> Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters
This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possible, as a follow-up to the email. I am sure people here need no instruction on how to find the appropriate person in the corporate structure to contact with their concern. These are the people who can get things done -- not just for you, but for everyone. Oh, don't forget that if you have a 401k you may legitimately be a stockholder in the company, so you can mention that if true.
> I am sure people here need no instruction on how to find the appropriate person in the corporate structure to contact with their concern.
Sounds like you live in a different world from most of us. In our world, complaining loudly on the Internet, whipping up an outrage is often the only way out; there are daily examples on this very forum.
How would you go about finding out how to access the manager of some department within MegaCorp? All one can do these days is fill out some contact form and maybe someday getting an email from some noreply email address. I'm also chuckling at the thought of me mentioning that I'm a stock holder.
This feels very detached from reality.
It has been known for awhile that most big companies have Executive Service teams that do respond to customer emails. the Website consumerist (are they even around anymore) used to publish these "ceo" email addresses.
about 20 years when I worked as a 3rd party vendor in a Big Box retailer I had contact with many Regional Managers, they all had public ways to contact them, and those contacts where read, and if a customer complaint was it issue it would be sent to store manager given high priority
Most people think like you do, "they are so big so they don't care" and depending on the reasonableness that may be true, I saw some really crazy things in my time (people always angling for free shit) but honest issues where dealt with.
Get this on ballot measures across the nation? A rightly worded ballot measure, in populous consumer-friendly states like CA and NY, can compel megacorps to provide appropriate customer service.
I said it was simple, not guaranteed to work. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But it's more inclined to work if you tell them that you appreciate their help and that they'd like to contact higher ups about the situation later.
It depends on the importance of the business. Hospital mistreating the patients? Sure, escalate it. Try to get it fixed, as politely as possible.
Local Dunkin behaving badly (my recent experience)? Just stop giving them my business. I can make my own coffee. I can also stop drinking coffee altogether. I don’t need them, and they demonstrated they don’t need me either.
There is too much bad behavior around - it is not worth one’s time and energy trying to fix them all
Do you think the executives care about your letter?
Stop going to the place that treats you badly, and if possible write an honest critical review of them. This is not perfect, but it has more hope of getting attention than a letter to an executive who almost certainly won't even see it.
For better or worse, people vote with their wallets. There are lots of low cost versions of things I would never even consider (and any experience would have me running to write an unfavorable review) but there are lots of people who care most about cost. It's the reason why southwest exists in the first place.
I do think that some do. A well written, polite, short letter expressing a issue and how it is detrimental to an organization and how it impacts customers would be welcome by any competent executive or manager. If they don't want that knowledge, then I am sure that is common, but it is not ubiquitous.
One of the most soulless companies in Canada has a special department you can contact for any complaints or questions and they will do everything in their power to make things right or answer your questions in a timely manner. The trick is that it's not well-known and not accessible through their normal abysmal customer service channels.
There are absolutely people that care in many organizations, if you can find them. Usually searching for "ombudsman" or "corporate secretary" will lead you in the right direction.
Instead of dismissing things off-hand because they don't fit your assumptions, you may find it useful to spend a few minutes coming up with a thoughtful and critical response. Doing so might not only contribute meaningfully to discussion but it might let you work through how some of those assumptions may not hold up to real scrutiny.
> Do you think the executives care about your letter?
Some do.
A few years ago I flew with $EAST_ASIAN_AIRLINE and had some complications with my checked baggage. The gate agent was courteous and patient in understanding and resolving my issues. After everything's sorted out, she gave me the typical "if you're satisfied with my service, please write or call ..." As the interaction was positive, and I've got nothing else to do on the flight, I wrote a brief e-mail expressing my satisfaction with the earlier service.
Maybe a week later, I received a reply stating that they were pleased that I had good service, and said gate agent would be commended. Of course I have no way of telling for sure, I don't believe that it's a canned automated response, given that it was sent days later, the reply's formatting's simple, and that the reply's grammatically correct but stilted.
In contrast, I flew with $US_AIRLINE last year, in first class. I went to the airport early and requested if I could be re-booked for an earlier flight. The agent "helpfully" re-booked me, but in economy. It was clear that the agent had overlooked that I was flying first class. It couldn't be re-booked and I got a look of "well it's not my fault and you shoulda told me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" Fine, I thought, but at least I still get express security lane and lounge access, right? I was assured that they'll call ahead so there shouldn't be any problem. That turned out to be a lie. The security agent didn't know what I was talking about when I got there. Same deal when I try to enter the lounge, but I guess the lounge agent took pity on me and "did me a favor" -- not "I apologize for the errors so far, and this is the least I could do" -- and let me into the lounge at least.
I should emphasize that at no point did I raise my voice nor disrespect the agents I'd spoken to, though by the time I was at the lounge I probably did sound slightly upset.
There was no WiFi on that flight, but you bet I wrote a lengthy complaint when I got home. I didn't even get an automated response back.
> Stop going to the place that treats you badly [...]
I agree that's likely the most effective approach. I no longer fly with $US_AIRLINE unless I absolutely have to.
I've not had a bad interaction with SWA thus far, and was in fact planning on flying with them sometime in February. Perhaps I should reconsider, but the alternative would be $$$ more expensive (and I may have to fly $US_AIRLINE), so I might still risk it. That's the rub, isn't it: when it comes down to it airline passengers, including myself, are quite price sensitive, so it's totally rational for airlines to optimize that over everything else.
You're getting a few saucy replies but it does work and you don't even need a physical letter. Find the "Our Leaders", "Our Corporate Team" section of a companies website, drill-down to the best fit, send an email. Some executive assistant will pick it up and re-direct appropriately. This has worked for me with UPS and Verizon. The complaints were not run-of-the-mill ones though but specific to ongoing issues. I think the key is having a unique problem.
Also, if you're in the US, it might seem futile, but you do have elected officials and a massive government bureaucracy that tracks all this. Include them on the email if it necessitates it. Every email or letter has to be recorded, by law, so, if it's ever needed as evidence in something, it exists.
This is a real benefit of public corporations: anyone with significant ownership is public. The names of the owners and executives are trivial to find.
I got stuck in this, and saw a new low while waiting in DCA with respect to QR code based menus.
All the service bars in the first terminal have ipad style devices in front of the seats displaying a QR code. The expectation is that you scan the QR code off the ipad, and order using your phone/etc! Then pay with the ipad, which actually pissed me off more than sitting in the terminal for 8 hours while my flight was delayed in 10 min chunks. Initially I was unaware what was going on, and just sauntered up to a free spot on the bar, and tried to order a drink. Bartender explains that I have to use one of the ipads, which I shrugged and was like, ok, but then largely stared blankly at because it had a couple buttons (pay, order water, play games, etc) none of which were "order food/drinks/etc". Gave up when told that the bartender couldn't just serve me, and that the ipad thinngy couldn't take my order. WTF, kind of crazy nonsense is it to populate POS style terminals at every table, then fail to be able to order from them? Not only that apparently every single restaurant/etc is owned/using the same crap system so there isn't a choice to just go to the bar without.
Anyway, I got lucky because the SW captain grabbed a crew that still had hours and were suppose to be spending the night at my destination and told them they were working his plane...
