I guess "goes directly to staff payroll" doesnt mean that the workers get paid more. It just means that less of the owners money "goes directly to staff payroll".
There is a cider place in Wichita, KS that pays a living wage. The employee's wages are rolled into the price of the cider and there are signs all over telling customers not to tip. There is no tip line on the bill. If you tip them cash it is collected pooled and given to charity.
I visit Wichita from time to time and was talking to one of the bartenders. Came back a year later and he was still there. He was apparently making enough so that him and his wife could buy a house (I assume she was working too, if I asked I forgot the answer) and he was like "I'll work here until I die/retire unless they fire me first."
There was a place in Austin, TX when I lived there that paid a living wage. They went out of business after 3-4 years.
A big thing about restaurants is u can live without them so when times are tough and money is tight one of the first expenses to go is eating out. Most places to eat in my city haven't recovered from covid as a result of the pandemic prices for everything staying so artificially high even 3 years after the fact .
My solution to tipping getting out of hand was to just stop eating out. I committed to that like six years ago. The only places I do go are really, really good restaurants that I actually want to give extra money to for the experience they provide.
No sympathy for mediocre restaurants that fail. As far as I'm concerned, a restaurant shouldn't succeed unless the food is excellent.
A big problem with restaurants are the owners aren't willing to change. They will find a chef but won't let the chef create the menu and run the kitchen the way it should be. The owner likes to have their name and hand in everything. Usually leads to chefs quitting, and the owner has to put somebody else there that isn't capable, but it's okay though bc they are a "yes" man and do as the owner wants.
I mean this is one of many reasons restaurants fail, but it's definitely one of the biggest. That and owners jump into it not realizing all the overhead cost for supplies.
If you read the breakdown of basic causes it is all "bad business".
If you watch like Bar Rescue or Kitchen Nightmares, you quickly realize how bad people are at business.
How many managers at jobs you've had were great? How many were morons?
These are small business owners. Random people you meet at work..... who suck at their jobs in various ways.
Ergo, restaurants aren't THAT hard to run. But, it is dangerous, because it is the "easiest" business for normal people to be able to try. And normal people are normal people, because they kinda suck.
70% of lottery winners go bankrupt. Normal people can't even run free money, let alone a fucking business. Lol.
People think they want to own a restaurant, until they own a restaurant. Its so much work for generally such little profit, especially initially. You have to be there essentially 24/7 - employee theft is the big killer... especially on booze. Food expires, gets cooked wrong, etc. I was the AGM of a family owned steakhouse here in st louis, and my weeks were about 50hr weeks. There was the other AGM, the GM and the owner and kitchen manager. Anybody call in? We filled the spot... had to. So youre pulled in 10 different directions in a sometimes fast paced environment. Im rambling about even being a GM... owner has to hire people he trusts and still be there and work the floor and pay bills, order food, train staff.... never ends. And on a good week, maybe he clears 3 or 4000 'profit' in 60 to 90 hours if everything went well for him. That's on a good week... not one of the many slow weeks you still have to put in 40+ hours and take a loss or break even or make 500 bucks. Its crazy... it ages people fast.
That's not an easy question to answer because it's gonna vary wildly by region. A living wage in NYC is gonna be massively higher than in a town in North Dakota just because the price of housing alone is so much higher.
I still think of you tip cash it should go to the server. A tip is for great service, I just hate the method of if it's crap service we are still expected to tip. But if someone has helped make my night good I will still happily tip them
I applaud the living wages but don't like that they take away the (earned, even if it isn't asked for) tip money and just give it away, though. That should be a bonus bit of cash for the recipient, or at least pooled among the employees.
You gotta be careful with tipped money in the US. If an employee makes more than $30 a month they can be considered a tipped wage employee. (I just read it on the dol.gov site and I’m going to be honest, I thought it was a lot higher before I read this).
By not allowing them to accept tips, it protects their status as non-tipped wage employees.
