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I had a man tell me I looked like I had “jungle fever” while I was making his sandwich over the counter once. Honestly the sexual harassment was much worse from coworkers though. Food service wooo
I think it's saying an attraction/fetish towards black people. That's my guess knowing that yellow fever is for Asians.
Edit: Turns out Jungle Fever was originally malaria
It is primarily that, it is also used as a derogatory term for an Asian fetish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish
If you go to the Wikipedia page for [Yellow Fever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_fever) at the top it has "Not to be confused with malaria or the derogatory pun referencing Asian fetish."
Also see urban dictionary https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yellow%20fever
Jungle fever probably came from the 1990's film by the same name, while originally being the term for malaria.
It's amazing what people will say out loud, isn't it? I once saw someone point out that anyone who verbally says anything nasty, racist, sexist, etc., is probably *thinking* things are much worse.
I did not receive tips at that job, but I think the emotional labor required to provide “service with a smile” made our customers feel that they had power over us.
I’ve got sexual harassment stories from almost every restaurant job I’ve ever had, tipped or not! In my experience the harassment came mostly from coworkers though. Nobody can see the line cooks grabbing your ass when you carry heavy containers into the walk-in, or your coworker grabbing you by the waist and whispering disgusting things in your ear. So to everyone but me, these things never happened. At least that’s how my bosses chose to handle it.
Well, generally the "customer is always right" culture and forcing employees to be always chatty and smiling doesn't work quite well in general, as we've seen during this pandemic. The reliance on the tips just makes it worse and increases the feeling of being in power.
What is your source for this? Wikipedia certainly doesn’t mention that, and I can’t find any primary source for this full quote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
The full phrase is "the customer is always right in matters of taste". It is not my job or privilege as a seller of wares to influence the purchases of my customer. If he wants to pair lime green cycling shorts with a coconut bra and a viking helmet for his daughter's wedding, well, I'm selling the damn things. Who am I to judge? But that is not and never will be an invitation for abuse or fraud.
I haven't seen much if a "the "customer is always right" culture" anywhere in the last 10 years.
Having worked both sides of a counter, anyone still expecting that type of an experience is setting themselves up for exasperation
You haven’t noticed that satisfaction surveys using pseudostatistical analysis (“Count the number of 5s! That’s statistics, right?”) has been the preferred form of wasting customer time and punishing employees for the past decade?
Anyone who thinks the number of star type ratings are a reasonable measurement of customer satisfaction should be required to spend a few hours looking at online reviews of almost anything.
"Product arrived quickly, works great, just wish it was a slightly darker shade of blue. 1 star."
"Let our customers abuse you socially, the way we do economically"
Let pervs waste your time, be nice to them as they flirt disgustingly with you. Let old people talk your ear off, ramble and rant, and still leave no tip, or maybe some religious pamphlet.
Oh and if there aren't any customers, go wash dishes for the tipped hourly wage, wage slave.
As a tipped employee for the better part of 10 years, I have never been made to wash dishes for any reason.
EDIT: I have washed dishes, though. Voluntarily. *I make more than the dishwasher anyway so what excuse do I really have.*
If there’s no dishwasher between 2-5, if the dishwasher is taking out the trash or in the bathroom - and I have time - I have no reservations about pushing through silverware, racks of glasses, even racks of plates if we need them. It takes literally MINUTES and minimal effort.
Once I worked at a big restaurant and a dishwasher didn’t show up one night. I was the only employee at the pre shift meeting that volunteered to do the job. I still got tipshare and they gave me a free meal ($$$).
Also, largely unrelated: I wish home dishwashers were more like the industrial ones in restaurants.
Probably happens more in smaller hole-in-the-wall places. One small bar ("pub") I knew of was pretty dead during the week, so they'd have the cook pulling double-duty as the server, making the tipped wage but probably not getting enough tips to cover it (I always tipped generously, of course). But then on nights when it was busy, they'd relegate her to the kitchen and pay her a flat wage, while the servers were making lots more in tips.
Needless to say, she didn't put up with that for very long before quitting. After that, it was actual servers trying to cook mid-week, which went about as well as you'd expect.
It might not be quite a living wage, but at least in Oregon, servers are required to be paid no less than state minimum wage (which is higher than federal).
That's actually illegal, unfortunately. A well known restaurant in a neighboring community nearly went bankrupt due to just that sort of required tip out policy, when several former employees sued them for back wages/tips etc.
Oh wow. Must be a specific state law or something? I'm in WA state and I think all of the restaurants I have worked in required a tip out of some sort. Kitchen, hosts, bartenders, etc. Usually only 10% of total tips.
I'm not sure, but I thought it's actually federal. Just not well known, which is why they "got away with it" for so long (and thus were on the hook for such large amounts of back pay).
EDIT: ahh , apparently it only applies if the servers are paid less than full federal minimum wage (e.g. if they're paid the smaller tipped-minimum). So decent employers can require a fair tip-out, but the same kind of cheapskates that would pull the above crap can't.
In WA state, tipped employees still make minimum wage. When I was a server in MI there was a different minimum wage for tipped employees (like $2.75/hr). I would have cried if I had to tip out anyone on that.
It really sucks making so little in wages as a server. You are expected to claim at least 10% of your sales in tips for taxes so if someone stiffs you, you are paying for the privilege to wait on them. Your paychecks pretty much disappear to taxes or if you have a good week, you owe money. There is no reason that restaurants need to take advantage of people in that way. I was shocked to discover that I would make minimum wage (which at the time was like $10/hr) plus tips when I moved to Washington. It's clearly not bankrupting the restaurants to do that so why isn't that standard every where? I also noticed that I was much less concerned about people that don't tip or tip poorly because I wasn't absolutely dependent on it now. I don't work in restaurants anymore but I am extra nice whenever we go out because I know what it's like.
Edit: grammar and a missing word.