Which itself was crazy, I'm pretty shocked that SW still doesn't have an automated system that "heals" the route network/etc when something like this goes wrong, and then sends updates to the flight crews/etc in question. You would think that after 2016 (when the exact same thing happened) they would have hired a couple "hackers" to just make it work...
Newark is full of those horrific ipad stations. If they were only used for orders, that would be one thing (still a bad experience), but the fact that every seat at every bar and table has these things flashing bright and distracting ads throughout your meal is just dystopian.
The cherry on top was when I walked to one of the self-checkout stores, grabbed a bag of chips, scanned it myself, and was then prompted for a tip....at a self-service kiosk.
>>SW still doesn't have an automated system that "heals" the route network
They do, it is commercial program from the 90's they have customized, when more than 300 cancellations hit that system it fell over and could not recover. It also requires human operators to read the crew changes over the telephone so every crew member has to call into a call center to get new assignments. No online portal or mobile app.
The article complains about automation replacing workers. This complaint goes back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but automation has enabled us to sit in warm houses and watch Netflix all day rather than spending every day picking bugs off of our crops.
The other thing it complains about is cutting costs. Well, Southwest has the cheapest air fares. You don't get top flight customer service when you buy the cheap seats. Customers have shown that they prefer lower prices to better service. They voted with their dollars.
McDonald's has replaced their cashiers with a kiosk. There's still a cashier there, but most of the customers (including me) prefer the kiosk because (at least in my case) it's faster.
The other day I went to a full service restaurant with a friend. Two burgers and a couple drinks went for $130. The restaurant was mostly empty, with more staff than customers. I don't think they're going to last.
My family has been flying SW almost exclusively for 10 years and this Christmas was the first problem we’ve encountered.
Something definitely changed with the new CEO because the usually happy workers were much less so. For instance, they used to have somewhat unique and entertaining scripts for the flight education before takeoff, but for the past few years they stick to the boring version the other airlines deliver.
Maybe there’s something else going on, and my observation is wrong, and it’s all a combination of shitty managers and outdated software
The summary is that Herb Kelleher (CEO until 2004) was operations-focused, he was replaced by Gary Kelly who had a finance background and appointed as COO someone with a similar background. Kelly retired early 2022 and was replaced by Bob Jordan, getting back to an operations focused leader. Alas, the operational neglect of Kelly's tenure wasn't quickly overcome.
I didn't think what happened with Southwest could get so bad but my last flight with them was in 2021. Post-early COVID, it was pretty obvious every airline was struggling with reduced and/or ill staff. I flew from the East Coast with a 1 hr layover in Las Vegas that turned into multiple hours, at night, with everything outside of the gambling areas closed down. Kids crying for food, all that. Finally, the staff for the flight from Vegas to LA showed up. They had to call them in and specially ask them to take this last flight of ours. I've also sat next to a Southwest pilot on a flight transferring to another city.
They haven't had "cheap" fares for a while nor have their staff had the quirky friendliness I had seen on flights when I started flying with them some 15 years ago.
The US domestic airline industry a patient that's always on life-support and pretty much upheld by government bailouts and bankruptcies at this point. I've probably mentioned it here before but the first chapter of David Dayen's "Monopolized" covers some of the sources of the issues going on there. It's a bad mix for something that has become important infrastructure, especially since we have no redundancy on the ground with something like rail traffic.
>The waiter hasn’t been replaced by an iPad, they’ve been replaced by you.
I've noticed as well that in grocery-store lines. Where customers are being conditioned to patiently wait in long lines to be next at the checkout machines. To wave their purchases over lasers, then pack them into each and every bag they'll pay for. Be careful what you put in the bagging area! the machines' metallic voices shriek at the customers. They must do exactly as they're told. Or else the single human attendant will walk over to ask them what they did wrong. While others still waiting trade impatient glances. Oh the shame.
Meanwhile the silent rows of unmanned registers wait in the gloom, just in case. Are they waiting for an EMP?
I recall reading that when they introduced self-service checkouts theft went up significantly; people were much less reluctant to still if they were only being served by a machine. However the solution was not to simply go back to use manned registers again, but instead make the systems for theft detection more sophisticated. I wouldn't even be surprised if the final systems that we have now are not even cheaper than manned registers, but the way the transition worked was that it was always sold on "potential savings" on idealised conditions.
The shop I use has the "scan as you shop" scanner guns, if I'm doing a big shop they're so much more convenient than having to load and unload at either a self or normal checkout.
If I'm only getting a few things I'll use the self checkouts, this store doesn't use the scales to weigh the "bagging area" so it's as easy as scanning the items, Apple Pay and away I go. As an autistic person I much prefer this experience to having to awkwardly stand and make small talk with a cashier.
>>I've noticed as well that in grocery-store lines. Where customers are being conditioned to patiently wait in long lines to be next at the checkout machines
Man I just realized I have not been inside of a grocery store in over 3 years... Thank god for curb side pickup
You should go in! I enjoy picking the fruits, veggies and cuts of meat instead of whatever the market grabs. (not to say curbside is bad but it was one of the few things I miss when the lockdown in 2020 happened.)
>>the deliberate, built-in ways corporate “customer service” is set up to not only shield those on the top of the ladder—executives, vice presidents, large shareholders—but pit low-wage workers against each other in an inherently antagonistic relationship marked by powerlessness and frustration.
Yup. Just like the classic experiment on rats where they start introducing stresses into the environment (increased crowding, reduced food, noise, etc.) and the rats start fighting each other. Here's it is letting the customers fight the customer service reps, who are themselves deliberately understaffed.
Maybe time to using LinkedIn and other sources to find the higher level managers executives and start letting them hear the complaints directly in their inbox.
The article is a bit too general. Not wrong, but not Southwest related.
What apparently happened to Southwest is that their flight crew scheduling created schedules in which a delay at one point resulted in no crew being available at a second point, which allowed cascading failures. As a cost-saving measure, they don't have enough reserve crews to cope with disruptions.
Someone should make app whose purpose is to route complaints directly to the highest echelons of a company through crowdsourced phone numbers etc. Why not share information to empower ourselves to speak directly with those who have authority to change the situation? If even 1% of these furious people were able to get through to a C-suite executive's phone, they might begin to see it as their problem. Perhaps those executives could benefit from the experience of being unable to escape all consequences of their decisions.
But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".
I would argue automated call centers are a problem.
If you end up needing to call someone since you've exhausted all other avenues you do want to talk to someone.
At that point you will either:
- waste a lot of time navigating prompts until you give up or reach a human.
- automated call center will decide that prompt it gave you is the correct one and close your call... (had this happen a lot...)
- automated call center asks you to state your issue, does speech to text, does a stupid prompt and close...
And all metrics will show great for the company while you've given up or you start looking for other companies.
Sure, lots of problems are solved by pointing to correct manual... although that would be an argument if product is user friendly enough.
Now... on southwest airlines case... what manual could you look up to fix your cancelled flight?, how do you deal with that?
Personally, I have had a cancelled flight on vacation. I could not find someone to talk to, automated prompts and calls closed. I booked another airline flight home and asked for a refund and compensation after the fact... This might not be an option in a lot of cases.
