Complaining about money

Work has been a little bit disheartening lately, as you know if you read regularly, tips are a pretty decent chunk of income for us there, and this past week has been pretty bad for those. We had a Boy Scout Troop come in last Sunday, they had called the night before and placed an order consisting of about twenty five pizzas and a ton of drinks, total came to nearly $350, come the day we get to work, have everything ready even when they showed up twenty minutes early, they were in the store for a total of about two minutes and that was mostly just walking the stuff to their car, we were all justifiably pretty proud of that, it was a lot of work and we did it well, they didn't think so apparently as they chose not to tip us at all. Fuckers. The rest of the week progressed similarly, though the night before last was alright if I recall correctly.

The point is, there isn't a lot of motivation to excel if the reward is the same when a crappy job is done, we could have slacked off and made them wait for fifteen or twenty minutes in the store and gotten the same amount of result, now sure doing our job better makes life easier in general and I didn't want them hanging out in the store getting in the way while they waited, but that is something you need to worry about when you are a manager, from the point of view of the 18 year old kids I had on my crew, they did a shitload of work for no tangible benefit.

Which brings me to the rising minimum wage and how smaller businesses like the one I work for are fixing to have their lower management staff gutted before too long. See, my boss doesn't believe in raising wages in response to the minimum wage going up, the lowest paid employees see raises, but not those of us who make more than that already. I am sure he isn't the only one. That's fine I guess, that's his choice, but the time is coming, and soon, when people in his position are going to find out that their managers aren't willing to put in the work they want without a reward either, if I can make the same, or more really, as a delivery driver working for Domino's or something, then I am gonna have to be given a damn good reason not to take that gig. I mean I skip the stress of being the person in charge, get delivery tips, don't get yelled at when things go wrong, and I get to be out of the store for most of my shift? Shit yeah I'll do that.

Now I might think twice as I also have my resume to consider, but a lot of people won't, or can't, do the same, so what happens then? Well my guess is short term the managers who, out of loyalty or other reasons stay, get to do a lot more work, but long term that won't last either, so owners are gonna have a choice to make, keep good employees or do the work themselves.

This isn't actually a problem! Well, it isn't for the employee anyway, and honestly who gives a shit about the bosses. Rising wages means more power to the employee! If I have more choices about how to make a living, then it means I have less reason to put up with unacceptable working conditions, be they wage based or due other issues. If I know for a fact that I can find a job making the same amount elsewhere, that gives me power. It's a great way of balancing the scales and one that can't come fast enough for the entire country.

It also helps the tip issue of course, servers wouldn't care about tips if we didn't need them, in my case they are the only real spending money I get, but I am lucky in a great many ways, for every other person at work those tips pay bills, or for schoolbooks, or gas, or any number of things that are needed. Raising the minimum wage means we don't need to rely on those, we can rely on the paycheck instead, and people, we would much rather rely on the paycheck then the crowds of borderline sociopaths that come into our places of business every day.

One of my drivers didn't get a tip recently, you know why? Because the order was twenty bucks or so, drivers don't carry more than twenty in change, and the dude wanted to pay with a fifty, he told her "I was going to tip you, but since you weren't prepared I won't". He paid with smaller bills instead and indeed he did not tip her.

Every single person in a service industry has a story like that, usually a lot worse, you can't rely on people, people are terrible, people are church groups with remarkably specific requirements that leave religious flyers made to look like bills on the table instead of tips, people are the Scout troop I mentioned above. People don't do things for the good of society, they don't even think of that. Laws do things for the good of society and until we do away with the need for money altogether, minimum wage laws are only a benefit to everyone, whether the business owner realizes it or not.

And yes I realized I wrote not a week ago about how money is an illusion of power used to keep us under control, or something to that effect, but like I said, until we are able to completely smash the capitalist system, we still gotta eat.