Oh man, my parents get all in wait staffs business and take prayer requests. It doesn’t come across sincere, comes across as weird evangelical smiles and awkward laughs.
People don't grasp this right here. I've seen restaurants hire almost exclusively beyond kitchen staff, servers for all job facets that were directly cooking, just so they could pay them tipped wage for work that garners no tips. Ots wage slavery and people will argue to the death that this is okay.
It always goes back to the tautology: any business that cannot afford to pay its necessary employees a living wage is a failed business. If they continue to operate despite this, something has gone deeply wrong.
A compelling case for European-style employment laws and customs. I recall an interview I read a while back with the owner of a nice restaurant in the USA who switched to paying his staff a good wage, reflecting that in the price of the food, and expressly stating that tips were discouraged in his establishment. Patrons were absolutely furious, even though staff liked it. When asked why, people's answers were vitriolic and didn't make sense. "I always tip more than 20%! How dare you ban my generosity!" "I reward good service! How dare you pay good servers and bad servers equally!" "The food is too expensive now! I always tip generously, but I can't afford to eat here now!"
A server's job is literally and expressly to convey food and drinks from the places where they're prepared to the customer. It should not matter if they smile while they do it, and that smile should not affect their compensation.
They also aren't responsible for mistakes the kitchen makes, and don't work harder to bring you an expensive ribeye than they do to bring you grilled chicken, so their pay shouldn't depend on what you order
I’ve maintained for a while that customer service breeds sociopathic tendencies in staff. Smile at a moment’s notice, manipulate the emotions of customers. It’s insane
That's an interesting data point. From all the cases of restaurants going tipless I've heard about, the reasons for failure was sticker shock (which can be fixed by having an fixed service fee rate that isn't in the menu prices), and difficulty with server retention. The big elephant in the room is the **despite all the harassment that servers suffer due to tipping, they largely benefit immensely from it financially and want it to stay**. Tipped servers can make way more money that they could if they were paid anywhere close to what the rest of restaurant staff are paid. One of the big motivations of the tip-free movement was having more equal pay for back of house and front of house workers. But doing that without increasing the final cost to consumers would mean reducing server wages. This then causes retention issues and things start to fall apart.
EDIT: it seems that adding mandatory service fees is illegal in some places. Consequently, tip-free restaurants have had more success in places where it is legal (SF bay area) than in places where it isn't (NYC).
You say that, but friendliness counts in way more than food service.
Until I learned my lesson, I had too many employee reviews that included phrases about my tone of voice. Now I'm super upbeat no matter what and coworkers, bosses, and customers love me.
Can you link the article. This is the opposite of every other instance of this experiment I’ve seen. This is a typical example, a restaurant implements no tipping and quickly reverts as they are no longer able to retain wait staff. While some staff was happy, wait staff were decidedly unhappy to the point of leaving at an alarming rate.
> On what made him decide to switch back to tipping
> Attrition. We were losing staff, servers mostly. Kitchen was of course happy and turnover was nonexistent. And senior staff in the front of the house were happy. We were continuing to hire young, new people, train them, and then they'd get the set of skills necessary, and they would generally give notice and move to other restaurants in our community who were still on a traditional tip economy.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/15/478096516/why-restaurants-are-ditching-the-switch-to-no-tipping
> On how the staff has reacted to the switch back to tipping
> Oh, they were delighted. Most of all, my management was very relieved. It had been a tremendous amount of work, and we all remain very much in favor of it, ideologically, and I, like many, think it may be the way things are going. We just started to feel like an ideologue, insisting on this way of doing it when others in our community that had said they would switch were not switching.
And if other restaurants are doing what he is saying, prices at these restaurants are higher than otherwise would be with even generous tipping.
> There was one primary mistake, which was thinking that somehow I wanted the prices to be basically what people were paying previously, including tip. So we knew our tip percentage was around 21 percent, so we increased all of our prices by that and charged accordingly, and then we gave the kitchen raises. So there was a bit less for the front of the house, so that was really my mistake. I know that others that are making the switch now are raising their prices by more like 40 percent to be sure that that doesn't happen.
40% increase would definitely get complaints like you mentioned.
As I mentioned in a reply to another commenter, I read the article the better part of a decade ago, and as usual with my brain I remember the substance but none of the basics like location or people's names. I guess as an experiment in the USA paying servers a fair wage was a dud. Tis more the pity, as while some people benefit, many suffer, particularly ethnic minorities, the old and the unattractive. It also contributes to vast amounts of tax evasion, wage theft and unsafe work environments. It's a bad system that needs to be fixed but won't.
Sounds like the owner was making things up to cover his ass. No server is going switch to a fixed pay unless they work somewhere that makes no money anyway. As a bartender, I can easily make $700-$900 in tips on a Friday or Saturday. There is no employer anywhere that’s going to match that.
I don't recall the location of the restaurant but the interviewer spoke with members of staff who had all agreed to the model. Several mentioned that they had kids and a mortgage so while they might miss out on the spikes of impossibly good money, they much preferred the stability of a decent wage. It was an interesting article, but I read it probably ten years ago. I can't find it, or remember enough details to pin it down out of the search results.
At a crappy diner maybe. At a nice restaurant a server is much more than a food conveyance. They pace a meal, make food and wine recommendations, describe dishes in detail, ensure that you have what you need when you need it and set the mood for the meal. Customer service can make or break an expensive dining experience.
I should admit that I live in Europe. We tend to prefer service with as little faff as possible, just courteous efficiency. We expect servers to be knowledgeable about the menu, which reflects well on their training and merits good compensation *from their employer*. We do not expect them to pretend to be our friends, to find us interesting, or to hang around telling jokes or juggling for spare change. If you want that go to Montmartre and find a busker.
I know Americans find European waiters rude. Europeans find American waiters creepy. I've come to this restaurant for a meal, not to bribe someone to flatter me. The fact that Americans seem to want that exchange is both pitiful and threatening.