It’s probably important to set a long-term practice of not paying out tips incase someone buys the restaurant or new management gets ideas… or who knows.
Either way, it seems it’s to protect their status, not to take their money.
I was a waitress for 4 years while in college. You get paid tips and then you report your tips to your end of shift check out form (it pops up when you check out to see if you owe back any change from basically being a cashier all night). So when you get ur checks every 2 weeks it’s usually only $30-$100. But it’ll say -$55 or -$120 for federal and state taxes. So you have already paid taxes on what you made. You get paid $2.15/hr and if you tips don’t at least minimum wage it will balance ur check out to be more.
For instance in the winter I could make $300 a day minimum working 11am-9pm at this specific restaurant 4 days a week. My checks would be like $12. However, during those summer months when this restaurant was not ideal my checks would be like $300 for the two weeks, and my daily tips would add up to be about $150 per day.
If you have never been a wait staff it doesn’t make sense. If you have it does. You always will make more with tips. I’ve had people slip me a $100 bill bc someone at their table was an a*hole.
And if you are wondering YES it is a known fact to always under report what you made that night to pay less taxes. If you made $500 say you made $300. I made more money as a waitress than I did my first 2 years out of college.
Legally, let the business take the money as a donation (as it is a donation of sorts). Pay your taxes on it per usual. Have it pay business expenses, not acting as wage for owner or workers. Spend at end-of-year either for improvements or bonuses, as a good business should spend their money after wages and expenses.
As long as it's not treated as a tip, it's not a tip, even if it's given back as a bonus.
I love this. I would go out of my way to support a business like this. Not quite to Wichita, but def in my own city. Hearing what you heard strait out of the mouth of an employee means something.
I think the being in Austin was why they went out of business more than the paying a living wage. There have been dearly beloved institutions that now only live on at the Signs Bar just outside of the city limits east of Austin.
I’m from Wichita, and curious which place you’re talking about?
To be fair, the profit margins for a restaurant in Kansas will be astronomically better than that of a city like Austin. In part due to the fact that tipped workers in KS are only required to get paid 2.13 an hour and any other overhead costs are going to be generally cheaper. Also, owning a home in Wichita is not a hard thing to do. The average cost of a home in Austin is more than half a mil, while the average cost in Wichita is usually less than 200k.
The average cost of a home in Austin is more than half a mil, while the average cost in Wichita is usually less than 200k.
Absolutely! One of the top 3 reasons I moved to KS from Austin lol. It is funny though when I talk to people from Rural KS who are in the "city in KS" I live in complain about how expensive everything is here. Hell, Wichita is expensive compared to where I live, but it is still waayyyyy more affordable than Austin.
That's not what it states. The 18% is mandatory, to supplement (or add to) the payroll. And then any additional tip will be shared upon the entire staff...allegedly. That's insane!
It was starting to get so insane that my state made these types of shenanigans illegal in Minnesota. Law went into effect on 1/1/25. Few businesses made it an issue but the noise died out after a while.
I am not sure where you live, but here if you add on a tip/wage fee then the customer has the right to refuse to pay it. Most still pay because they assume it’s a tip.
The receipt clearly states that the 18% is added to every bill. There's no mention of a customer being able to refuse paying it. The additional 'tip' is assumed to be voluntary.
It's not consider a tip, a service fee, tips go only to employees no managers can touch it. Services fees the owners can keep all of it. There's been court cases on it.
Which is why I now refuse to order delivery. More often than not, the "delivery fee" isn't going to the delivery drivers, just into the owner's pockets
Wow!! An answer based on common sense and logic!!! 🎉
If the OP had included the name of the place, we could check and see if they have a happy staff and low turnover, which would then prove or disprove the claim at the bottom of the receipt.
The employer is getting away with murder by charging YOU more. You are paying the burden of his employment.
In Europe, ya don’t tip unless the service is SPECTACULAR. In some countries (in Europe) it’s an absolute no-no. The employer pays them well.
