, that means the employees making a base salary of $2.13/hour got a total of $2.61/hour, or a total of $20.84 for the day, with no healthcare. That doesn't even cover the commute expenses for the day.

7. Because of all of the above, there are few people willing to work at a movie theater, and when a movie theater can't even keep a skeleton crew on staff to keep it running, it will have to close down.

Therefore, if you are an Austinite who wants to continue going to movie theaters, you have only one immediate way to keep them open: tip generously.

You might think the other option is to go to a movie theater that doesn't serve food and drink this way, and thus must pay the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. And this is more reasonable, but a total day's pay for a worker there will still be $58/day without healthcare. We're at the point where it covers the commute, but barely. The IRS estimates that commutes cost $0.56/mile in oil/gas/maintenance costs. For someone with a 30 mile commute each way, that's $33.60 in commute costs, leaving them with $24.40 for a day's work.

Raising wages would help, and the author did point out that companies that have been making higher profits than ever could afford it. Universal healthcare, affordable housing in the city, and more robust public transit could help, but those aren't coming any time soon. The only hope of getting a pre-pandemic theater experience in the short term is to tip so well that employees are making significantly more than the minimum wage, this attracting enough workers to a theater.

Even then, however, the author's point about customers being entitled assholes might still drive employees away. You could take tipping out of the equation entirely and most of the author's argument would still be true.

These are very valuable points from the article and good observations about the condition that a HCoL area (really, any area) is subjected to. Thank you for that.

One area that is problematic is not the custom of tipping, but the policy around tip-based wage earners. Sure, people will tip. Is the concern that the practice makes untraceable tax revenue? We could do away with the policy practice of reduced minimum wage floors for tip-based jobs. It wouldn't introduce a barrier for the practice of tipping, but it also wouldn't tacitly condone tipping through policy, either.

Now, can off-books money change hands (undeclared, untaxed income)? Sure, but honestly someone can hand me cash right now and it wouldn't be trackable either. So from that, I don't believe that we can or should stop tipping, actually (I don't see the problem with it).

My problem is: I don't think that policy reliant on goodwill (suppressing minimum wage floors and hoping tips arrive) is a good strategy. I've had those jobs and I know that pain. It's * almost * like the author is saying that demand will meet the supply shortage in labor right now, but there's this ghost tip component of the equation that troubles me. Just do away with reduced minimum wage floors for "tip based" jobs. Then we don't have to send this message any way other than, "it's nice to tip for nice service."

Tipped workers must be paid at least the untipped minimum wage. If the tips plus the base pay don’t add up to the untipped minimum wage, the employer has to make that up. I know some employers steal wages and don’t do that, but that’s a separate issue too. I’m assuming it’s not a factor here, or else it would be bizarre for him to leave out wage theft.

You're right, and I forgot to factor that into my calculations, because, in my experience, that kind of wage theft is the norm. Employees have to proactively petition their employers for the top-off if they make less than minimum wage, and in situations like this, where even the manager is working 12 hour days without breaks, that kind of thing falls through and gets missed.

But I don't think the author was trying to accuse his employer of that kind of wage theft.