I think this is right on the money. If you assume that most troubleshooting starts with a call to customer service, then automated prompts to do standard troubleshooting isn't a terrible idea. But the call to a customer service is usually the last resort, at which point you need to talk to a human being, and anything that adds friction is only going to aggravate your users.
> automated call center asks you to state your issue, does speech to text, does a stupid prompt and close
I usually just talk complete nonsense to these prompts (but valid English sentences). That way the automation gives up when it can parse the sentences but can’t intuit meaning from them.
> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. It's a strategy to try to get you to go online, use an automated system, or annoy you until you give up. Trust me, if I'm calling into a business something has already gone horribly wrong. The automated line lying about "higher than normal call volume" (bullshit, hire more people) or "You can find the answers you need on our website" (nope, that's why I'm calling in) only pisses me off. It has never in my life provided information that I found useful.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
What does this even mean? Of course understaffing saves the company money.
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Yes, because I have a real choice on what electric, gas, water, internet company I use /s. For non-monopoly companies (growing increasingly rare) I often can't help that I currently have their product, I might buy an alternative (if one exists) next time around but "vote with your dollars" doesn't really work here well.
> Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".
No, it's not. It might be a metric for human workers but they literally don't care if it takes you 10x longer to find the answer as long as they don't have to pay a human it's a win. I've worked for companies with call centers and I assure you the only thing they care about is reducing that headcount, the outcome for the customer doesn't even rank.
My experience is that customer service is often trying to convince me that there is no problem or that my problem is my fault and there's nothing they can do about it. I bet many people here can sympathize with me when I say I know from experience that when customer service asks what operating system I use, the correct answer is "Windows," even though I run Linux, because I will never get help with any issue of I admit I'm using Linux (even for issues not at all related to my OS, like issues with my router - I don't call for Linux issues, because I can diagnose and fix those!). They will tell me Linux isn't supported... By their browser app or broadband service or what have you.
The less connected you are to a real person, the more true this is. Email is the worst. If you include any detail remotely atypical, they will latch right on to it. It's not like writing a ticket where if you include everything you think might be relevant, it will be appreciated and used to troubleshoot in good faith. It's more like they're building a case against you and any extraneous information you include will be used to achieve a summary judgement against you.
(I've had lots of great customer service experiences with smaller businesses and startups, over email and phone calls, but for giant organizations it's a terrible, adversarial process that often doesn't resolve my issue.)
Automated call centers save money by disincentivizing calling in, and by making people give up.
Most people don't think about customer service or support when they are buying stuff.
Actually solving the customers problem is way down the list of objectives for most phone systems. It's easy to see this by comparing the quality of phone support with the kind of market power a company has.
That is an interesting thought. Google, for most consumer products (and a good number of business ones) notoriously has next to no phone support at all. Is this an indication of being a market leader or of being a digital monopoly?
Google is a leader in the tech playbook concept of cornering off your monopoly then treating your customers like shit. It's actually essential to any internet scale business model, because of the challenges of profitable serving so many people if you actually provide some kind of support.
FWIW, google is better positioned to give shitty support because their users are the product anyway, and they grew organically into this. Support was never really part of the bargain (incidentally why I would never take google seriously for "business" services like gsuite or gcp because it's just not their culture).
The more egregious examples are companies like uber (probably the worst) that actually have customers but think they can treat them as badly as google treats its users because it's a "tech" business. And you end up with supposedly "disruptive" businesses that just amount to "we're cheaper because we're self serve and don't offer support (and ignore laws)". But returning to your point and mine, the first step is "blitz-scaling" yourself a de-facto monopoly so you can get away with treating people badly.
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
Why? And how would they know?
Customer service is a thing that maybe 10% of customers will interact with, and usually long after the product is purchased. It's very hard to evaluate up-front except through "brand" reputation.
A number of years ago, Tracfone realised it _would_ be a good thing for customers to be able to automatic'ly extend their end-of-service date rather than having to remember to buying airtime minutes they don't need (due to already having lots of unused minutes) just to prevent getting their number suspended.
Tracfone also decided it should be possible to activate this feature using just your phone number and a credit card, without having to sign into the website. There wasn't even a way for customers to sign into anything!
Years later, they added a possibility of customers signing into an online account. But doing so did not give access to payment information enter in the old no-sign-in system. The call-in help number's menu system also got changed sometime, such that it was no longer possible to talk to a person — all permutations of the menu tree, as well as fallbacks like "just press zero a few times" resulted in loops.The mandated contact number for the vendor on credit card bills also went to this menu system.
The end result was that the only way to modify or cancel a recurring payment created under the old no-sign-in system seemed to be telling the credit card company to either refuse charges from Tracfone or to close the revolving account. Doing so would cause Tracfone to cancel your service (which might not be what either you or Tracfone wanted).
And after they cancelled? The remnants of Tracfone automation would do two things: send your now-disabled phone occasional messages trying to entice you back, and keep submitting charges to the credit card company to be rejected. When the credit card's refuse-charges instruction expired after five years, Tracfone would resume taking payment, for a now unrecoverable (already reassigned) phone number, for an IMEI that had not appeared any network for years.
On the upside, I know somebody who has no problems with current Tracfone.
> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
If a company's phone tree can make the consumer drop the call, it saves the company support worker time, regardless of whether the customer request was adequately served.
For a company, the tradeoff where customer may be on the line for 10 hours in a call tree to get an answer a their question, or 10 minutes with a support agent, is fairly easy if you do not care about support.
Phone trees do not automagically save anyones time, and especially not that of the customer.
> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
That assumes that there is a choice. Often enough there isn't. Just like there often enough isnt really competition. We have seen how "compeditors" have colluded to keep wages low before (the "gentlemens agreements between apple, Google etc execs). Funnily enough these agreements are never done to keep exec salaries down, might have something to do with the fact that they all sit on the same boards.
> Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible time is the metric, and if humans were better at it - you could still hire less humans and "save labor costs".
Evidence required. I suspect the systems are actually designed for customers to just give up. This is especially obvious in services which customers only use rarely and thus price becomes the main purchase factor. Take airlines, which probably are the worst in terms of call wait times, people do not buy tickets enough to make purchase decisions based on service when something goes wrong, so service is atrocious, except for business customers and frequent flyers, who typically get significantly better service.
>Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
I have never seen customer service come up during a purchasing discussion outside of large corporate purchases. It's pretty firmly a "cost center" that MBAs try to optimize into being as cheap as possible. It is simply cheaper to outsource your support and make it obtuse/difficult to reach a person, basically only fulfilling the absolute bare minimum to not get sued.
> But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual.
Do you have any evidence for that claim? It seems unlikely that could be true since people need to call for things like repairs which a manual couldn’t help with and the intersection of people who don’t read manuals but will read them when prompted seems to leave out a lot of other people.
> If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all!
> Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead.
This is leaving out a lot of obvious alternatives: products don’t fail often enough that people buy anything but the cheapest one (or the one that is featured more prominently in the store they have a promotional agreement with), companies have all cut their support staff so the ability to shop around is limited, the cost is shifted to the retailers or installers, some fraction of people give up and ask a friend or neighbor to help, etc.
Solving a customer's problem does not directly make a company money. It may arguably avoid them losing potential future money but it doesn't make them money.
