Inactive Account Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Brisbane, QLD, AUS |
Tipping f*cking sh!ts me.
There, I said it.
Bit of history: no, I've never been to the States. It sh!ts me here, like it annoys Arpe over yonder Tasman.
Truth is, most young kids here who do the waiting are raised on a strict diet of American TV and movies think that tipping is the norm. People give waitpersons tips. Oh no, lith, you're being racist and blaming Americans for the woes of the world!
No. I'll bet my last buck that 90% of all..."knowledge" retained in the minds of anyone under 35 comes from popular culture. The US just cranks out more than anyone else, and that's mostly all we get down here (but if it means people stop watching McLeod's Daughters, fine by me. Here's a hint, denizens of Drover's Run: you'd lose less money on the farm IF YOU STOPPED BLOODY WEARING $100 RM WILLIAMS SHIRTS IN THE PADDOCK.)
Anyway, you get this tip thing happening.
'Cept were all a bunch of pinko socialists down here - first country to introduce Minimum Wage laws! - and we have said Minimum Wage laws in place.
It's about $17-$19/hour down here, in the hospitality sector.
But, lo, tip jars keep popping up. Yes, I'll give a tip if I'm feeling generous, or it was exceptionally good service, or good food.
But I don't f*cking well owe you anything! Are you going to take me to court over my non-tipping?
Oh, I see how you get around it. You'll just take the tip from my change, without my permission. Quaint little legal term for that:
Theft.
And if I was going to tip you anyway, and you do that, you're not getting a tip. Ever.
Or, next time, you'll spit in my food or stick a pube or two in it...
Then I sue you from here until the next millennium, and you have to work out a resumé that neatly sidesteps you being the person "who got that restaurant shut down". Once you get outta jail. But, lith, you're obviously a tightarse!
No. No, I'm not. If I were a tightarse, I wouldn't eat out. I wouldn't pay $3 for a coffee that cost 15c to make. Wouldn't pay $6.50 for a kebab. Or, as I did this morning, pay $9.90 for two poached eggs on wholemeal toast, five dollars for some fresh-squeezed OJ (admittedly, that was pushing it), and $3.50 for a doppio.
And if another dessicated coconut like Johnny H tries to take the laws away, again, I'll be with on the barricades. You goddamned commie! People should be paid in accordance to how well they do their job! Tipping is the purest form of that! It encourages people to work hard and do a good job!
Oh, piss off.
Seriously. That meritocratic, libertarian male bovie-faeces can kiss my ring. And I don't wear jewellery.
Every single person who wheels out that argument, I've seen, is invariably some who claims to have had to work harding for is some smug bastard who of course, never did do anything of the sort (Dubya!), because the easing of work-related laws (bringing the work conditions similar to the Industrial Revolution in Britain, or the robber-baron eras of the the US).
Or they're stuck in some shite, dead-end job, where they'll most likely die before they reach sixty, and all they've got is pride. They sure as hell don't have a decent house or the ability to afford a balanced diet.
Or they're commission-based salespeople, and, frankly, what I want to do to commission-based salespeople would land me in The Hague.
You want to know how tipping works?
I lived with a girl who worked in a certain pub in Brisbane, and she explained how it worked:
"I get good tips, because I've got big tits."
QV, that. I'm guessing they were well past the 44DD stage. Actually, I think they were off the musical scale, if you catch my drift. Didn't exactly get my tape measure out. And she was slim, too. It got to the point of men buying a pot with a twenty and letting her keep the change.
I guarantee, it won't go to the person who works the hardest. It will go to the most attractive. Attractive people tend to be stupider, my theory goes, as they don't need to be smart or work hard. People will fall over themselves to help. They don't need to know if they're hot or not - they'll just get used to the treatment..
Sit in a bar, and watch it. If an utter babe delivers the drinks, people won't give a soaring shag as to how long it took. And they'll tip - specially men, who tapdance through a minefield if they think there's the slightest chance of a root.
They'll have some poor ugly bastard as the glassie (busboy), though. His tips will be what he can fish out of the urinal.
But, of course, you can reverse-engineer this by measuring people's performance by counting how many tips they make, and say "Tips are only ever awarded to people who do good work, and, ergo, the person with the most tips is the most hard-working."
So you keep the one with the biggest tip intake, fire the ones with the smallest, and, voila! Your workforce gets less efficient.
|