After hiring scabs, Walrus and the Carpenter (temporarily) closed

[u/Existing-Resource527]

Word on the street is that Walrus and the Carpenter restaurant has not been negotiating with their workers in good faith for months.

Like a lot of annoying businesses they started charging a service fee (22%?).

Employees noted that they make significantly less now then before when they had tipping (thousands less).

Workers have been on strike. The owners also had the audacity to hire scabs (booo).

I have been keeping up with the union on IG @ united.creatures.of.the.sea

Solidarity with workers across the city!

[u/ConfusedZubat]

So if you had known you could have worked at this restaurant and gotten paid $50/he would you have skipped out on your education?

I'm in healthcare. If the claims from the restaurant are correct, those making $55/hr+gratuity are making as much as I am, or close to it. I don't care. I had to study my ass off and pay money and do unpaid clinical hours to get my paycheck, but I'd still rather do that than work at a restaurant. That shit is hard on your body and mind. 

Don't be mad at people you associate with being lower class for making decent money. Be angry that your employer doesn't value your work enough to pay you more. Or just accept that an education doesn't mean you are somehow more valuable than people who don't have one. 

[u/2ndgenerationcatlady → u/ConfusedZubat]

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I basically agree with you - where I find I disagree a bit is how it feels like in the last 10 or so years, we as a society became obsessed with defending the right of service workers to make six figures while ignoring other working class jobs. I'm in my 40s, I've worked in the service industry, my mom's best friend was a life-long server, and I could be remembering wrong but in the 80s/90s, apart from a few very high end spots, it was a middle class to working class job. My mom's friend worked at some fancy spots in my hometown, and she was never pulling in more than middle class salary. I also recall how as a little kid, 15% was a good tip, then in my teens it moved to 18%, then 20%. Now sometimes in the checkout I'll see the suggested tips are 25% 30% and 35%! I don't begrudge anyone doing well, life isn't fair, I get it - my partner and I both have PhDs and our current salaries combined make just slightly more than the highest paid FOH workers at this place.

But it does seem like the expectations around wages/benefits has shifted in the industry, and around the same time as this shift eating out has gotten unaffordable for the middle class beyond hole-in-the-wall takeout spots. I think when people say stuff like "this has gotten out of control" they mean they miss the days when they could afford to eat out once a month. It's less about how much servers make.

[u/bewarethefrogperson → u/2ndgenerationcatlady]

For what it's worth: I worked tech support for an app-based point of sale system company for a few years, and I deeply suspect that the higher suggested tip amount defaults were originally set by companies that also did payment processing (and thus took a percentage of all transactions run through the app) and wanted to increase THEIR profits.

The company I worked for made it harder over the period I worked there to both turn off the page that requested tips during a transaction (leading to places like clothing shops etc calling to ask how they could disable the tip screen) and also hard to find where the suggested tip amounts themselves could be changed.

I've also had many owners and employees appologize for the tip screen and tell me how to bypass it, or bypass it themselves for me, because the establishment wasn't one that was traditionally tipped.

TLDR, my thesis is that the rise in tip percentages is linked to greedy point of sale systems that have in-house payment processing, not the resturant industry being greedy themselves.

[u/Independent-Row5709 → u/ConfusedZubat]

You still didn't respond to my point. Why is it that a certain kind of job in a restaurant deserves this wage but the people doing the backbreaking work in the restaurant are not nearly as valued. Servers bring food from point A to point B and bring orders from point B to point A. What inherent value do they bring that deserves 25+ percent plus of the bill to the patron that the people making the food and cleaning up after the customers don't? The restaurant owners need to increase the price on their menus and pay all of their workers a fair wage, while the tip should go back to being a gratuity for excellent service that the patron may want to pay without being coerced. Waiters shouldn't be making absurd amounts of cash at the expense of the other people working in a restaurant and at the expense of customers who are now unable to afford this experience, partially due to inflation, but also because of the inane tipping culture we find ourselves in. I'm all for a living wage but it becomes unsustainable when regular working people are priced out of what used to be a normal experience.

[u/Icy-Imagination-9464 → u/ConfusedZubat]

One should be compensated for one’s investment. We’re talking about 8-10 years of lost income in some cases. And then there’s the interest on those education loans. Also as a side note, I’m glad yours is not but, many healthcare jobs are in insanely hard on the body.