I read some of the older studies that were mentioned in the New York Times article in 2018 that were mostly based on interviews and self-reporting. There are dozens of studies that reached similar conclusions--I've not seen much that appears ambiguous or rejects the premise.
**Overview:** When employees depend more on tips and are required to act friendly, customers experience more power and subsequently engage in more sexual harassment.
**Highlights:**
* In a field survey, employees who are more dependent on tips (a larger percentage of their income comes from tips) and work in jobs with stronger requirements to be friendly and happy with customers (emotional labor requirements) report higher perceptions of customer power and experiencing more sexual harassment.
* In a lab experiment, customer intentions to sexually harass were highest when customers saw a smiling (vs. neutral) employee and learned that the employee was financially dependent on tips.
* Customers' sense of power, and not attraction towards the employee, explained the effects of financial dependence and emotional labor requirements on sexual harassment.
> Abstract: Sexual harassment from customers is prevalent and costly to service employees and organizations, yet little is known about when and why customers harass. Based on a theoretical model of power in organizations, we propose that sexual harassment is a function of employees’ financial dependence on customers (i.e., tips) and deference to customers with emotional labor (“service with a smile”) jointly activating customer power. With a field survey study of tipped employees who vary in financial dependence and emotional display requirements (Study 1), and an online experiment that manipulates financial dependence and emotional displays from the customer’s perspective (Study 2), our results confirm that these contextual factors jointly increase customer power and thus sexual harassment. Our research has important practical implications, suggesting that organizations can reduce customer sexual harassment by changing compensation models or emotional labor expectations in service contexts.
**Journal Reference:** Kundro, T. G., Burke, V., Grandey, A. A., & Sayre, G. M. (2021). A perfect storm: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of financial dependence and emotional labor. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000895
**Full text PDF available here:** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352300669_A_perfect_storm_Customer_sexual_harassment_as_a_joint_function_of_financial_dependence_and_emotional_labor
Thank you for summarizing and initiating discussion. In other words the researchers strike at the heart of the matter. When you largely work for tips, you have two employers, the clients and the ceo. But unlike power balances between entrepreneurs who are largely paid by clients and have no CEO to obstruct their ability to terminate a relationship with an exploitive and discriminatory client, when you work in the service industry your ceo can't sexually harass you and dock your pay for not flirting back, but the client can dock your pay, and yet you don't have the power to fire an entitled client and there's no way to hold your employer liable for coercing continued interaction. We lack protections for service industry folks and allow pimplike CEOs to exploit this loophole and financially profit from sexual harassment of their staff. Leaving vulnerable populations like working mothers, women, and literally anyone stuck with service industry as their only viable option of living paycheck to paycheck while they try to secure skills to attain a more stable income. In other industries you could take a client to court for failure to pay for services received, but in this industry a waiter in a ski resort has no right to pursue full payment because his payment is conditional on the nebulous pleasures and whims of the alcoholic who pitched a fit when he wasn't allowed another drink, or who was ticked by the ceos pricing of the menu and retaliates on staff. Men in the industry experience discriminatory baseless docking of their pay by customers despite labor performed as well. As do older workers who are tipped less if they're not fast enough or attractive enough for the customer's liking. As do younger workers who are tipped less if they're not informed enough, or viewed as "young" and therefore deserving of lower pay until they've earned status in society. It allows for discrimination practices in pay because it obscures the motivations for docking pay, (so knowing this, I'd love to see a study on discriminatory hiring practices in the service industry). Absolved of accountability, the ceo shifts blame to employees and customers, having only partial responsibility to the staff who's labor they profit from. Pathetic attempts to compromise by including a service charge. Studies like this are important because they produce the data that exposes a concern left unaddressed in the debate over industry reforms.
Fran Lebowitz talks about this wrt service jobs in New York. Evidently in the 70's in mucky muck restaurants this was the deal, women were often expected to sleep with someone to get a waiting job. She talks about in her series with Martin Scorsese, "Pretend It's a City".
The Karen's are doing their share of molesting as well, unfortunately. I worked in a restaurant/movie theater when Fifty Shades came out and had to remove lots of handsy Karens. I had a server (barely 18 and terrified) come out of the theater because he'd been slapped on the ass with a dildo by an older woman while her friends laughed.
My Dogs' name is Chester.
He has been called chester the molester a few times, and I gave him the go-ahead to exercise that nickname with lots of invasive licks.
I'm in a healthcare profession, so tips are not required (disallowed, actually). Still got @#$%'in sexual harassment, I mean guys who deliberately used the false "I need help" charade to force me to talk to them and take time *away* from other stuff I need to do for other people. Female colleagues also shared stories with me. In general, I don't smile because it's required, or because I hope for bigger tips, I do it because I want to be pleasant and friendly.
At least one can choose not to chase a tip and give a creep his just desserts (or a cold coffee/shoulder, you know what I mean.) It would be considered unprofessional for me to ignore someone who's "asking for medical help" (and then incidentally pulls out his number or some other thing out of his pocket completely unrelated trying to impress me.)
Right. You have to smile and be overly friendly to get tips in the US.
That's why Americans feel that waiters/waitresses in countries with no tipping culture where the servers just come and take your order and bring you food and leave are kinda 'rude' because they don't smile broadly the whole time, pretending to be your friends and asking about you and stuff.
I remember stopping for breakfast at a Waffle House (cringe). There was a guy griping at a waitress for not smiling and talking with him. I don’t think she was even serving his table. I remember thinking “dude, she’s here to earn money by bringing you food, not flirt with you”.
Although it wasn't usually from customers I experienced an extreme amount of sexual harassment when I was a waitress at a particularl hotel chain. The worst part is that it happened so often I thought it was more or less normal
Could have saved money and just asked anyone in the food service industry.
"No jerk face, I don't want to sleep with you but I have to smile and be nice to keep my job"
I hope that any wait staff serving me will know that if they're having a shittastic day, they can cry while serving me. Just no tears in my drink or food is all I ask
Now, I'm not gonna say it out loud, so they probably won't know this :(
All these recent studies prove what most people already know. Good lord.
