ggBarabajagal

@ggBarabajagal@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tipping culture npcs⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “People’s definition of good is also different.” That’s exactly what makes working as a server a difficult job.

  Take you, for example. It sounds like you don’t like to be bothered when you’re dining out. An excellent server might be likely to recognize that and leave you alone after the first or second visit – as well as get your order right and bring your bill promptly. Even if not, there’s nothing wrong with politely asking to be left alone, but you can’t expect your server to read your mind. Some people do like to be bothered. Some people value the experience of being served while dining out to be as important as the food or the ambience. People have different definitions of good.

  In your “first” part, I hear you talking about resentment toward feeling obliged to tip servers when they give poor service. I understand and agree, to an extent. Paying servers minimum wage (or more) would not necessarily improve the service, however, and could possibly allow it to become worse. The amount you leave as a tip – if anything at all – is still completely up to you. That’s a big part of tipping culture as well.

  As for your “second,” and your “third,” I’m talking about tipping culture at sit-down restaurants in the United States.

  Because you are able to conceptualize tipping as a “a mechanism to justify suppressing wages” does not mean that’s the only way to conceptualize it. Do you really believe that raising server pay to minimum wage (or more) would end tipping culture in the U.S.? I do not believe that at all. Because there really is a culture to it, even it is merely a custom to folks like you.

  We can stop its spread – we can refuse to tip at places that never expected a tip before. But tipping at fancy sit-down restaurants is ingrained in American culture. It would take generations of social engineering to breed it out. There are people who like to be able to tip for good service, wealthy American people who will seek it out. Even if it became the norm not to tip at restaurants, I bet tipping would been seen as a status symbol at the fancier ones.

  And what about the “excellent server” I talked about earlier, who makes more money in tips than anyone else on the shift? To you, maybe that person is akin to some sort of prostitute, to be asking for extra money in exchange for personal consideration, when already making almost as much as “ffs EMT personnel”? Seriously though, no matter how much you raise that server’s wage, they’re still not going to be making anywhere near as much as they did working those big-money shifts for big tips. All else being even, they’re not going to choose to work those crappy hours anymore either, so the restaurant no longer has its best staff working its most demanding shifts.

  Anyway, it didn’t really seem like you were punching down. It did sort of seem like you failed to address some of the points I tried to make about tipping culture in the US, and instead provided information about your personal preferences and bad experiences dining out at full-service restaurants. That, and pushing the single-problem-single-solution minimum-wage idea, again without really addressing any of the possible collateral consequences I tried to suggest in the original post.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tipping culture npcs⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tipping is more than just a custom; there really is a culture to it. If you’re tipping only because you know the server makes less than minimum wage from the restaurant (or that greedy restaurant owners are completely to blame for this injustice), I think you may be misunderstanding an aspect of this culture.

  Working in a restaurant is as hard a retail job as there is, and working as a server is often the hardest job in the restaurant. Being a truly good server requires a rare mix of people skills, math skills, memory, and a thick skin. So why do people choose to take the hardest job there is in the whole restaurant, when it pays less than all the other jobs?

  Most servers end up getting paid better than the people doing other jobs in the restaurant. In most restaurants, servers make more than minimum wage. At the end of their shifts, most servers in turn tip-out the front-of-the-house employees, such as hosts and bussers, who often do only make minimum wage.

  A truly excellent server may be the highest-paid employee for an entire shift – that certainly includes the manager and anyone else on salary, and it may even include the owner, when you add in labor and upkeep costs.

  In order to make all that money, however, this server has to work at all the times that everyone else is out having fun – Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning. This server must put up with drunks, picky eaters and other narcissists, as well as seating errors and kitchen mistakes, all with a smile, for six or eight or ten hours straight. This server, who earns more than anyone else on the shift, is working harder than anyone else on the shift.

  This is the other aspect that I wanted to address. Tipping culture is what gives that excellent server the opportunity to earn a better wage, more appropriate to the effort and expertise they devote to the job.

  I’m sure this all sounds very capitalist, because it is. This may not be the most capitalism-friendly forum, I know, but I’m not trying to make any larger argument here.

  I’m just saying that to me, it seems like this should be a “don’t hate the players” (owners, managers, servers, rich/drunk people who like to leave big tips) “hate the game” (tipping culture). And even if you do hate tipping culture, it couldn’t hurt to consider how it works for the people who don’t hate it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tax time⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But how do they know what they know about your income? Didn’t you (or your employer on your behalf) already volunteer this information to the government in the first place? Or is your government monitoring your private financial transactions without your express consent?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tax time⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you need to check it, then maybe they are not calculating your taxes for you, so much they are taking their best guess and asking you to sign off on it. If their best guess is as good (or better) than yours, there is no difference in practice. But there is still a difference in principle: whether a citizen is permitted to declare their own income or whether the government is obliged to determine it for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tax time⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The IRS calculates an employee’s taxes based on the income and withholding information provided to the IRS by the employer. The employee “volunteers” his tax information (and IRS witholding payment, if any) with each paycheck. The accounting for all this is listed right there on the paystub.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tax time⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We have a “voluntary” tax system in the U.S. – that’s always been the situation. “Voluntary” doesn’t mean that that you can choose to not volunteer to pay your taxes. It mostly just means that the way we run things, by default, it is each citizen’s responsibility to calculate and pay their taxes each April.

  American taxpayers filled out 1040 forms in the days before computers, a lot like they do now. The IRS selected certain fillings for audits, just like they do now – sometimes because of an apparent discrepancy, and sometimes just at random.

