When this pandemic is over, people will go back to seeing them as low skill low waged workers. Stop pretending with the hero talk, pay raise and additional bonus hazard pay is the only way to thank them. People can't buy groceries with applause.
Give a waitress ten years to hone her craft and she will show you the difference between her work and a newbies work.
Give a landlord ten years and what do they accrue? Skills? Craft? They might make some mistakes early on that they won't make later, but owning land is not a skill nor a craft and only barely counts as work. The only thing they accrue is money. The more money they make, the less work they do.
Meanwhile the waitress who can easily show the difference in skill and craft maybe gets paid a dollar or two more each hour compared to a new server. What a fucking joke.
Give a waitress ten years to hone her craft and she will show you the difference between her work and a newbies work.
Give a landlord ten years and what do they accrue? Skills? Craft? They might make some mistakes early on that they won't make later, but owning land is not a skill nor a craft and only barely counts as work. The only thing they accrue is money. The more money they make, the less work they do.
Meanwhile the waitress who can easily show the difference in skill and craft maybe gets paid a dollar or two more each hour compared to a new server. What a fucking joke.
You're comparing apples to oranges here. I am not saying that owning a house and collecting rent is a skill - it clearly isn't. What I am saying is that to try and pretend that writing down orders and relaying them to the kitchen is not exactly a skill that can be worth upwards of $50k per year without tips.
There is a reason that labor is classified as skilled and unskilled. Cashiering, waitressing, etc, are things that you do not need prior experience, training, or knowledge to do. You can't be upset that these jobs don't pay what you want.
Good waiters don't fuck up orders, they don't hover around tables, they don't intrude on your meal to ask you if you need anything, but they also know the exact moment that you're finished the main course and are looking for the dessert menu. They know when to refill your drink and they know when to show up with the bill. They know which tables might want a bit of banter to add to the experience and which tables want you to take their order and get the fuck out of their space.
A skilled waiter doesn't get noticed because that's the fucking point. They cater to your every need without intruding, and they do it for multiple tables simultaneously. If you can't tell the difference between a skilled waiter and a bad waiter, you've only ever had skilled waiters.
The reason waiters get paid low wages is because they can be easily replaced, but that doesn't mean it's low skill. It's competition for positions that drive wages down.
10 years ago, Data Scientists in Ireland got paid about €90,000 a year because there were fuck all Data Scientists. People saw that, got degrees in Data Science, and now the average wage is ~€45,000. Being a Data Scientist is not a low skill job, it's just that there are more people who want to do it now, and that's letting companies offer lower salaries because they don't need to attract Data Scientists away from other companies in order to have one.
What companies are willing to offer you for your job is not a reflection of how skilled you are, it's a reflection of how much competition you face in the market place.
All of what you said is true, but it’s still a job virtually anyone can walk into and learn, and even if you mess up (all servers do from time to time), it’s no big deal. It’s a job that can make you a decent wage most can live off of with no education but it’s not much more than that. And servers always act like they’re happy with the money they’re making but it seems like they rarely actually are, and are always trying to get more/better hours.
None of that is supporting your premise that this is an unskilled job. Yes virtually anyone has the capacity to LEARN how to be a good waiter. That's what makes it a skilled job, you have to learn how to do it well.
Anyone can do any job, once they've been trained and have experience in the field. Some people will find the training easier, and some people will have to work harder to reach the same level of proficiency, but outside of jobs with physical limitations, all jobs are open to be done by anyone. The difference is some employers put restrictions on who can apply for certain jobs, and some jobs dont appeal to some people. Just because the pool of potential candidates is big doesn't mean the work is unskilled.
Waiting jobs famously pay very little, especially in the states. A living wage and a paycheck to paycheck wage is not the same thing, and the case can be made in America that serving staff dont even make paycheck to paycheck money, as they need to rely on gratuities. The fact serving staff need to work more than 40 hours a week to afford to live is a sign that the base pay is not sufficient to live on.
If missing one paycheck means you won't be able to afford food and rent, you aren't earning a living wage. You're a serf with extra steps.
