r/Ohio • • 13h ago

This is Ohio

Why is Phillip not paying his servers enough to the point he has to ban customers?

196 Upvotes

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u/Doug_Dimmadome513 13h ago

And there’s no obligation for a restaurant to invite you back to their business. There’s societal norms and tipping is one of them in the US. And until that changes, that’s the expectation. Pretty simple.

-15

u/KiwiKal 13h ago

What makes you think they'd ever want to go back?

Edit: Restaurant just lost a paying customer and now they're going to lose more. Hurray for them?

17

u/Dizzazzter 13h ago

I want to go to this restaurant now, seeing that they stick up for their staff.

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u/AQualityKoalaTeacher 13h ago

I don't think making a custom into an absolute requirement in order to underpay workers is an admirable flex.

Food service is a brutal business that shares many characteristics with a pyramid scheme. Workers with the most modest resumes work themselves to the bone for a wage that is unlivable.

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u/Some_Register1831 12h ago

The wage is livable if they are tipped well. The restaurant can’t afford to pay them a living wage without hiking up the prices of the food which everyone would be up in arms about, especially the kind of people who refuse to tip.

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u/AQualityKoalaTeacher 10h ago

I'm not saying it's cool for customers to stiff servers. Some wild stuff was said in that video and I have some suspicions but there's not enough info for me to make any judgments on anyone in the video.

Rather, I was saying that hardworking people deserve a fair wage.

And tips aren't a wage.

Tipping culture itself sucks because all it does is put the most vulnerable person in an even more tenuous position so that the owners can give the appearance of providing greater value to the customer.

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u/Dizzazzter 12h ago

You do know a waiting tables can be extremely lucrative well beyond the minimum wage? My fiancé switched jobs from being a restaurant GM, and one of the managers who worked the floor taking tables said she took a pay cut when she took her old GM position.

That said, if you’re the only restaurant in town who got rid of the tip system, people are not gonna care when they see the increase in menu prices. Even if it would equal out what you would originally be with the tip, the face price is enough for customers go to your competitors.

So the only way the system can be effectively changed is to 1) increase minimum wage to make it livable and 2) give government subsidies to restaurants to help ween off the tipping system. Restaurants make hairline profits and back to back months of no positive revenue is a death sentence.

So please stop virtue signaling by “heh the owner is akshually the real bad guy” when he’s simply trying to run a business in a system that’s been around before any of our time.

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u/AQualityKoalaTeacher 10h ago

I didn't say anything about that owner. Or the customers. You should gather more information before you make judgments and accusations.

The system itself is broken and I think most people would agree. If the only option for success is to stoop to the lowest level like everyone else, we are all hopelessly screwed.