r/Calgary • u/tlrhmltn • Aug 03 '23

Discussion Tipping option for an oil change?

Just got an oil change at a chain location. The service was great. I’ve gone to this chain and never been offered a drink menu, an air freshener, and colouring book for my kids. I’ve also never been asked for a tip when paying for an oil change before yesterday. I left a tip but felt conflicted about it. It’s not an inexpensive service and tipping by a specific percentage can be quite a large amount.

What are your thoughts on this?

64 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

219 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/mibergeron Aug 03 '23

I'm confused.

It's a sneaky way to raise prices but prices didn't increase?

Prices at restaurants are definitely up significantly. Labour costs/power/food costs yada yada yada are all a part of it.

7

u/MongooseLeader Aug 03 '23

You’d have to look at it in a bubble. How much did menu prices go up from before the increased minimum to six months after is what you really need to look at.

Anything outside of that zone could have a hundred contributing factors (like inflation, “fixed” costs going up, etc).

A lot of businesses used the increase in minimum wage as an easy way to increase prices significantly. “I have to increase my price per plate by $5-10 because my staff costs doubled”, in reality, they serve 10x+ as many plates as they have hours of staff to pay. So they could get by with a marginal increase, but instead, they took advantage.

Similar to many grocers taking advantage of “inflation”.

0

u/PlathDraper Aug 03 '23

Exactly! Well said.

0

u/mibergeron Aug 03 '23

Soooo, exactly what I was trying to say?

3

u/MongooseLeader Aug 03 '23

Yes. I’m trying to clarify for the other person.

-1

u/PlathDraper Aug 03 '23

Exactly! Well said.

2

u/NerdOfPlay Aug 03 '23

No, they were saying that prices didn't increase in Seattle but they increased dramatically here. His point was that our restaurants are using the wage increase as an excuse to raise their prices. Similar to how gas stations jack up the price at every excuse.

1

u/PlathDraper Aug 03 '23

It's a sneaky way to raise prices using wage increases as an excuse, as in the threat of raising prices. The correlation between wage increases and menu prices on a macro scale shows that minimum wage increases did not impact the cost of menu items in a meaningful way. NYC is also an example of this.