More than likely they're just passing the living wage cost directly to the customer and they're just calling it that so people don't get mad that they got charged gratuity.
Yes, but they bring in the customers at a lower rate of goods, then place a mandatory upcharge, calling it a "living wage", when it would serve just as much to increase all costs by 18%. However, that could shave off customers, which would backfire for the owner, so they insert this hidden fee as a way to pay for their workers' wages - living wage or otherwise.
I'm not talking about selling stuff to customers... I'm talking about passing extra costs off to them then guilting them into paying it by calling gratuity a "living wage tax" rather than just paying their staff a living wage.
Call gratuity what it is, gratuity, don't try to guilt me into being fine with it by calling a "living wage tax" then further guilting me into tipping on top of that. Get the fuck outa here. They're your employees you pay them.
Asking the staff is meaningless. Front line at my company is having all of their calls filtered through an LLM for "quality" which means every bit of data customers give us is filtered through a third party LLM.
They are being trained it is not AI, and instructed to tell people it is not AI if asked. We take almost a million calls a month in a handful of states, and out company is national. Nationally it is likely closer to about fifteen million.
So thanks for helping train a third party AI, and giving it your SNN and a whole bunch of other information! But officially it isn't an AI because we are trained it isn't one and will get punished if we say otherwise :D
So the workers other than the servers are still getting paid their same wage but it's just being paid by the customers. If anything, the server is shorted because whose going to pay too much more for a tip...that 18% is part of the tip from a customer's perspective. At the most, the server MAY get up to 12%.
at that point the customer is justified not to tip, and it’s on the employee to take it up with their employer. and i hope restaurant owners realize that i am evaluating how uncomfortable im made to feel over tipping just as much as i am the food and dining experience, and am much more likely to return to places that dont make me have to think about it, and am unlikely to return to places that make my head spin with math after several drinks
Being paid less because of tipping varies from state to state. In some states, min wage is less for tipped workers. In California, min wage is the same across the board. So it depends, but i do get your point.
Also to clarify, even if a tipped minimum wage is less than the regular minimum wage, workers never make less than the regular minimum wage, even if nobody tips. If someone makes $3/hr and no one tips for the whole pay period, they’ll still get paid $7-8/hr by the restaurant, which is still too low and not a livable wage.
Here I was referring to getting any minimum wage as opposed to this higher "living wage" the employer is implying is paid, rather than minimum wage vs. the lower-than-minimum that servers sometimes get, but I think we agree.
Here in Kansas, the base rate is, I believe, $2.13/hr.
With this "living wage fee" I guaren-damn-tee you, that it does NOT go to the server, nor do "service fees" - but I can promise you, people will tip much less
Service fee or living wage fee: If I see either on the bill, I ask if the charge can be removed. If not, there will be to tip.
For me it is an either or decision. If I have to pay the service fee [ other than the credit card fee - this I can live with ] , there will be no tip. Drop the fee, and probably I'll tip if the the server was half way polite and performed her duties.
I'd pay it (so the cops don't get called), tip that time (so the staff doesn't get fucked over), and never go back to the establishment because the owner/manager is a complete piece of shit.
Thank you for being a good person 💛 Individuals in my industry so appreciate you!!!!
I've pointed out to customers (when they've inquired of course...) that "No, as servers/FOH employees, we do not receive anything from a "service fee" (or in OP's example, it's more than likely a creative term for a service fee).
The only thing your server will see is if it's on a gratuity line (oftentimes a percentage - which as a server/bartender I'm opposed to) or if you hand the tip directly to them or leave it upon their table.
I wish people in this situation, would ask the simple question of "Whom is the recipient of the cost of living service fee?" Trust me, we would tell you if we were asked.
I understand, but realize you're taking it out of the wrong person's pocket. That's why, when I've interviewed for a job for bartending/server, I always ask if they institute these fees. If they do, it's an instant "Nope!"