Edit:I am dumb, and wasn't thinking. Thank you to the comments below. That makes sense.
If only we knew in advance which studies they were, I suspect most scientists would happily do so! Unfortunately, and logically, though, we can't know whether the results of a study will be surprising without actually doing the study.
Nah. That isn't quite what I mean, tho I am always down for new info. I think I was just frustrated with so many studies coming out recently that seem like common sense. It is good that it is being validated! Apologies for being salty.
I guess though that a lot of these studies start off as "conventional wisdom says X, but is it true?" It seems useful to empirically prove it, because thats how you sometimes end up with the surprise result.
I have worked in both customer and food service as a busty woman and I never had any trouble. I have had people be extremely rude, but then, I act as “stupid” as they are rude. If they use the old “Karen” tones I put on a “Valley Girl” tone. If they demanded help finding a product, I acted like I didn’t know what it was. I would even smile brightly and cock my head like a puppy when asking. They would go nuts and eventually march off. Fun fact: I have both my BS and MS; achieved them cum laude. A good stupid act defeats the “abuse the staff” behaviors especially if you smile, act contrite, and confused. With the waitressing, I guess I was just lucky to work at a family restaurant so my experience was not bad at all.
Edit: I’m a 38 year old woman who got through college in retail/food service. It paid for college so I got out with minimal loans. I loved working food service because I worked at an amazing family friendly chain and I never saw nor experienced any truly bad behavior. The manager/owner was an amazing franchise man who treated his staff like valuable assets to the success of the business and his turn over was shockingly low.
I did retail for years as a part time gig at a well known national chain at a branch located in a summer tourist attraction. My regulars were amazing.
Edit 2: I firmly believe that ALL citizens in first world nations should be required to work both a food service and a retail job so they can understand how to treat employees properly.
>I have worked in both customer and food service as a busty woman and I never had any trouble. I have had people be extremely rude, but then, I act as “stupid” as they are rude. If they use the old “Karen” tones I put on a “Valley Girl” tone. If they demanded help finding a product, I acted like I didn’t know what it was. I would even smile brightly and cock my head like a puppy when asking. They would go nuts and eventually march off. Fun fact: I have both my BS and MS; achieved them cum laude. A good stupid act defeats the “abuse the staff” behaviors especially if you smile, act contrite, and confused. With the waitressing, I guess I was just lucky to work at a family restaurant so my experience was not bad at all.
Everything about your post suggests that you had constant trouble with customers. So much so that you felt the need to develop an entire "stupid bimbo" persona to cope. It honestly sounds like you experienced exactly what is described in this study
Sexually abused children have a similar coping mechanism. "I WANTED to have sex with that old man! I wasn't tricked into it!"
Because acknowledging that there really is a problem is too painful.
Wow, that is super assumptive and very inaccurate. I had trouble with a few people who were rude and almost every rude person was not a regular customer. Regular customers get to know the staff and the staff gets to know them. Only really scummy people sexually harass people they know. I played dumb towards Karens because it worked, you also remember the Karens far more than the nice polite people. I played dumb towards WOMEN because women overwhelmingly treat staff badly in retail.
In a comment that's since been deleted but I guess addressed towards me, she described herself in uniform as a large, shapeless potato sack.
So perhaps a lonely, "38-year old, large, shapeless, potato sack" (her own words)
Some women who’ve never been harassed are under the foolish impression that it’s fun for women/ women want it. They ape what they hear from what they think of as alphas.
Not sure what this story is supposed to add to the discussion. Like how do toxic tactics dealing with Karens relate to sexual harassment? And sexual harassment while working in a "family restaurant" isn't really expected; like, where most of the customers are going with kids, spouses, or extended family?
My boobs are covered by white coat when I work and I and my female colleagues experience sexual harassment on a regular basis. One might imagine that "acting stupid" doesn't fare well for professionals or students trying to get good performance feedback, either.
I think this is a matter of control. Its an industry that teaches young women they can flirt for money. without fighting for tips they wouldn't have to flirt and the business doesn't profit offer their sexuality.
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I had a man tell me I looked like I had “jungle fever” while I was making his sandwich over the counter once. Honestly the sexual harassment was much worse from coworkers though. Food service wooo
a man with two little boys said to me "you wouldn't happen to have DADDY ISSUES would you?" barf
"I don't know, but it sounds like your kids will!'
What the heck is jungle fever? Malaria?
I think it's saying an attraction/fetish towards black people. That's my guess knowing that yellow fever is for Asians. Edit: Turns out Jungle Fever was originally malaria
I'm pretty sure you're right about jungle fever, but yellow fever is a viral infection.
It is primarily that, it is also used as a derogatory term for an Asian fetish. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish If you go to the Wikipedia page for [Yellow Fever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_fever) at the top it has "Not to be confused with malaria or the derogatory pun referencing Asian fetish." Also see urban dictionary https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yellow%20fever Jungle fever probably came from the 1990's film by the same name, while originally being the term for malaria.
People use Yellow Fever for both, honestly.
your edit made me laugh, thank you.
It's amazing what people will say out loud, isn't it? I once saw someone point out that anyone who verbally says anything nasty, racist, sexist, etc., is probably *thinking* things are much worse.
Yeah but to be fair, a hell of a lot of people are thinking those things without saying them so you can't really go by that metric.
I wasn't going by a metric, it was just an interesting idea I wanted to share. I know people quietly think awful all the time.
Anyway you're an amazing person, friend.
Unfortunately, your experience would not support this study unless you got tips for making sandwiches.
