Shortly before opening, Casa Bonita’s new owners Matt Stone and Trey Parker decided to eliminate tipping and instead pay workers a flat wage of $30 per hour.
Now I could be wrong, but getting a an hourly wage as a restaurant worker is FAR better than relying on tips. I feel like either workers in this situation are too obsessed with tips or there’s huge context missing.
Yes, since the post is about a restaurant in the us I only commented about serving in the us.
I’m not sure where you’d put the cutoff for multifunction, servers in the us are expected to do a bunch of side work that could include putting away glassware, marrying and refilling condiments, making silverware and napkin setups, etc. servers in the us will famously only do their side work until they’re tipped out.
Part of the point I’m trying to make is that there’s an expectation of how things will be in a serving job and people set their expectations for the way they’ll be paid based on that. Serving in the us is already one of those jobs that have you running a checkbook out of a wad of cash anyway, so it’s not like someone looking at serving jobs is gonna do the slot machine eyes coming up dollar signs when they hear $30 an hour.
Like you’re saying, without significant changes to the way servers are scheduled, paid, work is broken up and, as a consequence, the way servers live and plan their lives, changes that allow for hourly pay will be face an uphill battle both with the workers and management.
I see your point, I disagree though about the perceived value of the competitive hourly wage when you remove the tipping context. It’s a fairly normal occurence here for example to miss your hospitality worker family member at the holiday reunion because they’re off working - not out of obligation, but because those shifts attract penalty rates by law so they’re in high demand. The same is true to a lesser extent on weekends & after 7pm daily. It does mean that places close earlier at night and pay close attention when budgeting payroll though
Even with tipping some of the slower holiday shifts here are attractive to people. I used to work with a bartender who would always pick up the Christmas night shift. The volume was dogshit but with him and one person in the kitchen they’d clear tips like it was Friday.