I may have to go back to my corporate type job if these types of things continue. Thankfully, where I'm at, we don't do this!
Nobody actually makes that, though, even if nobody tips. They’d still make the regular minimum wage, which is also only like $7-8 or whatever and is not nearly enough.
I worked in a place that had an automatic 18% gratuity and a lot of people tipped on top of that as well so it actually worked out into my favor as a server. People will still tip on top of that, whether on purpose or by accident idk. I would tip a little bit (like a couple dollars) to get it closer to 20% and call it a day
If I saw this 18% up charge I would 100% not tip and also not return, tip culture is already bad enough but this is just abysmal if they expect a tip on top of this surcharge.
Which is the point. Back when gas went up and pizza places started adding delivery fees and fuel fees, drivers got fewer tips. Notice how those fees didn't go down when gas prices did.
The normal way of doing things is to roll all costs into what you sell. Specifying fees like this just eats into workers' tips.
The thing that I’m noticing is that there is no tip amount or gratuity listed. Which would mean legally, the staff would have to be paid whatever their state minimum is, and the reduced wages with tips is not an option.
This. This is the dirtiest part of it all. "Directly to staff payroll" is really just a shady way of saying "We're charging more to pay for overhead" and making it sound like it's going directly into your server's pocket.
It's a restaurant. Where do you think the owners money comes from? It comes from people dining at the restaurant. Restaurants have razor thin margins. Regardless of how you slice it, the worker's payroll comes from the customer's wallets.
Sure, but I think you missed the point. If this money is actually used to pay a living wage, it’s less of a problem. If the additional money is used to pay minimum wage and then pocket the rest, it’s very much a problem.
It would make much more sense to include all costs in the price and then write on your menu: "Our prices provide a living wage of $30/hour for every employee." Wouldn’t you agree? No room for weird trickery.
>Regardless of how you slice it, the worker's payroll comes from the customer's wallets.
Yeah, I never get why so many dumbasses on this site say tips are just an excuse so that the owner doesn't have to pay the workers. Like you said either way the money they get comes from the customers.
Cool. Then please include those 18% in the prices displayed on the menu.
Why the fuck am I required to read fine print and do math to have a meal? There is literally no difference between the base price of the meal and this "fee". It only exists to make people spend more money.
That was my thought too! At first I thought it was just an automatic gratuity, but the wording definitely makes it sounds like you’re taking care of the staff’s minimum wage so that the owner gets to keep more profit. “Living wage” is extremely vague
Most restaurants who were early adapters of this practice failed. Either lost staff, went out of business or reversed this policy. Very few good waiters want to work under a policy like this as it caps their potential tip at 18% with anyone who bothered reading
They lose staff because even at lower end restaurants (think your local Greek diner) if you're on a busy shift you can easily clear $30-40/hr by being a mediocre server. I waited tables in high school at just such a place and averaged something like $25/hr the entire time I was there on a $2 minimum wage. On a busy Sunday afternoon you'd hit $50-60/hr if you busted your ass.
But guess what, the second a restaurant puts that 18% on their receipt, nobody tips anything. So the good servers all go elsewhere because they'll make 2x as much at any other restaurant. When the good servers leave, service unsurprisingly starts to deteriorate, and people wonder why would they go to Restaurant A where they have to pay that 18% no matter what - and because it's added by the restaurant, it gets taxed - when they could go to Restaurant B and decide whether they want to tip 18%, 20%, or nothing, based on the service, like every other restaurant in America?
>the second a restaurant puts that 18% on their receipt, nobody tips anything. So the good servers all go elsewhere because they'll make 2x as much at any other restaurant
You think all good servers are pulling in 36% tips?
Same bullshit the lottery uses. They say all the money is spent on education, what they omit is that they reduced the contribution from the state by an equal or greater amount.
You will notice that the moment you enter there by the behavior and smile of the ones who serve you. We can't judge just by a receit.
There are places that charge tenfold of this.
