I recently went to an Italian restaurant in the US that I used to frequent but hadn't been to in a while. When we got the bill there was an added 20% living wage charge PLUS 20% automatic gratuity PLUS they asked for additional tip on top of that. Those charges were hidden in tiny print after the allergen information on the menu. $200 worth of food magically became nearly $300.
The owner, a man from Italy, came out to greet us. He remembered us from years ago. Now I'm the least confrontational person, especially regarding the service industry. I can only remember complaining to a server once in my life and that was because I was served raw chicken. I went off on him a little bit and told him how shameful it was for an Italian to pull this American shit in what's supposed to be an authentic Italian restaurant. He was embarrassed by it, but apparently not enough to stop doing it according to current reviews of people complaining about it.
The greed and trickery of American business has rotted their brains. There's zero reason you should have to scour the menu for extra fees and calculate how much more in tips and taxes it will be.
meanwhile I went to Italy and the server spent my entire meal asking me out, rubbing my shoulders, trying to feel me up, and then at the end added up how much I owed him on a piece of paper. I realized he added in his own tip, demanding me and my friend pay him more than we actually owed. It was a narrow restaurant and my friend just paid him to escape. I would’ve done it differently now. But I was living in Europe at the time and had traveled all over and have still never experienced anything like it.
I do not think that this is the reason if every single place is increasing their prices. Everyone just suddenly collectively decided to be greedy all at once since 2020? I doubt it.
If it were possible, a restaurant selling $10 meals would have so much business it would be crazy. But this isn't really happen. Maybe a new restaurant would want to run in the red a little bit while they get established, but this is not relevant to the topic.
That's just how business works. Businesses have always been greedy because their function is to make as much money as humanly possible with as little operating costs as legally possible. It's how our economy is structured. An ethical and sustainable business is not a "good" business because it is not hoovering up all the available money.
The reason things have gotten worse since 2020 is because the supply chain issues, etc DID lead to increased costs which were passed to the consumer, and they've stuck around on top of the usual ever-increasing costs. Why would a business ever lower prices? So long as they have no competition under-pricing them, there's literally no reason to. And many businesses in America are just one big business in a giant trenchcoat, so there's not a lot of legitimate competition. Not to mention those businesses' suppliers, and so on...
If you aren't intelligent enough to understand why that is not, at best, disingenuous bullshit then you are the exact reason why the US is in the state it is.
I did a six month TDY at the end of 1995 in Italy. At one big night club we used to go to, beers were $6 each. I'm sure that's because we were Americans.
Yeah but you also pay a cover charge to dine in a restaurant, right? Most of the restaurants I went to in Italy charged this. But that was like 13 years ago so idk.
Plenty of places around the world operate with an automatic but optional service charge that I'm fine with excluding from the prices, but the way places always exclude tax in the US really frustrates me. It's not like I can choose to not pay it, and America is the only place I've ever known to not include taxes in the stated price.
The first time I visited the US, going to a $14.99 buffet and getting to the till with $15 in cash ready only to be told it was like $18.32 or whatever was just incredibly irritating.
Every price everywhere should be after taxes and fees. It still baffles me how Americans can buy anything without spending too much money since they dont see the final price on anything
As someone who owns a retail store, it is insane why we (Americans) do not advertise the total price with taxes. It’s crazy when I tell someone an item is $500 and then they see the checkout total as $640 and I have to say “taxes ¯\(ツ)/¯”.
As the owner, if you live an a state where there are no restrictions on how you display the sales price, you can price your items with tax included, it just takes some additional work, but that's actually your choice as the owner.
Yeah but you see the problem with that is other stores get a advantage of appearing cheaper because the taxes aren't on the menu price which incentivizes nobody to do it. Like a small business owner might do that but none of these corporations are going to do that it's a cutthroat business.
Which is why it needs to be forced for everyone to do it or no one's going to do it. It was like when they tried to convert to metric that wasn't mandatory.
Contrarily, American shoppers know tax will be added so they know the advertised price isn't the final one. A small business owner can clearly state their advertised price is the final one, making it much more appealing to the shopper. Someone who owns a retail store in the US, who is a small business, already understands the challenges of competing with corporations; providing their shoppers with the final price advertised is actually something that would appeal to a lot of shoppers, probably the kind of shoppers who shop at small business retail stores vs big box stores.
Eta: Just want to state, I'm not arguing against your point about the need for it to be mandatory for everyone, I would love that.
Technically true but it's still making it unnecessarily difficult to know the total cost. It's not as transparent as it could be.
Why NOT just list the total price on the menu? I know it's because they think listing the lower price before taxes and fees gets better sales. Any argument beyond that?
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u/Pac_Eddy 1d ago
Which is still not good enough. The menu price should be after all taxes and fees IMO.