SS Radio #192: Silly Bullshit

[Mark Rippetoe]

Q&A Episode - Asking Jews, Tipping Wait Staff, and Blood Flow Restriction | Starting Strength Radio #192

[AndrewLewis]

One of the problems with tipping is that the model is not consistent everywhere. Some places pool all tips and split them evenly between waiters. Some waiters tip out the cooks and support staff like busers, dish washers, and host. Some pool everything and split between all staff. Some places include 20% gratuity as a part of the meal.

Another complication you may not have thought of (based on the podcast) is that some people have a poor perspective on why their experience wasn't good. They see their meals come out late or cooked wrong or one meal is hot and another is cold and they get pissed at the waiter despite the fact that it was the expeditor or chef who ruined their experience. Unless a customer worked in a restaurant, it can be hard to divorce the totality of the experience from the quality of the job the waiter did.

[KeithI]

A cook can absolutely screw a waiter on getting a meal out promptly.

Several years ago, before it became such an obvious shit show, I went to Australia with my wife. They don’t tip, but their minimum wage was high and I believe they had some overtime laws that kicked in after 7pm or after 8 hours in one day or something. So instead of having eight brain dead people standing around acting inconvenienced for coming to work there’d be a cook in the back and one competent person working the counter in front, and the meals would cost about the same as a meal plus tip here. It worked out ok for me.

[Bluefan75]

One of the problems with tipping is that the model is not consistent everywhere. Some places pool all tips and split them evenly between waiters. Some waiters tip out the cooks and support staff like busers, dish washers, and host. Some pool everything and split between all staff. Some places include 20% gratuity as a part of the meal.

Another complication you may not have thought of (based on the podcast) is that some people have a poor perspective on why their experience wasn't good. They see their meals come out late or cooked wrong or one meal is hot and another is cold and they get pissed at the waiter despite the fact that it was the expeditor or chef who ruined their experience. Unless a customer worked in a restaurant, it can be hard to divorce the totality of the experience from the quality of the job the waiter did.

There are also places that, when tips are paid by credit card, that take a piece for themselves and lower how much is going to the staff. We tip in cash as often as possible, even if we pay the bill by credit card.

[Jovan Dragisic]

I don’t really understand the young guy who says his German degree is useless. It is an almost two trillion dollar market. Maybe he went to a bad school.

[Satch12879]

I don’t really understand the young guy who says his German degree is useless. It is an almost two trillion dollar market. Maybe he went to a bad school.

It means he can’t speak it, even after getting a degree in it, which happens a lot. He might be able to follow some written German with some effort, but he’s nowhere near able to be useful in a legal or financial context.

That or he studied German literature, which is truly next to useless.

[Jovan Dragisic]

That or he studied German literature, which is truly next to useless.

I guess this is true, if he studied it in English. If he read it in German, it would go a long way. Seriously, I am close to decades removed from working in the field, and I still make a few thousand bucks from German these days. Ok, I am a native speaker, but very many of my former classmates who are not native speakers can say the same. It is probably a shitty school.