Depends on the call centre. Some are great and answer your question straight away. Others are newspeak-laden smokescreens designed entirely to either funnel customers into doing what the company wants, or to waste their time until they give up.
“Thanks for calling $corp, press 1 to pay a bill or 2 to give us a 5 star rating. Press 3 to hear these options again.”
Anyone here reading this, did it change your opinion on the increase in theft at retail stores during the pandemic? Are there people that now realize no one cares who works for Walmart so why not just steal stuff freely? And, they do it because they think that Walmart has destroyed their local economy? I'm not asserting that all is true, just saying it would be an interesting story behind the theft.
people steal stuff so freely because they don't get prosecuted or punished.
and they do it in the first place because they can sell the stuff and buy meth. they 100% aren't worried about gentrification issues or the local economy, etc.
> people steal stuff so freely because they don't get prosecuted or punished.
> and they do it in the first place because they can sell the stuff and buy meth. they 100% aren't worried about gentrification issues or the local economy, etc.
People also steal stuff increasingly because they need it and cannot afford it. In the past few years thefts of things like groceries and diapers have shot up. It's depressing, really.
Theft of diapers (and laundry detergent) is because these are items that are consumed, fairly high value, needed somewhere in the area, and able to be sold for cash.
People don't often steal diapers because they need them.
True — though even if the people directly responsible for the theft aren't savory individuals, the people they sell to might be struggling to buy diapers all the same. There's apparently an entire black market around this stuff.
> The black market for diapers and other baby products thrives because so many people can’t afford over-the-counter prices for them. Diapers and wipes cannot be purchased with food stamps or other welfare benefits, and the expense is a grinding source of stress for families in poverty. During the pandemic, the number of families who couldn’t pay for diapers shot up across the country.
only because people who are stealing groceries and diapers have spent, squandered, wasted, or sold, the goodwill and benefits designed to cure their hunger or cloth their children.
you will not starve (or kids have no diapers) in this country simply because you refuse to steal. it's a really bad choice, and yes I do understand that people make bad choices. it's redeemable and understandable, but it's not excusable.
> Are there people that now realize no one cares who works for Walmart so why not just steal stuff freely?
People are just smart enough to know that if they do not have a badge, then they should not get involved unless they want to take on a lot of legal liability. It has nothing to do with how much Walmart staff cares about theft.
I agree with the general idea that the insatiable hunger for greater profits comes at the expense of labor. Southwest is just another example of this. Additionally, everything ts treated as a cost center, such as IT systems. And everything is short-term thinking.
But pointing to automation as a problem is misguided. Automation is great. I look forward to a future when we don't subject humans to "time off task" in an Amazon warehouse. We automate a bunch of things now that were horrible for the people who originally did them.
The problem is systemic: how do we distribute the fruits of that labor? The current capitalist organization of the economy exploits labor and concentrates all the wealth in the hands of a small handful of people.
The US has and produces enough wealth such that every citizen could have enough to eat, a house to live in, access to healthcare and otherwise have all their basic needs met. We, as a society, have decided we'd rather have people die in the streets, starve and use state violence in the form of withholding basic healthcare like insulin.
Automation should mean that we only need to work 10-20 hours of work a week. But no. Instead we just cut the amount of workers (to the point of having no redundancy like the railroad companies) and suppress real wage increases in the name of increased profits.
> Under the thin pretense of Covid, increased labor power has exploded the use of automated technology that creates a frustrating maze to get a simple problem solved or task accomplished
Has anyone else noticed how every single service call you make now has a (I suspect permanent) voice message saying "we are experiencing higher call volume than normal". If volumes are continuously higher than normal, then they're are the "new normal" and companies must adjust accordingly. (Edit: I see this is in fact mentioned later in the article; hadn't gotten that far yet).
> More and more consumers are being pushed away from humans onto automated systems we are told will “save us time,” but instead exist solely to save the corporation labor costs. ... The waiter hasn’t been replaced by an iPad, they’ve been replaced by you.
When faced with an automated system I always just press 0 continuously in the hope that it will break the cycle and get me through to a human rather than wade through their garbage system and answer a bunch of prompts only to have to repeat it all again when I finally get to an actual human (since I have yet to find one of those automated systems actually able to solve my query).
> If volumes are continuously higher than normal, then they're are the "new normal" and companies must adjust accordingly.
You know I think in the current business environment there is zero confidence in what the new normal is actually going to be. I don't think businesses like credit card issuers want to make people hold for a long time but I do think they are terrified of spending big bucks onboarding a lot of call centre staff and then having volumes drop off. And they honestly may not think they can afford the level of staffing required to bring wait times down in the long run and are grasping for technological solutions (that either don't work or are not mature enough to be effective).
As a farmer I certainly feel a bit paralyzed by the "new normal" - are these high commodity prices here to stay? High input costs? Am I facing decade or so of high-cost/high-margin production that would mean the securing land now is the optimal strategy? Or am I facing a decade or so of high-cost/low-margin operations if grain commodities fall back to earth but energy stays high in which case land prices will start to fall? The steady state of 2008-2019 was pretty easy to manage - this is a different world.
Another similar notion is with credit card payments for convenience items at bakeries, deli, and pizza restaurants. A company called "4shifts" is notorious for telling owners to place a sign on the register "a convenience charge of 3.5% will be added to the sale if you use a credit card". Add the 3.5% plus sales tax which increases the sale by 8% - 12% depending on the state you live in. 4shifts is also used in major stadium venues.
That sounds like a violation of the Visa/Mastercard agreement. Those networks do, in fact, charge the merchant for the use of the network but their licensing agreement specifically prohibits mentioning that surcharge or passing it on to the customer. Instead the allowable method is to provide a "cash discount."
That surcharge is also why most credit card terminals default to debit card when presented Visa/MC debit card is used. Debit cards incur a lower fee from the network than the credit card fee. Of course the customer also has less recourse using debit vs credit when it comes to chargebacks, extended warranties, etc.
Cash isn't free either (you need a float, security/insurance for the risk of theft, employee mistakes/theft, accounting costs to reconcile the days earnings). It's just that these costs are often internalised by the company (I have no idea what the actual cost is compared to a credit card surcharge, but it's non-zero).
Then (depending on your political views) there's the broader cost to society of tax-evasion that sometimes comes with cash payments (I'm not saying that cash is bad, but it's pretty clear that some businesses that are cash-only are avoiding tax and paying workers under-the-table, which has impacts both for government and the workers involved)
I previously lived in Japan and this was such a big difference compared to the US. In US stores it can take minutes to find someone if you have a question and when you do find someone they'll usually be dealing with something else. In Japan stores had so much staff that a store employee was always within a stone's throw away. The same thing at restaurants.
Amazon does the same thing by using third party delivery companies and geographic dislocation with their support staff.
The proletariat can be taught to take their class problems out on the customers. I assume that the third party delivery companies' leadership even encourage their drivers to take out their class frustrations on customers that complain about problems.
Many companies even use third-party support staff, per ProPublica. It's outsourcing and penny-pinching all the way down, and the people getting screwed are the customers and the employees.
The main thing Southwest's issues show is how quickly you can burn through consumer goodwill. For years their bread and butter was being the "We're not like the other airlines" airline, and now here we are. It's almost as though all that sophisticated brand theory was a load of hogwash the whole time.