  It would be a lot more work, take a lot more resources, and be prone to a lot more error and lawsuits, if the IRS tried to calculate everyone’s taxes for them. Even now that we are in the days of computers, it is much more efficient for the IRS to only audit a fraction of the filings submitted each year.

  I’m also pretty sure our “voluntary” tax filling system has something to do with the Fourth Amendment and other privacy concerns. A lot of Americans very strongly believe that it is not the government’s place to be all up in their private business.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nikki Haley vows to abolish anonymous social media accounts: 'It's a national security threat'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  A pastor usually leads a Protestant church. Catholic churches are led by priests.

  Confession of sins to (God though) a priest is a rite in the Catholic church, but not in Protestant churches. Protestant churches often encourage members to ask forgiveness for their sins directly to God through prayer.

  There are more Catholics than protestants in the world, but there are more protestants than Catholics in the U.S. The type of Christianity most often associated with socially conservative Republican/MAGA primary voters is Protestant “evangelical” Christianity.

  Evangelicals are a hardcore subset of Protestants who take the Bible literally. They’re sometimes called “Born-again Christians” because of their belief in the importance of personal conversion. That is, you’re not really a real Christian until, as an autonomous adult, you willingly choose to surrender yourself, mind body and soul, and devote your life to (your pastor’s teachings about) the teachings of Jesus.

  Anyway, now I’ve done an eight-hours-later four-paragraph TED-talk riff on what is otherwise quite a fine and clever comment. I mean no offense and hope none is taken. I mostly just wanted to note that when Nikki Haley talks about “pastors,” she isn’t talking to Catholics; she’s talking directly to the GOP evangelical voter base.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kroger introducing AI at self checkout to lower both accidental and organized crime theft.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Giant food stores in Mid-Atlantic US

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kroger introducing AI at self checkout to lower both accidental and organized crime theft.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There is a phone app, that pretty much allows you phone to work like the scanner gun. I’ve used it before and it works fine, but my phone’s camera is not as good as the guns at scanning barcodes.

  Also, as much as I realize I am trading privacy for control, I figure there’s no need to have the grocery store’s app living on my phone, when it is just as easy for me to use the dedicated device they provide in-store.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kroger introducing AI at self checkout to lower both accidental and organized crime theft.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In the produce section, they have scales that print out barcoded price stickers. I look up the item I’m weighing (or enter the PLU) and it gives me a sticker I can scan.

  In the bakery section, where you can pick out individual muffins or donuts, they have barcodes printed on the self-service case above each item. I can just scan the barcode for whatever I take.

  (I do also have the option of checking things out at the end, if I didn’t scan them with the gun.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kroger introducing AI at self checkout to lower both accidental and organized crime theft.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The grocery store I shop at has handheld scanner guns for customer use. I check out a gun by scanning my loyalty card, then make my way around the store, scanning each item as I put it in my cart. When I’m done, the handheld scanner displays a barcode that I scan at the self-checkout scanner. My entire order shows up on the screen there, along with the total cost. I pay, take my receipt, and head out to the parking lot.

  I like scanner-gun shopping a lot. I like it because it’s efficient, but also because it puts me in control. I can see the real price of everything I take off the shelf, in real-time. If something doesn’t ring up at the price it’s marked, I know instantly. The device keeps a running total as I shop.

  Most days, my entire grocery experience involves no direct interaction with any store employee whatsoever, except maybe to exchange pleasantries with a stockperson. I do 100% of the work of checking myself out. I imagine the money the store saves on me in labor might make up for a lot of the money it loses in shrink.

  But the store gets something else from my use of its scan-as-you-shop service. It gets to collect a huge amount of data on the way I shop. Not only does it record everything I buy, but it knows when and where I buy it. It knows the patterns of how I move through the store. It can compare my patterns to the patterns of all the other shoppers who use store scanner guns. It can analyze these patterns for useful information about everything from store layout to shoplifting mitigation.

  One of the ways the store mitigates shrink from scanner gun shoppers who might accidentally “forget” to scan an item they put in their cart is point-of-sale audits. Not usually, but every so often and on a regular basis, my order will be flagged for an audit when I go to check out. When this happens, the cashier running the self-checkout area has to come over and scan a certain number of items in my cart, to make sure they were all included in my bill.

  My main point in all of this was to offer a narrative that runs counter to the narrative I picked up from the article. I prefer to have more control over my checkout experience, and I will willingly choose to surrender personal information about my shopping habits and check-out procedures in order to gain that control, every chance I get.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FBI Made 'Inappropriate Use' of Foreign Surveillance Program To Spy on Americans⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  FISA stands for “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” By definition, it’s only supposed to be used in the surveillance of people foreign to the U.S.A. The FBI’s job is domestic law enforcement. It’s the FBI’s job to investigate crime involving U.S. citizens.

  Officially, the NSA does not spy on U.S. citizens. You can believe whatever you want about whether it actually “unofficially” does, but unless you do a lot of business overseas, chances are high that Google and Amazon and Facebook all have collected way more personal information about you than the NSA has.

  Even if the NSA does surveil U.S. citizens, it can’t use any information it obtains in any legal or political way, or in any otherwise public manner.

  If a U.S. citizen has communications with a foreigner, however, it is possible that those communications will be surveilled. The NSA does spy on foreign citizens, just like foreign intelligence agencies spy on U.S. citizens. If you’re a U.S. citizen communicating with a foreigner who’s being surveilled, then your communications with that person are going to be surveilled as well.

  But again, it’s not the FBI’s job to police international crime – that’s the job of the CIA. As the article describes, this is why it is a bad idea for the FBI to be using FISA intelligence. This is why “it’s a problem when they do it to Americans.”