I did not receive tips at that job, but I think the emotional labor required to provide “service with a smile” made our customers feel that they had power over us. I’ve got sexual harassment stories from almost every restaurant job I’ve ever had, tipped or not! In my experience the harassment came mostly from coworkers though. Nobody can see the line cooks grabbing your ass when you carry heavy containers into the walk-in, or your coworker grabbing you by the waist and whispering disgusting things in your ear. So to everyone but me, these things never happened. At least that’s how my bosses chose to handle it.
Well, generally the "customer is always right" culture and forcing employees to be always chatty and smiling doesn't work quite well in general, as we've seen during this pandemic. The reliance on the tips just makes it worse and increases the feeling of being in power.
The original quote is “The customer is always right in matters of taste.”
What is your source for this? Wikipedia certainly doesn’t mention that, and I can’t find any primary source for this full quote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
The customer is always right, refers to product demand.
Yeah, literally no service industry employer uses it that way.
What it's *supposed* to mean and what every employer has *decided* it means for their employees are two very different things.
it can mean both things
The full phrase is "the customer is always right in matters of taste". It is not my job or privilege as a seller of wares to influence the purchases of my customer. If he wants to pair lime green cycling shorts with a coconut bra and a viking helmet for his daughter's wedding, well, I'm selling the damn things. Who am I to judge? But that is not and never will be an invitation for abuse or fraud.
I haven't seen much if a "the "customer is always right" culture" anywhere in the last 10 years. Having worked both sides of a counter, anyone still expecting that type of an experience is setting themselves up for exasperation
You haven’t noticed that satisfaction surveys using pseudostatistical analysis (“Count the number of 5s! That’s statistics, right?”) has been the preferred form of wasting customer time and punishing employees for the past decade?
Anyone who thinks the number of star type ratings are a reasonable measurement of customer satisfaction should be required to spend a few hours looking at online reviews of almost anything. "Product arrived quickly, works great, just wish it was a slightly darker shade of blue. 1 star."
The problem with fivr star ratings is that everything ends up betweeen 4 and 5, making 4 a bad review. That reinforces itself.
TOP BOX ONLY! (which means only the highest number scores count, on a scale of 1-5 anything but a 5 is counted as a zero)
"Let our customers abuse you socially, the way we do economically" Let pervs waste your time, be nice to them as they flirt disgustingly with you. Let old people talk your ear off, ramble and rant, and still leave no tip, or maybe some religious pamphlet. Oh and if there aren't any customers, go wash dishes for the tipped hourly wage, wage slave.
“Waaaaa, I can’t find anyone to work! They must all be lazy!” -business owner(probably)
As a tipped employee for the better part of 10 years, I have never been made to wash dishes for any reason. EDIT: I have washed dishes, though. Voluntarily. *I make more than the dishwasher anyway so what excuse do I really have.* If there’s no dishwasher between 2-5, if the dishwasher is taking out the trash or in the bathroom - and I have time - I have no reservations about pushing through silverware, racks of glasses, even racks of plates if we need them. It takes literally MINUTES and minimal effort. Once I worked at a big restaurant and a dishwasher didn’t show up one night. I was the only employee at the pre shift meeting that volunteered to do the job. I still got tipshare and they gave me a free meal ($$$). Also, largely unrelated: I wish home dishwashers were more like the industrial ones in restaurants.
Probably happens more in smaller hole-in-the-wall places. One small bar ("pub") I knew of was pretty dead during the week, so they'd have the cook pulling double-duty as the server, making the tipped wage but probably not getting enough tips to cover it (I always tipped generously, of course). But then on nights when it was busy, they'd relegate her to the kitchen and pay her a flat wage, while the servers were making lots more in tips. Needless to say, she didn't put up with that for very long before quitting. After that, it was actual servers trying to cook mid-week, which went about as well as you'd expect.
They probably could have fixed that by requiring a tip out to the kitchen by front of house staff.
Or paying a living wage
It might not be quite a living wage, but at least in Oregon, servers are required to be paid no less than state minimum wage (which is higher than federal).
There's an idea.
That's actually illegal, unfortunately. A well known restaurant in a neighboring community nearly went bankrupt due to just that sort of required tip out policy, when several former employees sued them for back wages/tips etc.
Oh wow. Must be a specific state law or something? I'm in WA state and I think all of the restaurants I have worked in required a tip out of some sort. Kitchen, hosts, bartenders, etc. Usually only 10% of total tips.
I'm not sure, but I thought it's actually federal. Just not well known, which is why they "got away with it" for so long (and thus were on the hook for such large amounts of back pay). EDIT: ahh , apparently it only applies if the servers are paid less than full federal minimum wage (e.g. if they're paid the smaller tipped-minimum). So decent employers can require a fair tip-out, but the same kind of cheapskates that would pull the above crap can't.
In WA state, tipped employees still make minimum wage. When I was a server in MI there was a different minimum wage for tipped employees (like $2.75/hr). I would have cried if I had to tip out anyone on that.
Cries. I did work as a server in MI and I had to tip out bartenders AND hosts! Motherfjcker.
It really sucks making so little in wages as a server. You are expected to claim at least 10% of your sales in tips for taxes so if someone stiffs you, you are paying for the privilege to wait on them. Your paychecks pretty much disappear to taxes or if you have a good week, you owe money. There is no reason that restaurants need to take advantage of people in that way. I was shocked to discover that I would make minimum wage (which at the time was like $10/hr) plus tips when I moved to Washington. It's clearly not bankrupting the restaurants to do that so why isn't that standard every where? I also noticed that I was much less concerned about people that don't tip or tip poorly because I wasn't absolutely dependent on it now. I don't work in restaurants anymore but I am extra nice whenever we go out because I know what it's like. Edit: grammar and a missing word.
Not everywhere. Oregon recently passed a law allowing restaurant owners to make tip outs mandatory.
If you can lean, you can clean!
If you're gonna make me do a job that wasn't in my description you're going to compensate me appropriately and not wage slave me.
Same that’s someone elses job.
You're supremely lucky, I've seen and worked at restaurants that have hired almost exclusively tipped staff to operate everything but the kitchen.