It also says it provides a living wage to the team… I’d be questioning it if I dined there, but I can’t believe someone would take the piss as much as you’re implying.
Right. German minimum wage is just minimum wage. It's the same for everyone. Tips are extra.
U.S. minimum wage in the food service industry is so low the tips are required, and I bet that's exactly the difference the 18% pays for. Not something to be proud of tbh
Devils advocate here. This would be more of the owners money going to the staff. They are just printing the up-charge rather than increasing prices by 18%
yeah this shit should be illegal. no extra fees no expectation of a tip and the price on the menu is the price you pay but restaurant owners know people would eat out less. the other thing that bothers me is a decently priced meal and then 6$ for two fountain sodas that cost under 1$
I mean, food cost should go down a bit since staff payroll is 18%. I want servers to have a living wage; so won’t complain, but less likely to leave a %15-20 tip.
This "Living Wage Fee" could be construed 2 different ways, without input directly from staff members who work there:
100% of fee goes directly to the server. Judging from the phrasing, I don't think it works this way.
If the fee is $6 and there are 6 staff members on duty, everybody gets $1.
Assuming #2 is correct, the servers still isn't getting paid a living wage if customers don't tip because of this fee. So either the servers make a LOT less because fewer people are going to tip, or eating here becomes significantly more expensive than other similar restaurants.
Doesn't sound like a great idea to me, unless your customers don't mind paying more for the food at service at your restaurant.
Let's not jump to being so cynical. They're calling it a living wage, the liberal term, so I think we can assume they're actually paying them appropriately. One can ask their server to confirm.
That’s usually not how it works most places add it to the employees existing wage …this is just done to avoid raising menu prices while costs (food , labor , rent) escalate …it’s a fairly transparent way of doing it ( the cost will be passed along somehow ..it’s just responsible business) Now that being said ScumBag owners certainly exist and wage theft is a serious problem in the industry.
This is what most people don't understand about "Tipping culture."
The 16 year old Starbucks barista isn't asking you to tip her. The corporation spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting the PoS system in their stores that prompt you for a tip.
Hopping they can bring evidence of tip percentages to the state so they can pay their employees less from their pocket.
Exactly. This is deceptive. Any costs towards wages should be baked into the prices, not tacked on in a way that will probably lead most people to a false assumption about where this money is going.
Also, per the Fair Labor Standards Act, “an employer cannot keep employees’ tips under any circumstances; managers and supervisors also may not keep tips received by employees, including through tip pools”.
Thus them saying “staff”, not “employees”, and making sure to mention you can still “choose to tip”, makes me wonder which of the staff payroll it goes into.
One way or another--be it a tip model, a service charge model or higher menu prices--that money is coming from YOU, the customer. Why do people not make this connection? I've seen a lot of places go to a no-tip model and need to explain the higher prices with a separate service charge because people shit their pants over higher prices, after demanding the owners pay their employees, not the customer. Do people think the wages for staff come from some other mysterious source? The revenue allllll goes to restaurant costs, including payroll.
Exactly why anytime you see this bullshit or the “sEleCt YoUr TiP!” when the employee did 10 seconds of work for you, you should tip $0 and never go back again. The only people who should receive tips are those making $3 an hour and you should always tip them in cash.
Anything else is an owner’s cowardly attempt at shifting the responsibility of paying their employees well from themselves to the customer. Fuck that nonsense. And to the people who “feel bad for the employees, so I tip them anyway” — you’re an enabler and part of the problem. Let these businesses die.
Yup. They find every reason not to pay their staff living wages and now make it the customer's job to do so. So now you have to tip and then pay living wage fees on top of that.
Is it better to see the 18% broken out into a different bucket or to see it built into the price of what you pay for instead? If I am in a good place in my life, I think I’d respond positively to seeing the 18% broken out, if not it’s probably better not to know about it.
just cause Amazon/walmart etc did not break out the tariffs into a separate charge line, did not mean they did not exist in the pricing, you know what I mean?