> It's almost as though all that sophisticated brand theory was a load of hogwash the whole time.
I don't get it, how does them "burning through consumer goodwill" through their issues show that "sophisticated brand theory" (ie. "We're not like the other airlines") is bullshit? If anything it shows that it's working exactly as advertised. When they were "not like the other airlines" they were liked, and now they're hated.
The idea was, other airlines were soulless automata that didn't care about you, but SW could be personable because they were small and perky. That's all gone now.
> A November 2022 study published in the journal Econometrica looked at the significantly widening income gap between lesser and more educated workers over the past 40 years. It found that “automation accounts for more than half of that increase”
There's a lot of talk about "look at the low employment numbers, automation hasn't made humans redundant after all, so stop being such a luddite". But what is usually overlooked is the downward pressure that it's put on wages (when adjusted for inflation), and the yawning income gap referred to above.
This is why my #1 metric to choose a service provider is support capability. Things will always go wrong and if the point of contact with the customer does not have any agency to fix things effectively, I will not deal at all. The exception is the norm, and front facing employees must be able to act instead of just reading a script and hoping the problem will solve itself.
That phrase about recorded apologies is just dystopian.
One company that (somewhat recently) improved their support is T-Mobile.
They used to do call centers in the cheapest places but now have agents that are a) local to your time zone and b) are not governed solely by basic metrics but are actual careers with an actual progression ladder.
You’d not think these are intrinsic but it’s turned out to be fantastic in aggregate as a customer.
I have always had a great experience with their support since they updated their process circa 2018.
It's easier to discard companies by looking up their points of support. If there's not even a phone number where I can get a real person to talk to, that's an immediate out. Typically, then I just ask users about their experience. If I hear stuff like them wasting hours on the phone or not getting any meaningful replies that's also an out. In the end sometimes I end up choosing the less worse version, not going through with any service at all, but there's been rare cases where support was so good that I wouldn't even mind having trouble at all since I know there's always ways to work around them.
The weather affected my holiday travels (not for Southwest.)
I sat at the gate behind 20 other people in line, waiting. I called the support number and tried to use the app while on hold.
The person on the phone managed to snipe a flight that put me home four hours later than my original plans, with a free, unsolicited upgrade to first class. The best the app showed me was a 48 hours delay. Nobody had showed up to help the line of people by the time I was off to find a comfortable seat.
I usually dislike talking to people. When it comes to stressful situations or customizations that aren't cheap (think cars or dining out,) a living, breathing professional is going to be much more useful than an inherently limited screen.
I prefer the agent because I already deal with crappy user interfaces all day long, and the cognitive load of one more app to contend with is just not worth it.
Waiting, on the other hand, is an opportunity to meditate, which I always appreciate, and usually improves my state.
> Under the auspices of “empowering” the consumer, we are told to spy on our low-wage servants and gauge the quality of their servitude with stars, tips, and reviews.
I hadn't thought of it this way before, but I totally agree. We're told to judge the person rather than the system.
1) What good would it do to subject the execs and shareholders to vitriol?
2) Is this even a new thing? Did John D. Rockefeller ever have to endure an angry tirade from someone pissed about the gas prices?
3) Have you seen Southwest's stock price? The workers are getting their pay no matter what. The shareholders have just lost $3 billion in value.
4) Are we just going to pretend that the airlines didn't nearly just collapse 2 years ago? SouthWest took on a peak of $11 billion in debt as of 2021 Q3, now down to $8 billion. Do you blame them for cutting customer support staff?
Southwest Airlines received over $7B in federal pandemic aid and used it as soon as they legally could to start paying dividends and doing stock buybacks. Not investing in IT or the fragile infrastructure that was recently on display.
There is a tension in the article between "the capitalists are pitting the consumers against the front line workers" premise and the "the capitalists are eliminating the front line workers" point made in the article.
Southwest's meltdown was about computer systems that coordinate "offline" based on assumptions instead of online based on passing information back and forth on a regular basis.
Southwest was a very reliable airline, it didn't have some sort of day-to-day understaffing problem, they executed an unorthodox business strategy [0] in the last year or so that has degraded their performance, and bad weather exacerbated the problem.
Inc. makes it sound like point to point (rather than hub and spoke) is the problem, but that seems like a distraction. Airlines operated PtP for decades; hub and spoke is a relatively new approach that has its own issues.
What got Southwest could get any airline: being stretched too thin, running schedules too tight, having everything just in time, all to cram as many fares into the sky as possible.
American also had huge delays and cancellations, United kind of always has huge delays and cancellations. There but for the grace goes any other airline in this situation.
The lesson from all this, it seems to me, is that if a meltdown can happen to a company like Southwest, which has ample resources and talent, then it could happen to anyone.
This is only really true prior to deregulation in 1978.
After that, Delta began hub-and-spoke out of Atlanta, and the majority of airlines followed them.
These days, as far as I can tell, Southwest is the only major carrier that doesn't follow this approach. It has its downsides. You don't have pilots sitting "on reserve" at bases ready to fly at a moments notice if there are gaps in the system. There isn't a need to shut down and esentially "reboot" the airline when there is a major disruption, which is what Southwest just had to do. Delta had the second highest cancellation rate due to this winter storm, and that was at 10%. Southwest had to cancel 70% of their schedule.
> The lesson from all this, it seems to me, is that if a meltdown can happen to a company like Southwest, which has ample resources and talent, then it could happen to anyone.
That doesn't strike me as the lesson at all, the lesson seems to be that if you have a part of your process that is brittle (staff tracking & scheduling) you need to be aware of that limitation and either address it or not execute a business strategy that makes it sure to break under duress. American & United had a lot of delays and cancellations but they did not have to essentially shut down their airlines so they could spend a few days figuring out where their crews actually were! Southwest had to do that! (And many of the SW crews had to book their own accommodation in the hopes that they would be reimbursed because everything was broken.)
The article does make it seem like the ptp model is the issue.. and it is the issue in the sense that ptp is certainly harder to support if you can't actually track where your staff is.. but having the worst staff tracking system in the industry and straining that part of your business by adding more routes that require more stringent staff tracking is kinda my point!
If you provide a unique service or talent to a corporation, it is incentivized to use technology to empower you. This lifts your worth, and your financial situation.
If you provide a replicable service or talent to a corporation, it is incentivized to use technology to make you generic. This makes you easily replaceable, lowers your economic value i.e. your wages, and reduces management complexity.
In both cases, the corporation is incentivized to use technology to reduce the number of people it needs.
It is like a vertically oriented barbell, but with the bar getting longer, the balls at the end getting smaller. The people at the top are fewer but wealthier. Those at the bottom are more in number, but also often getting fewer, and definitely getting poorer (relatively).
The bar is automation. The implicit goal is for the two balls to shrink to the point that there is only the bar, only automation.
--
This isn't due to politics, or morals, or even greed. It is just an extension of natural selection.
Social solutions need to take into account more than just capitalism - which after all, is only part of the ecosystem of life - while still keeping the benefits of capitalism.
--
For instance, if untapped natural resources were considered a joint inheritance of all humans, then everyone would inherit at least a minimal base level income, providing a base line level of financial security and leverage. Resource extractors would bid to use resources, with the result of their bidding shared by all.