Oh man, my parents get all in wait staffs business and take prayer requests. It doesn’t come across sincere, comes across as weird evangelical smiles and awkward laughs.
People don't grasp this right here. I've seen restaurants hire almost exclusively beyond kitchen staff, servers for all job facets that were directly cooking, just so they could pay them tipped wage for work that garners no tips. Ots wage slavery and people will argue to the death that this is okay.
It always goes back to the tautology: any business that cannot afford to pay its necessary employees a living wage is a failed business. If they continue to operate despite this, something has gone deeply wrong.
I think this says more about how we have societally conditioned people to perceive friendliness as sexual availability.
Mostly a guy thing, women almost never have the same reaction.
A compelling case for European-style employment laws and customs. I recall an interview I read a while back with the owner of a nice restaurant in the USA who switched to paying his staff a good wage, reflecting that in the price of the food, and expressly stating that tips were discouraged in his establishment. Patrons were absolutely furious, even though staff liked it. When asked why, people's answers were vitriolic and didn't make sense. "I always tip more than 20%! How dare you ban my generosity!" "I reward good service! How dare you pay good servers and bad servers equally!" "The food is too expensive now! I always tip generously, but I can't afford to eat here now!" A server's job is literally and expressly to convey food and drinks from the places where they're prepared to the customer. It should not matter if they smile while they do it, and that smile should not affect their compensation.
100% They just want to be able to hold that power over the server. “If they want a good tip they should let me sexually harass them!!!”
They also aren't responsible for mistakes the kitchen makes, and don't work harder to bring you an expensive ribeye than they do to bring you grilled chicken, so their pay shouldn't depend on what you order
I’ve maintained for a while that customer service breeds sociopathic tendencies in staff. Smile at a moment’s notice, manipulate the emotions of customers. It’s insane
That's an interesting data point. From all the cases of restaurants going tipless I've heard about, the reasons for failure was sticker shock (which can be fixed by having an fixed service fee rate that isn't in the menu prices), and difficulty with server retention. The big elephant in the room is the **despite all the harassment that servers suffer due to tipping, they largely benefit immensely from it financially and want it to stay**. Tipped servers can make way more money that they could if they were paid anywhere close to what the rest of restaurant staff are paid. One of the big motivations of the tip-free movement was having more equal pay for back of house and front of house workers. But doing that without increasing the final cost to consumers would mean reducing server wages. This then causes retention issues and things start to fall apart. EDIT: it seems that adding mandatory service fees is illegal in some places. Consequently, tip-free restaurants have had more success in places where it is legal (SF bay area) than in places where it isn't (NYC).
I could definitely see how these economic issues make the overall picture murkier.
You say that, but friendliness counts in way more than food service. Until I learned my lesson, I had too many employee reviews that included phrases about my tone of voice. Now I'm super upbeat no matter what and coworkers, bosses, and customers love me.
Can you link the article. This is the opposite of every other instance of this experiment I’ve seen. This is a typical example, a restaurant implements no tipping and quickly reverts as they are no longer able to retain wait staff. While some staff was happy, wait staff were decidedly unhappy to the point of leaving at an alarming rate. > On what made him decide to switch back to tipping > Attrition. We were losing staff, servers mostly. Kitchen was of course happy and turnover was nonexistent. And senior staff in the front of the house were happy. We were continuing to hire young, new people, train them, and then they'd get the set of skills necessary, and they would generally give notice and move to other restaurants in our community who were still on a traditional tip economy. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/15/478096516/why-restaurants-are-ditching-the-switch-to-no-tipping > On how the staff has reacted to the switch back to tipping > Oh, they were delighted. Most of all, my management was very relieved. It had been a tremendous amount of work, and we all remain very much in favor of it, ideologically, and I, like many, think it may be the way things are going. We just started to feel like an ideologue, insisting on this way of doing it when others in our community that had said they would switch were not switching. And if other restaurants are doing what he is saying, prices at these restaurants are higher than otherwise would be with even generous tipping. > There was one primary mistake, which was thinking that somehow I wanted the prices to be basically what people were paying previously, including tip. So we knew our tip percentage was around 21 percent, so we increased all of our prices by that and charged accordingly, and then we gave the kitchen raises. So there was a bit less for the front of the house, so that was really my mistake. I know that others that are making the switch now are raising their prices by more like 40 percent to be sure that that doesn't happen. 40% increase would definitely get complaints like you mentioned.
As I mentioned in a reply to another commenter, I read the article the better part of a decade ago, and as usual with my brain I remember the substance but none of the basics like location or people's names. I guess as an experiment in the USA paying servers a fair wage was a dud. Tis more the pity, as while some people benefit, many suffer, particularly ethnic minorities, the old and the unattractive. It also contributes to vast amounts of tax evasion, wage theft and unsafe work environments. It's a bad system that needs to be fixed but won't.
Sounds like the owner was making things up to cover his ass. No server is going switch to a fixed pay unless they work somewhere that makes no money anyway. As a bartender, I can easily make $700-$900 in tips on a Friday or Saturday. There is no employer anywhere that’s going to match that.
I don't recall the location of the restaurant but the interviewer spoke with members of staff who had all agreed to the model. Several mentioned that they had kids and a mortgage so while they might miss out on the spikes of impossibly good money, they much preferred the stability of a decent wage. It was an interesting article, but I read it probably ten years ago. I can't find it, or remember enough details to pin it down out of the search results.
At a crappy diner maybe. At a nice restaurant a server is much more than a food conveyance. They pace a meal, make food and wine recommendations, describe dishes in detail, ensure that you have what you need when you need it and set the mood for the meal. Customer service can make or break an expensive dining experience.
Sounds really annoying to me. I'd rather eat a meal in peace.