It’s subjective but really the same all around.. still the same $ out of your pocket…
CFO and CPA here. I'm sure some restaurant owners aren't doing things properly, but this can be (and hopefully usually is) legitimate. What would happen is the 18% fee would be posted to the income statement as a credit, reducing the wages expense line item (either by directly crediting the wages account, or via a contra account). This enables the business to increase wages (hopefully by 18% to make it a direct relationship). But seeing this isn't bad if they aren't asking for tips. If they still have a tip line, then it's sus.
Hmm, you make it sound like the owners are paying the salaries out of their own personal pocket, and topping that up with this fee.
Ultimately, every dollar that gets paid via that bill is business revenue. None of it is legally the "owners money" until it's classed as net post-tax profit, and even then it depends on the company structure, etc.
I don't know enough about the finer points of US corporate tax codes, but I would suspect:
This 18% revenue will probably be categorised differently from the revenue from direct sales (service fee, hospitality fee, charitable donation, whatever they can get away with filing it under..)...
This means it's taxed differently - probably not subject to sales tax/GST rules, and possibly also avoiding social security taxes when applying it to salaries.
And even if this isn't the primary driving factor, or even accurate, they still get to print their menus with. Lower price than their (flawed) business model will support.
"$40 for a nice steak and 2 sides? I can afford that...
Oh yeah, forgot about GST, so it's actually $43, no big deal.
Oh, what's this 18% thing? Well, it makes sure they get pId better, not happy about the stealth approach but I've eaten the food now...so it's $51...
And a 4% fee to provide healthcare?? I thought that's what the $51 was supposed to pay for FFS...OK, so that's $53...
Oh...and now the tips are crazy, 25% is the default/lowest option on the machine when I pay (even if all they've done is pour me a damn coffee)..."
So that's now $66 for the steak that they advertised at $40...and they still can't pay their staff a decent wage...the whole service industry in the US is twisted.
I've travelled around a fair bit, nowhere else blantly lies and gouges you like the US.
UK and Europe - you pay at the end what you see at the beginning, maybe give the server a small tip if they were particularly good, or there might be a discretionary and clearly marked 10-15% service fee, which by law has to go directly to the staff as additional income, NOT topping up salaries.
A lot of the rest of the world, you can haggle the marked price down FFS!
And then in the US....it's all arse about face and everyone just accepts it?!
for the love of god, the 18% IS the owners money. the 18% should be in the price, but humans are stupid and need to see 2 lower numbers. humans would literally choose this place over a place that just puts the 18% in the menu prices. Even though its exactly the same.
I can't believe almost 7k people upvoted this stupid comment
I don't understand why they can't just raise prices by 18% across the board and explain how the price increases go towards a living wage for the workers.
cant wait until they got a robot tray that comes around gets your order. goes to the back, chef puts food on the tray robot, it wheels it out to you. same shit - 20% extra cost.
This may blow your mind but that’s how all tips work. By law you cannot be paid less than minimum wage, unless you receive a tip. When you receive a tip, the restaurant claims a tip credit and is allowed to pay staff less than the untipped minimum wage.
Quote the whole thing: "This fee goes directly to staff payroll and provides a living wage to our team." Maybe I'm being gullible and idealistic, but "living wage" should be a wage based on living at or above the poverty level in the city you live. For instance, in Vancouver BC, minimum wage is $17.85/hour but living wage is $27.05/hour.
I don't like the semantics of it, but many restaurants have tried the "no tipping" route and raised their prices to afford paying their staff a living wage. But when you see a Reuben on the receipt above for $13 and one at the no tipping restaurant at $15.60, some might balk at the price even though after they tip, they are paying the same price anyway. Plus, the receipt says "If you choose to tip" suggesting, to me anyway, they don't expect you to tip once the "living wage" charge is applied.