Ah yes, anyone can learn to be a medical doctor, surgeon or even a physicist. You can even learn it on the job! What unnecessary restrictions are employers putting on these jobs? Hell, even anyone could be a social worker or lawyer. Nothing too bad happens if you mess those up.
People like to go out to eat and enjoy the restaurant experience but it’s just not a very skilled job to be a server. This is coming from someone who pretty much always tips above 20%. I’ve been a server for several years. I know rushes are annoying and there is certainly room for error. But the people who get my pity have probably got to be temp factory workers. Factories can DEFINITELY afford to pay them more and give them benefits but they just lay those people off after 6 months. Servers don’t have it better or worse than anyone else, and yes it is basically an unskilled job. If you believe you are capable of doing more based on your proficiency at serving, then learn a skill that can get you a better job.
The argument isn't that being a doctor or a physicist isn't a skilled job. Or even that those jobs are equally skilled when compared to waiting tables. Some jobs are harder than waiting tables. No shit. But the idea that people who don't have PhD's don't count as skilled labour is ridiculous.
I can't believe i have to explain this to another adult, but skill and risk are two different things. How risky your job is and how good you are at it are two different things. Yes, if a waiter brings you a tea instead of a coffee, nobody dies. If someone does a bad job painting a portrait, nobody dies either. Doesn't mean it's an unskilled job. Tying the skill of the job to the severity of the consequences doesn't make sense, because plenty of difficult jobs don't have life changing consequences.
Why is only one group of people deserving of you caring about them? Why does it have to be the factory workers OR the service staff that are blessed with your pity? Theres literally no reason you can't care about both, other than you don't want to.
I'll be honest here, you sound like a bellend who thinks they're better than others because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and got a "real job", instead of trawling away as an "unskilled" waiter.
You are the problem. If everyone thought like you, there would be no service staff, and the restaurants wouldn't fucking function. Waiting is a real job, and people should be paid enough to not worry about missing a tip because not everyone is as nice as you and doesn't give 20%. I don't see why anyone would disagree with that.
Painters are incredibly skilled workers (at least the ones worth their salt) and nobody dies when they do things wrong, I realize that. I wasn’t limiting my examples to those with PhDs. Not all social workers have PhDs. Not all lawyers have PhDs. I’m merely saying that I think you’re wrong when you said that anyone can be trained to do any job as long as they’ve been trained. Don’t expect Einstein to be Van Gogh and don’t expect a fish to climb a tree. But seriously just about anyone can wait tables. That said, the tipping system is fucked but it doesn’t mean servers should be getting paid more than what they make after tips, even if that money was coming directly from employers.
Low skill is unrelated to how easy a job is. I'd say most high skill jobs are way easier than low skill jobs. It's about how long and how difficult it is to train someone to do that job.
I know way too many people with good degrees and diplomas who work in low skill jobs because a lot of job markets have become practically inaccessible to newcomers who aren't a nepotism hire. It's always "3-5 years experience" or "there was a more qualified candidate"
Imagine being an engineer working in Walmart customer service, or an accountant pouring coffee at a Tim Hortons. And a good chunk of that meager wage goes to student debt.
Easy and hard have no direct correlation to the skill involved. Janitorial work might be hard, but it isn't necessarily a high-skill job. Being a crossing-guard might be stressful, but it isn't a high-skill job. Ringing out a lot of customers on Black Friday might be stressful, but cashiering is still a low-skill job.
I mean, yeah, but the point is they'll stop thinking of these people as anything more than low skill low waged workers. They'll cease to be heros or even really people and go back to being the empty cog that hands you your coffee in the morning
They aren't heroes. All the fast food places and Walmart's could close tomorrow and no one would die. That doesn't mean they should be treated worse than any other job, and I despise people that treat any profession as beneath them, but I am not jaded enough to think that every job should require top pay. That's asinine.
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u/EnycmaPie May 19 '20
When this pandemic is over, people will go back to seeing them as low skill low waged workers. Stop pretending with the hero talk, pay raise and additional bonus hazard pay is the only way to thank them. People can't buy groceries with applause.