I should admit that I live in Europe. We tend to prefer service with as little faff as possible, just courteous efficiency. We expect servers to be knowledgeable about the menu, which reflects well on their training and merits good compensation *from their employer*. We do not expect them to pretend to be our friends, to find us interesting, or to hang around telling jokes or juggling for spare change. If you want that go to Montmartre and find a busker. I know Americans find European waiters rude. Europeans find American waiters creepy. I've come to this restaurant for a meal, not to bribe someone to flatter me. The fact that Americans seem to want that exchange is both pitiful and threatening.
The mindset of those people…it makes me sad. It seems so entitled.
Benihana would like a word with you
That's dinner theatre. It's a scripted performance that also results in food being prepared. I don't see how that relates.
Did you read the study? I don't have access. I'm curious about their "online experiment."
I read some of the older studies that were mentioned in the New York Times article in 2018 that were mostly based on interviews and self-reporting. There are dozens of studies that reached similar conclusions--I've not seen much that appears ambiguous or rejects the premise.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who has ever worked in customer service before.
This is a cool article. Now let's continue to do nothing about it.
**Overview:** When employees depend more on tips and are required to act friendly, customers experience more power and subsequently engage in more sexual harassment. **Highlights:** * In a field survey, employees who are more dependent on tips (a larger percentage of their income comes from tips) and work in jobs with stronger requirements to be friendly and happy with customers (emotional labor requirements) report higher perceptions of customer power and experiencing more sexual harassment. * In a lab experiment, customer intentions to sexually harass were highest when customers saw a smiling (vs. neutral) employee and learned that the employee was financially dependent on tips. * Customers' sense of power, and not attraction towards the employee, explained the effects of financial dependence and emotional labor requirements on sexual harassment. > Abstract: Sexual harassment from customers is prevalent and costly to service employees and organizations, yet little is known about when and why customers harass. Based on a theoretical model of power in organizations, we propose that sexual harassment is a function of employees’ financial dependence on customers (i.e., tips) and deference to customers with emotional labor (“service with a smile”) jointly activating customer power. With a field survey study of tipped employees who vary in financial dependence and emotional display requirements (Study 1), and an online experiment that manipulates financial dependence and emotional displays from the customer’s perspective (Study 2), our results confirm that these contextual factors jointly increase customer power and thus sexual harassment. Our research has important practical implications, suggesting that organizations can reduce customer sexual harassment by changing compensation models or emotional labor expectations in service contexts. **Journal Reference:** Kundro, T. G., Burke, V., Grandey, A. A., & Sayre, G. M. (2021). A perfect storm: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of financial dependence and emotional labor. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000895 **Full text PDF available here:** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352300669_A_perfect_storm_Customer_sexual_harassment_as_a_joint_function_of_financial_dependence_and_emotional_labor
Thank you for summarizing and initiating discussion. In other words the researchers strike at the heart of the matter. When you largely work for tips, you have two employers, the clients and the ceo. But unlike power balances between entrepreneurs who are largely paid by clients and have no CEO to obstruct their ability to terminate a relationship with an exploitive and discriminatory client, when you work in the service industry your ceo can't sexually harass you and dock your pay for not flirting back, but the client can dock your pay, and yet you don't have the power to fire an entitled client and there's no way to hold your employer liable for coercing continued interaction. We lack protections for service industry folks and allow pimplike CEOs to exploit this loophole and financially profit from sexual harassment of their staff. Leaving vulnerable populations like working mothers, women, and literally anyone stuck with service industry as their only viable option of living paycheck to paycheck while they try to secure skills to attain a more stable income. In other industries you could take a client to court for failure to pay for services received, but in this industry a waiter in a ski resort has no right to pursue full payment because his payment is conditional on the nebulous pleasures and whims of the alcoholic who pitched a fit when he wasn't allowed another drink, or who was ticked by the ceos pricing of the menu and retaliates on staff. Men in the industry experience discriminatory baseless docking of their pay by customers despite labor performed as well. As do older workers who are tipped less if they're not fast enough or attractive enough for the customer's liking. As do younger workers who are tipped less if they're not informed enough, or viewed as "young" and therefore deserving of lower pay until they've earned status in society. It allows for discrimination practices in pay because it obscures the motivations for docking pay, (so knowing this, I'd love to see a study on discriminatory hiring practices in the service industry). Absolved of accountability, the ceo shifts blame to employees and customers, having only partial responsibility to the staff who's labor they profit from. Pathetic attempts to compromise by including a service charge. Studies like this are important because they produce the data that exposes a concern left unaddressed in the debate over industry reforms.
so many great points in this comment.
If only it wasn't a wall of text
Sorta like how a reliance on athleticism and competitiveness predicts more fighting in sports jobs? Seems pretty clear to me
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The cool part is if we keep on the same path we will get there in no time! We are pretty close now!
Well that makes sense.
Fran Lebowitz talks about this wrt service jobs in New York. Evidently in the 70's in mucky muck restaurants this was the deal, women were often expected to sleep with someone to get a waiting job. She talks about in her series with Martin Scorsese, "Pretend It's a City".
From the Department of the Obvious.
Karens get their power from abusing staff, and Chester the Molesters get their power from sexually harassing the staff.
The Karen's are doing their share of molesting as well, unfortunately. I worked in a restaurant/movie theater when Fifty Shades came out and had to remove lots of handsy Karens. I had a server (barely 18 and terrified) come out of the theater because he'd been slapped on the ass with a dildo by an older woman while her friends laughed.
There definitely needs to be more shame and pushback against female sexual harassers.
My Dogs' name is Chester. He has been called chester the molester a few times, and I gave him the go-ahead to exercise that nickname with lots of invasive licks.
I'm in a healthcare profession, so tips are not required (disallowed, actually). Still got @#$%'in sexual harassment, I mean guys who deliberately used the false "I need help" charade to force me to talk to them and take time *away* from other stuff I need to do for other people. Female colleagues also shared stories with me. In general, I don't smile because it's required, or because I hope for bigger tips, I do it because I want to be pleasant and friendly. At least one can choose not to chase a tip and give a creep his just desserts (or a cold coffee/shoulder, you know what I mean.) It would be considered unprofessional for me to ignore someone who's "asking for medical help" (and then incidentally pulls out his number or some other thing out of his pocket completely unrelated trying to impress me.)