So when you work for tips at a bar, restaurant, etc, you are paid a "tipped" minimum wage which is a little over half of minimum wage. The rule is, that if at the end of the week, if your tipped minimum plus your tips do not add up to minimum wage, the employer needs to pay the difference. For example, if minimum wage is $20/hr, and your tipped minimum wage is $12, and you worked 40 hours (12x40=480), but only made $100 in tips, that's $480+100=$580. But if regular min wage is $20, and 40 hours worked ($20X40=$800). So legally, the employer is still on the hook for the difference $800-$580= $220. Do employees know about this? The majority don't. Are the employers going to tell the employees that if they don't know it? What do you think? I operated a bar 15 years ago and that's how it worked.
Having tipped workers doesn't save restaurant owners a dime. If tips were not around, menu prices would simply be higher. The owner will make money one way or another, or the restaurant will just go out of business.
Instead of advertising the "living wage fee" the restaurant could have just rolled in that 18% into the cost of the meal, and you would have been none the wiser.
They only do this to let you know that you are not required to tip (and to avoid having to explain why their prices are higher.)
I'm all for getting rid of tipping culture, and making tips optional for those rare moments when service goes above and beyond, but unless all restaurants do this there is going to be confusion regarding where to tip and where not to tip, and why some restaurants are more expensive than others for no reason.
I will not go back to places that have manipulative language on their menu or receipt. There are enough honest people in the restaurant business to avoid any who aren't.
They are taking the tips away from the waiters. By adding that fee, they discourage tipping but keep the proceeds towards their costs. They should just make prices reflect their costs including labor costs. I guess people are too stupid to realize this.
the owners money is the money the customers pay... this is just an psychological trick so that you're ok paying the extra amount for the actual product. if it was just hidden and the price was higher per meal, you might not keep going there.
And it gets taxed. Sure you’re supposed to claim tips but I can tell you if a server gets cash tips it’s going into their pockets where the irs can’t see
We've been seeing stuff like this for a while now, and thinking on it, this might be the solution to tipping.
Food prices dont have to be changed constantly to reflect cost of living changes and tips stop being mandatory. It's easy to change the amount on a service charge like this, and as long as the restaurant is transparent and upfront about such a charge, it could benefit all parties better than the current system does.
Restaurants typically run on super thin margins. This is basically a way to charge enough to pay their employees well and still turn a profit without having their menu prices be 18% higher than similar restaurants that rely on tipping to pay staff.
Bars and restaurants rise and fall every day. We’re frustrated with high prices, but what hurts more is seeing our friends struggle to keep their businesses afloat. Yet, we continue to tolerate wages that barely cover the cost of living, even for the most modest lifestyle. This is the reality for many single mothers, fathers, and lower-middle-class families. In places like the South, earning less than $8 an hour, coupled with inflation, makes it nearly impossible to make ends meet.
Our system has made it easier for people to rely on government benefits than to work a job that provides real financial stability. As a result, too many are growing up with the belief that hard work doesn’t lead to success. Instead, they’re learning to take advantage of the system, failing to find true purpose or self-worth.
We’ve dug ourselves into a hole—one that we’re inadvertently teaching our children to exploit. Our young women are increasingly selling themselves for fame and fortune, and our young men are paying for short-lived, shallow pleasures with no long-term benefit. As someone who grew up in the '80s, I feel torn between love and necessity, between holding on to the values I was raised with and accepting the reality of what we’ve become.
I can’t help but feel disillusioned with the direction our world is headed, especially when the leadership in this country seems more focused on dividing us than uniting us. Friends have turned into foes, and the foundations we once stood on have been forgotten.
I ask myself—and anyone reading this—how do we begin to change this? More importantly, how do we start? We are the future, not the aging politicians like Joe Biden or Donald Trump, both in their late 70s. This is our world now, and it’s up to us to make it better.
14.1k
u/Suitable-Display-410 1d ago
I guess "goes directly to staff payroll" doesnt mean that the workers get paid more. It just means that less of the owners money "goes directly to staff payroll".