Interesting Links for 07-09-2013

[andrewducker]

• Europe drafts law to ban mobile roaming charges
  (tags: europe phones )
• NIH Studies Explore Promise of Sequencing Babies’ Genomes
  (tags: genetics children healthcare )
• Iran foreign minister Zarif tweets happy Jewish new year
  (tags: iran GoodNews jews )
• Pornography reinforces sexist attitudes (but only in some people)
  (tags: sexism pornography )

Comments

[bart_calendar]

There are people who don't understand pooled tips?

[cartesiandaemon]

I imagine it's not, not understand it, but not know it's universal. After all, if tips are pooled, that basically obliterates the "serve better, get more tips" idea, but I think many people act as if that's still true?

[bart_calendar]

To not understand the pool system you would have had to never work in a tip paying job in your life and/or never had a friend or family member work in a tip paying job.

I find that sort of hard to believe.

[andrewducker]

I never have.

No member of my family has.

I can only think of one friend that's worked in a bar - and tipping is very rare in bars here. Common in restaurants, but if any of my friends have worked as waiting staff then they've never mentioned it.

[bart_calendar]

Weird, in America bartending or waitering is sort of a rite of passage for college and high school students.

[andrewducker]

They don't need _that_ many bar staff at university, and roleplaying nerds don't tend to be their first choice.

Also, I worked summers in IT, which happily paid off any debt I worked up the rest of the year, and I was pretty frugal. I think I only knew two people who worked during the school year.

[bart_calendar]

The difference might be that university in the UK doesn't cost $40k a year.

I can't imagine that most students in the U.S. could possibly go to school and not work - and bars and restaurants are by far, because of tips, the highest paying part time jobs that exist for people that age.

[bart_calendar]

To be fair I worked in a grocery store rather than a bar - but that was only because my dad was best friends with his bank manager who was also the bank manager for the grocery store and therefore was able to get me into the union, so I made like $15 an hour stocking shelves and shit (which was a lot in 1989) but if you didn't have connections you weren't getting into that union and getting those jobs.

[ajr]

I don't know if it's changed any in the years since, but when I was in education it was data entry that was the field that people went into for quick cash

[bart_calendar]

Ha!

[ashfae]

Still not unavoidable, though; my friends and I all went for retail instead of restaurants, so I've never worked for tips either and nor have most people I know. (which was very deliberate on my part, at least; awful as retail was, waitressing sounded like hell)

[cartesiandaemon]

1. I specifically said people did understand "pooling" but not know it's universal. Even if the 6 restaurants someone happened to work in did pooling, do they know that EVERY restaurant does pooling? (Although I hope that someone who did work as a server knows to tip appropriately, although I don't suppose that's always true.)

2. I suspect many people haven't although I don't know how many. I'm ashamed to admit I never worked in a customer-service (or other entry-level job) in teens/twenties because it's an experience most people should have, and because it makes me sound elitist.

[abigail_n]

Or, you could live in a country where the assumption is that businesses pay their employees a working wage and that tipping is an extra, not an unspoken part of the price of service.

[drdoug]

I've friends and family who worked behind bars, but I've (almost) never discussed tips with them because that'd have been talking about how much and how they get paid, which is very much just Not Done in my social circles.

[ext_208701]

A pub typically doesn't have pooled tips. Certainly in my local if you tip / buy a drink for the staff it's clear it's given directly to the person.

Certainly a friend of mine worked at a hotel, where a tip on the bill was taken directly by the hotel and paid into the staff party fund, so your tips came back at Christmas if you still worked there. The students who worked in the holidays through all the weddings were less than impressed with the deal.

[bart_calendar]

In New Jersey where I spent my life before France it was always pooled and at the expat bars here in Montpellier - which are all run by English, Welsh or Irish people - the tips are always pooled.