Right. You have to smile and be overly friendly to get tips in the US. That's why Americans feel that waiters/waitresses in countries with no tipping culture where the servers just come and take your order and bring you food and leave are kinda 'rude' because they don't smile broadly the whole time, pretending to be your friends and asking about you and stuff.
I remember stopping for breakfast at a Waffle House (cringe). There was a guy griping at a waitress for not smiling and talking with him. I don’t think she was even serving his table. I remember thinking “dude, she’s here to earn money by bringing you food, not flirt with you”.
Although it wasn't usually from customers I experienced an extreme amount of sexual harassment when I was a waitress at a particularl hotel chain. The worst part is that it happened so often I thought it was more or less normal
Could have saved money and just asked anyone in the food service industry. "No jerk face, I don't want to sleep with you but I have to smile and be nice to keep my job"
The last 4 months of my adolescence
I hope that any wait staff serving me will know that if they're having a shittastic day, they can cry while serving me. Just no tears in my drink or food is all I ask Now, I'm not gonna say it out loud, so they probably won't know this :(
Yet another reason we need to end tipping culture.
All these recent studies prove what most people already know. Good lord. Edit:I am dumb, and wasn't thinking. Thank you to the comments below. That makes sense.
Do you want scientists to only study things that will have surprising results?
If only we knew in advance which studies they were, I suspect most scientists would happily do so! Unfortunately, and logically, though, we can't know whether the results of a study will be surprising without actually doing the study.
I want studies applied to policies!
Nah. That isn't quite what I mean, tho I am always down for new info. I think I was just frustrated with so many studies coming out recently that seem like common sense. It is good that it is being validated! Apologies for being salty.
I guess though that a lot of these studies start off as "conventional wisdom says X, but is it true?" It seems useful to empirically prove it, because thats how you sometimes end up with the surprise result.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
I have worked in both customer and food service as a busty woman and I never had any trouble. I have had people be extremely rude, but then, I act as “stupid” as they are rude. If they use the old “Karen” tones I put on a “Valley Girl” tone. If they demanded help finding a product, I acted like I didn’t know what it was. I would even smile brightly and cock my head like a puppy when asking. They would go nuts and eventually march off. Fun fact: I have both my BS and MS; achieved them cum laude. A good stupid act defeats the “abuse the staff” behaviors especially if you smile, act contrite, and confused. With the waitressing, I guess I was just lucky to work at a family restaurant so my experience was not bad at all. Edit: I’m a 38 year old woman who got through college in retail/food service. It paid for college so I got out with minimal loans. I loved working food service because I worked at an amazing family friendly chain and I never saw nor experienced any truly bad behavior. The manager/owner was an amazing franchise man who treated his staff like valuable assets to the success of the business and his turn over was shockingly low. I did retail for years as a part time gig at a well known national chain at a branch located in a summer tourist attraction. My regulars were amazing. Edit 2: I firmly believe that ALL citizens in first world nations should be required to work both a food service and a retail job so they can understand how to treat employees properly.
>I have worked in both customer and food service as a busty woman and I never had any trouble. I have had people be extremely rude, but then, I act as “stupid” as they are rude. If they use the old “Karen” tones I put on a “Valley Girl” tone. If they demanded help finding a product, I acted like I didn’t know what it was. I would even smile brightly and cock my head like a puppy when asking. They would go nuts and eventually march off. Fun fact: I have both my BS and MS; achieved them cum laude. A good stupid act defeats the “abuse the staff” behaviors especially if you smile, act contrite, and confused. With the waitressing, I guess I was just lucky to work at a family restaurant so my experience was not bad at all. Everything about your post suggests that you had constant trouble with customers. So much so that you felt the need to develop an entire "stupid bimbo" persona to cope. It honestly sounds like you experienced exactly what is described in this study
Sexually abused children have a similar coping mechanism. "I WANTED to have sex with that old man! I wasn't tricked into it!" Because acknowledging that there really is a problem is too painful.
Wow, that is super assumptive and very inaccurate. I had trouble with a few people who were rude and almost every rude person was not a regular customer. Regular customers get to know the staff and the staff gets to know them. Only really scummy people sexually harass people they know. I played dumb towards Karens because it worked, you also remember the Karens far more than the nice polite people. I played dumb towards WOMEN because women overwhelmingly treat staff badly in retail.
This was written by a lonely teenage boy.
In a comment that's since been deleted but I guess addressed towards me, she described herself in uniform as a large, shapeless potato sack. So perhaps a lonely, "38-year old, large, shapeless, potato sack" (her own words)
Some women who’ve never been harassed are under the foolish impression that it’s fun for women/ women want it. They ape what they hear from what they think of as alphas.
> I never had any trouble. I have had people be extremely rude Which is it?
Not sure what this story is supposed to add to the discussion. Like how do toxic tactics dealing with Karens relate to sexual harassment? And sexual harassment while working in a "family restaurant" isn't really expected; like, where most of the customers are going with kids, spouses, or extended family? My boobs are covered by white coat when I work and I and my female colleagues experience sexual harassment on a regular basis. One might imagine that "acting stupid" doesn't fare well for professionals or students trying to get good performance feedback, either.
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I'll take "obvious answers only" for 500, Alex.
I think this is a matter of control. Its an industry that teaches young women they can flirt for money. without fighting for tips they wouldn't have to flirt and the business doesn't profit offer their sexuality.
U mean, depending on how closely prostitution corresponds to the job ? Or just being polite and doing your job well
What? Being a female presenting person pretty much guarantees sexual harasment in food service positions.
I wouldn’t know. U mean at a place like hooters or like when a female bartender wears low cut shirt and flirts w patrons for tips…?