Restaurants Are Adding Equity Charges to Customers Checks to Fight Oppression | Hacker News Reader

Restaurants Are Adding Equity Charges to Customers Checks to Fight Oppression

fee.org

11 pointsbrk12 comments

Why not just raise prices 15% and pay the workers a decent wage? Though, I suppose if they did that, their humane treatment of their employees would be effectively invisible. So they wouldn't get to posture with such an in-your-face statement about it on every customer's bill.

Exactly. Now they get to charge you more AND virtue signal. It's a win/win for the woke.

I really hate the hidden charges at restaurants. Tips are generally calculated as a % of the final bill. But the bill includes tax (often higher than normal Sales Tax), and now other bullshit fees like CA Health Mandate. So $100 total of menu items easily becomes $120 post tax. If I want to tip 20%, do I calculate this based on the pre or post tax? Since post is at the bottom of the bill, I use that, but now I am effectively tipping 24% of the base menu price, which is kind of crazy, and my bill is now close to $150, making a meal ~50% more than what's on the menu. I understand all this before ordering so its no surprise, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating.

As a European, this is one of the most frustrating things when I visit the US. When I see a price here on a menu or in a shop, I know that's pretty much always the price I will pay.

Some restaurants (usually aimed at tourists) have a surcharge for large groups, or a cover charge of a few euro, but that's it. A tip of 10% is usually nice to give, but if you don't (especially now, where nobody has coins) you won't be chased out the restaurant.

When you buy something in a shop, the price you see on the shelf is the price you pay. I can understand in a way why it works the way it does in the US (you want the label on the item saying $25 sold in different cities/states with different taxes), but it doesn't make it easier for the consumer.

The U.S. is now flooded with "fast and convenient" point-of-sale systems (Square, Clover) that ask customers for a tip amount following the transaction.

To the retailer it's an obvious move. But as a customer I'm not going to pay a gratuity for the counter worker to pick up my order behind the counter and hand it to me. Their compensation should be built in to the retail price.... like everything else.

On the other hand, waiting tables is mentally and physically straining, and the quality of service can vary widely. They also act as salespeople. I WANT to tip them, it makes me feel better about being a particular/specific customer. That said, they shouldn't have to rely on gratuity to live a balanced life. Build it into base price. Then I tip as a genuine bonus.

If restaurants want to hide food prices in "equity" tax, then fine. I'll consider that in my purchase. But it only makes THEM look cheap.

What if I told you that tip would be distributed to the people making your meal, and maybe even the dishwasher and floor mopper, etc...

The price should include the cost of everyone who works at the business.

Tipping is just a way for businesses to avoid having to pay their workers and instead pass that responsibility onto the customer.

It is far from guaranteed the workers get the tips at checkout. I'm aware of a few places near me where I've been told (after asking) the workers do not even get the tips, it goes to the owner.

Personally, I only tip for table and bar service. I won't contribute to tip culture beyond that

This is fantastic honestly. Now we join the legion of nations that don't have a tipping culture because SJWs have now declared tipping "racist". That's a win in my book.

Well, they were intentional with their use of the word "equity", not "equality".

Looking it up in my favorite search engine I think they are implying they will be giving shorter servers a higher percentage of the collected fees.

As a short person this makes me happy.

But it's a "short"-term win for us shorties, cause as all the tall people are slowly forced out of their service-level jobs they'll be that much more motivated to find better opportunities elsewhere.

Then as more short people wait tables we will be taking less and less of the overall "equity" fee. In the same spot as before, but at an even greater disadvantage. It's a ruse.

There is no shortcut to equality --just start and end there.

If you read the article, it is not a gratuity. You are still expected to tip.

I read the article, and they're claiming it's not gratuity, but it's de facto gratuity. The reason they're claiming it's not gratuity is because automatic gratuity is prohibited by Minnesota law.

Much like Obamacare "it's a fee, not a tax", but then the Supreme Court decided that it's actually a tax, so the individual mandate could be repealed like a tax. Just because they claimed it doesn't mean it's reality.

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