Charity is an alternative, but it doesn't present a clear structure for operating, and is notoriously difficult to rationalize consistently with capitalism. Charity is hard to scale and maintain without conflict, corruption and gaps in coverage where it is needed.
Whereas, equal shares of the inheritance of the resources, that the universe bequeathed to all of us, is a stronger, more orderly, non-coercive, structure for sharing wealth.
--
Taxing real estate based on the land, not the structure, recognizes that land is a limited availability common resource and treats land ownership more like renting, with the proceeds shared by all.
Since structures are not taxed, development of land is not disincentived with greater taxes, making it cheaper to increase land's productivity (i.e. adding and improving structures for businesses, more homes, etc.). And since unused land is taxed as heavily as used land, it becomes unattractive as a financial hedge (no longer useful like gold, or perhaps bitcoin), lowering non-productive financial-instrument demand for land.
Thus making land both more productive AND affordable.
The road ahead is going to be rocky, but there are ways it can be made smoother.
It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.
Agreed. Not only is tipping a scourge but it doesn't even try to hide what it is, you paying the worker for doing the minimum. In a lot of apps/websites you have to enter a tip before any service is rendered and you have no option to change it later if the service is bad.
For some services like Uber Eats/DoorDash I've heard that orders will just sit on a shelf because the tip isn't high enough to entice someone to "claim" that order. Tipping is mandatory if you want to get your food in any reasonable timeframe.
Tipping has spread further and further into our economy and into areas it never should have existed (I'd argue it shouldn't exist at all but it's moved well past "traditional" and reasonable places). Services have the audacity to charge you a membership fee and then essentially require tips on top of that (Looking at you Kroger Boost, I've got a blog article worth of issues with that service).
If my order doesn't get delivered, uber eats or door dash eat the cost... or I get refunded and their metrics go down. Feels like punishing them for their bad economics.
> For some services like Uber Eats/DoorDash I've heard that orders will just sit on a shelf because the tip isn't high enough to entice someone to "claim" that order. Tipping is mandatory if you want to get your food in any reasonable timeframe.
On the other hand, I was recently doing searches for "food near me" and the UberEats / DoorDash delivery fees were under $1.
I'm not really pleased that useful search results about what is where have been replaced by useless ads for UberEats, but there's no argument to be made that you're getting charged twice when you're asked to tip. As far as the pricing goes, delivery appears to be priced at "pay what you want".
The fees get charged to the restaurant. The restaurants make up for it by charging higher prices on their (delivery) food. This is in addition to the "delivery fee" those services advertise and the extra "service fees" some services don't show you until you check out (look under "taxes and fees".)
They have a low fixed "delivery fee" that they advertise heavily and then add a 15% "service fee" for the customer and also charge the restaurant a percentage.
Where are you based? Here in SV I've never seen delivery fees like that. They always tack on at least $5 in mandatory fees, to say nothing of their inflated pricing (versus ordering direct from the restaurant).
Ah, I was including all of the delivery-related fees, which seem to be spread across three or four separate charges. The "delivery fee" is often waived, since they make plenty of money on their other delivery-related fees.
In my experience, anything less than a 50% off coupon for DD or UE is not worth it. Their markup and delivery fees really add up.
>For some services like Uber Eats/DoorDash I've heard that orders will just sit on a shelf because the tip isn't high enough to entice someone to "claim" that order. Tipping is mandatory if you want to get your food in any reasonable timeframe.
Honestly this is great, for two reasons:
1. You're letting the market figure out the right price for delivery service at any given moment, which reduces deadweight loss. For instance, if you're price sensitive you can order during off-peak times to get a discount. On the other hand, if it's peak hours and you need food urgently (impatient kids?), you can be assured that your order arrives ASAP rather than 1 hour later.
2. It strengthens the case for DSPs treating their delivery workers as contractors, because the price isn't set by the DSP.
edit:
To be clear, I'm for having prices for delivery services be set by the market (ie. people who want food delivered can put in bids and delivery drivers can put in asks). I'm not for the current state of affairs where your order is "accepted" but you have to put in some indeterminate amount of tips to get it actually serviced.
Also as a consumer I have absolutely zero information on how busy drivers are, if my tip needs to be > $X to get picked up faster, if more drivers will login if I tip $X or greater, nor do I have a way to increase my tip if drivers aren’t “biting”.
IF I had that information/ability I’d concede to part of your point but I don’t and even if I did I hate that idea with a fiery passion. If that’s the world we are going to live in then why am I paying a membership fee AND service fees?
I’d say you don’t get to eat your cake and have it too but that’s absolutely what these companies are doing.
>Also as a consumer I have absolutely zero information on how busy drivers are, if my tip needs to be > $X to get picked up faster, if more drivers will login if I tip $X or greater, nor do I have a way to increase my tip if drivers aren’t “biting”.
Why do you expect that the app won't have such information displayed? The UX isn't hard. It seems pretty trivial to show a bid/ask chart of delivery prices, along with stats like how many drivers are online and how many orders are coming in. You could even use those pieces of information to come up with an estimate for how much you have to bid to get a driver within n minutes.
edit:
I re-read my original comment and realized that it was worded in such a way that implied that I supported the state of affairs that the gp described. To be clear, I'm only advocating for letting the price be determined dynamically.
>If that’s the world we are going to live in then why am I paying a membership fee AND service fees?
I don't see how this is relevant to my proposal. It's already the case today that you can get charged a membership fee (eg. uber one) and get charged delivery/service fees.
It isn’t obvious that you were making a proposal, it looked more like you were describing the current situation.
As an idea… it might be neat to try at least. But I think you’d have to build the whole service around delivery bidding, there must be abuses in this sort of market, right? As a customer, make 10 accounts and “take” every bid higher than yours, that sort of thing.
> It isn’t obvious that you were making a proposal, it looked more like you were describing the current situation.
I realized that after reading some of the replies. I made various edits accordingly.
>As an idea… it might be neat to try at least. But I think you’d have to build the whole service around delivery bidding, there must be abuses in this sort of market, right? As a customer, make 10 accounts and “take” every bid higher than yours, that sort of thing.
This is probably a non-issue. My impression is that it takes a non-trivial amount of work to get a driver account on such platforms. At the very least you need to give some sort of driver license scan and/or background/SSN check. That alone makes it fairly hard to set up fake accounts to take out competing bids, just so you can save $5 or whatever on your delivery.
> You're letting the market figure out the right price for delivery service at any given moment
No, you aren’t, because there is no clear signal to the buyer about acceptable price (except, the outright fraudulent, if one accepts that the tip is actually part of the delivery charge, membership + delivery free charged by the intermediary).
> It strengthens the case for DSPs treating their delivery workers as contractors, because the price isn't set by the DSP.
Unless you are a shareholder of the DSP, this isn’t a benefit.
>No, you aren’t, because there is no clear signal to the buyer about acceptable price (except, the outright fraudulent, if one accepts that the tip is actually part of the delivery charge, membership + delivery free charged by the intermediary).
See my edits.
>Unless you are a shareholder of the DSP, this isn’t a benefit.
The existence of gig jobs is a benefit for people who can't work regular hours, and therefore can't get jobs as "employees" (delivery or otherwise).
> The existence of gig jobs is a benefit for people who can't work regular hours, and therefore can't get jobs as "employees"
Employees with irregular hours are a thing, and were even moreso before the trend of forcing them into more precarious designated-as-contractor-roles (often contrary to labor law) became popular with the “gig economy”.
>Employees with irregular hours are a thing, and were even moreso before the trend of forcing them into more precarious designated-as-contractor-roles (often contrary to labor law) became popular with the “gig economy”.
Note that I never made any claims about whether it's actually better for every employee, or even the average employee. I was only responding to your claim that "Unless you are a shareholder of the DSP, this isn’t a benefit". Moreover, I'm skeptical your claim that people are being "forced" from being employees to being contractors. At least when it comes to restaurants, the DSPs were basically servicing restaurants that didn't do deliveries before. Therefore it's highly unlikely that anyone who was previously a delivery employee was forced to switch to being contractors, because those jobs didn't even exist before.
I want food. I don’t want to find the intercept between curves. I don’t want to see how busy or not your workers are. I just want my food. If I don’t get my food, I’m blaming you. I stopped using Seamless and, after GrubHub bought them, Caviar, because of this B.S.
This seems to echo and reinforce a point in the article. The apps aren’t replacing the delivery person they’re replacing the logistics management with you the consumer and letting you be mad at yourself, the driver, the restaurant, and the app in some set of proportions when net the balance of ire should fall on the app for the state of affairs.
You realize that absent this, you still have the issue of not getting your food? If there are more people wanting deliveries than there are drivers, you'll still be left waiting. This merely gives you more options (eg. "delivery within 10 minutes for $15, delivery within 60 minutes for $5), compared to the alternative of the platform trying to make a one-size-fits-all price for everyone (eg. some sort of surge pricing system).
I interpreted them to mean that if they are going to use the app instead of cooking or eating out, they just want to pay to get food. If there is uncertainty about whether the food is coming or not, there is no reason to use the service.
> If there is uncertainty about whether the food is coming or not, there is no reason to use the service.
And what I'm saying is that there's already uncertainty. The current interface of DSPs showing that it'll arrive within 30 minutes or whatever, is a leaky abstraction of how the underlying system (ie. restaurants and delivery drivers) work. Just as how DSPs likely have some sort of system to estimate delivery times based on current supply and demand, they can build a system that also factors in price, and give consumers various price options and their associated estimates.
As a customer, I support workers unionizing to improve their wage bargaining power. Besides tipping, I can’t do much to help them do that. They’ve gotta organize to do it, and call on the NLRB when there’s (always inevitably) Corporate Fuckery [1]. Luckily, the NLRB received a $25M funding bump in the latest Omnibus spending bill signed into law.
It doesn't. The tipping is the only thing I can do in the short term to help, because those tips go to workers immediately (versus the lengthy sales cycle of labor improvements). My apologies that wasn't more clear.
I think a problem you get with tipping is that you have no idea what the worker is getting paid, and you have no idea what they deserve. You go up to the counter and you assume that's the case, and I'm sure much more often than not, they're not raking it in, but it's it a demeaning thing to look at someone and say "hey you look poor, here's some extra money that wasn't part of the bill"?
Unionized may end up deciding that tips work in their favor, so that's not necessarily a solution. What we really need is for the government to ban soliciting of tips or to ensure prices are fully transparent prior to sale. That's a more realistic solution anyway, and one with fewer potential societal costs to it.
This is where if I were inclined to condescension I’d explain what an order of magnitude is, and how many there are here, but since I don’t actually think you’re stupid can you fill me in on what your point is?
The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips.
There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models, consumers and staff both hate it. First the highly productive staff often make less under that model (where poor performers make more), consumers hate it because the menu prices increase, and you end up with McD's level customer service where drinks are never refilled, and service overall degrades.
I've heard these as talking points, often in a political context, but the opposite has been true in my experience. The places that have removed tips seem to be much happier on the whole.
I think as well something that would be concerning regarding the quality of service of the places that you're talking about that the quality of service depends upon how much money is being given, and less things that oftentimes help people perform on the job better (non-toxic environment, healthy egoless leadership, good colleagues, good company ethos and ethics, etc).
Obviously pay is important, it's a job after all, but people can't magic the willpower to perform well for money out of nowhere. I think that's up to the company to protect and foster that kind of a productive workplace where people can achieve their potential.
>There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models,
You mean like most restaurants in europe? Yes the service there is on average worse than in American restaurants because of tips, but in my opinion not by enough of a margin to cost me 20% every time. The times that you would tip at a eu restaurant, its something reasonable well below the ridiculous 20% average that American businesses have swindled into existence (because a tip is supposed to be extra, not the employee's actual means to paying rent)
The definition of 'good' and 'bad' table service is also very cultural. I am from a non-tipping country and I find American style table waiting very overbearing, bottomless refills are not a thing here (except table water). I dont want to make small talk with the waiter, I'm there to eat with my party.
Europe has a completely different cultural model. One of the most important services the waitstaff provides (for me anyway) is ensuring my beverages are refilled. This concept does not exist really where as they pay for every refill. This also changes the business dynamics as the Restaurant wants the waitstaff to "always be selling" to increase ticket revenue.
The US has a less hard sell model and free refills. That changes alot of the dynamics
The tipping the way it's done in America only exists in America, in the rest of the world it's not like that and consumers and staff are ok with that. Also your idea that tip creates a micro free market where highly effective staff makes a lot of money and poor performers are penalized is politically motivated, someone had to tell you this.
I don't know, I've had pretty bad service recently at places where you tip. I still top 20% out of guilt, but it might be that service in general is poorer now.
When did tipping 20% become standard in the US? I was talking to a colleague about this recently and they mentioned it but I could’ve sworn it used to be 15%
I don’t think it is just you- ten years ago I distinctly remember somewhere where the brand new POS tip screens used to have 10, 15 and 20 percent tip buttons; now I frequently see 15 20 25 or 20 25 30 as defaults on those screens when going out.
I do wonder why it’s creeping upward though given it’s proportional and would increase as prices increase - perhaps it’s a symptom of employers paying even less after controlling for inflation etc. when comparing then vs now
The minimum wage (roughly what tipped workers earn) has been falling for decades, so I think at least some of the upward creep can be attributed to the knowledge that the workers are getting screwed, hard.
I want to say around-ish a decade ago? It definitely used to be 15% when I was growing up.
Although based on some recent news articles I found when I tried searching for a more definitive source, tip amounts have gone down in the past year or so.
During the pandemic. 15% used to be the norm, then people (including me) started paying a bit more to help out restaurant workers who were dealing with a sudden precipitous drop in business. I'm about over it though.
It's true! I remember before we use to just double the tax and that was the tip. (When it used to be 7.25% in California) Nowadays we're taking a second and thinking before eating out.
In more cosmopolitan areas it's been normal for a while now. I remember 18 & even 20% being discussed over 10 years ago. And these days starting to see 25% pop up in conversations.
>>but it might be that service in general is poorer now.
I wonder why that might be? You have allowed emotion to screw the system. the entire purpose off a tip is pay for the service. no serivce no tip. People work of incentives, if they know they will get 20% no matter what why would or should they give you good service?
you set the expectation, and now complain that people have given you exactly what you expected of them
> The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips.
One sensible metric is that you should be able to support yourself while living in the area you work (or an area nearby such that it isn't a significant financial hardship or timesink to commute to work). Service jobs largely fail on that metric, effectively using government money and family support structures to cover the gap.
Support yourself living in a large house with a nice car and a family? Or support yourself as a single person living in a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other roommates? Or support yourself with enough money to have some spending cash as you work your way through high-school and live with your parents?
The idea that a job shouldn't exist if it is only something that would interest a high-school student or uneducated young adult who is willing to live with lots of roommates creates fewer opportunities at the low end--not more.
I am not sure how that is a "sensible metric", how would you even begin to create a wage around that? What is "supporting yourself" even mean? Does a teenager need to make the same wage as a mother of 3? if there are 2 20yo waitstaff one is a single mother living alone, and the other is guy living in his parents basement should one be paid differently due to their life situation?
This is problem with basing wages on an individual needs, in reality the wage you are paid should have, and does have nothing to do with the amount of money you "need" to support yourself.
All of those examples should be able to afford the basics off their wage. An apartment that isn’t three hours from work or requiring hot beds, transportation, food, healthcare, etc.
Yes, it gets complicated, but “$7.25/hr isn’t enough” is not complicated.
Amazing the market already figured that out. I would love to know what jobs out there are paying $7.25
Not everything needs a government mandate. Every drive thru, and service job I see is has $13, $15, $16 per hour wages, and this is in the midwest where the median income is hovering around 50-55K
the problem here is none of that is actually connected to what a person needs. "Living Wage" Laws are just a different way to implement minimum wages, none of the laws shown on that page are connected to any kind of structure or process by which things needed to "live" like food, housing etc are tabulated where by a wage is set.
it is just a arbitrary wage picked by legislatures exactly like a "minimum wage" law only the "living wage" seems to apply to older people, where "minimum wage" laws apply to everyone. For example a 20yo in the UK can make "minimum wage" but a 24yo will need to make "living wage" both of which are just numbers pulled out of thin air, not connected to "the amount of money you need to support yourself. "
The numbers are in fact calculated, not pulled out of thin air. You seem to be cynically assuming they are not with no proof and no interest in proof one way or the other.
In many places low wage workers commute into HCOL areas. Being able to live in Manhattan on waiter's earnings is wishful thinking. Waiters are dime a dozen, and it's ridiculous to suggest they could possibly be making enough to live with mega high earners
Read the statement more closely: you can either tackle this problem by raising wages, or by reducing the financial and logistical burden of commuting (or both!). Manhattan isn't a good example for your case: millions of people (like myself) commute cheaply and easily into the borough each day to work.
A server can make $100-$500 per shift in tips, 4-5 shifts per week. On the low end, that's probably not enough even for a roommate situation. But in the medium-to-high end, that can easily cover a studio apartment.
So, nice areas shouldn't have restaurants? Paying waiters and busboys enough money to live in downtown SF while their counterparts in the suburbs are paid what they're getting now will distort the labor market in ways that break the whole thing.
That’s a distortion that is what the property owners in California want. Y’all get your million dollar studio apartments with $1000 property taxes and tent cities on the curb outside.
San Francisco can be a playground for the rich until they get sick of paying for $30 lattes or whatever and flee to low cost locales like Manhattan that have affordable housing and transit.
It won’t be “fixed” until we’re all backed into an economic corner where it becomes politically acceptable for the property owners to lose bazillions of dollars.
I don't know how you got to that, other than by assuming that nice areas have to be expensive. The fact that SF is unable to achieve both is an indicator of broken local markets and politics, not an ironclad rule for every other locality.
Edit: Another framing is that "nice" and "fancy" are different things, as much as extremely unequal markets like SF distort the distinction.
What's your qualification for "nice"? For me, it's decent public infrastructure, convenient access to both basic goods (groceries) and "light" luxuries (restaurants, bars), and a broad lack of concern that I'm going to be victimized by a crime.
Most of the US satisfies these constraints, especially if you own and don't mind driving a car.
> There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models, consumers and staff both hate it. First the highly productive staff often make less under that model (where poor performers make more)
Strong disagree. You can still tip at restaurants where the service is already added to the bill automatically (so you go in knowing the meal will cost 20% more than what the listed prices are, just like you know that when something says $199 it's actually $210 once you add sales tax). You can always also tip in appreciation for the service (so high performers can get more) but you're not feeling like you're forced to tip just to bring workers' wages up to the minimum level.
>>you can still tip at restaurants where the service is already added to the bill automatically (so you go in knowing the meal will cost 20% more than what the listed prices are
They better just raise the menu price, any place that has a 20% service charge added automatically (outside the standard large party ) will never get my patronage again
>> once you add sales tax
that is nothing like Sales Tax. Sales tax is a fee the government is charging ME that the business is mandated by the government to collect on my behalf, I owe the tax not the business. People often do not understand that context. Just like when your employer taxes out of your paycheck, you owe the income tax but the employer is mandated to collect it because the government do not trust you with your own money.
I hate tipping and the idea of it and now it’s automated with all these payment apps, ie it suggests a figure, is even more stupid. Like the worst service ever and they suggest you pay 15%” so you feel obliged because the poor kid gets paid nothing anyway.
I’ve travelled all over the world and I don’t find the service in America to be that much better honestly.
Australia doesn't have a tipping culture (though it's slowly creeping in). Customer service is usually pretty good. Sometimes great (in which case I usually do leave a tip). If the service is really bad, then you can always tell the management; they're usually pretty obliging.
If I'm at a restaurant, I really don't want to have much interaction with most of the staff; I'm there to talk to my dining party and to eat and drink. _Really_ good wait staff know this and are attentive (e.g. to your drinks, or can notice when you need them), personable when they're there, but otherwise you don't notice them. I think tipping culture discourages this, as being invisible isn't an obvious way to get a tip.
> There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models, consumers and staff both hate it.
Citation needed. My experiences at no-tipping restaurants have been the absolute opposite of your claims: great food, great service, and no fucking around with tipping afterwards.
> First the highly productive staff often make less under that model (where poor performers make more)
I just wanted to share the fact that there are places where tips are shared by the whole staff, and that system works well (I can't say if it works worse or better than the one you're describing as I don't have much experience with it). It also has the advantage that non-public-facing staff (e.g., cooks) get their share of tips too.
consumers hate it because the menu prices increase, and you end up with McD's level customer service where drinks are never refilled, and service overall degrades
I have one such restaurant near me and I neither hate it nor experience bad service. It's been like this a few years and they're doing fine.
If a business is pushing for tips (those dumbass Toast POS consoles that now often start tipping at 20%), the workers are underpaid. Tipping is getting out of control, and businesses just need to pay more.
Tipping is a stupid concept. Japan has the number three economy in the world and they'll refuse tips.
Exploring a bit into how it might fail: AFAIK Japanese people shun tips because it is seen as an unwelcome incentive to do better, and they take pride in doing their best wherever. Tipping, thus, is akin to saying "This should motivate you to do better next time" - basically an insult. This is said in the site you linked to as well, it quotes a testimonial from an employee that didn't quit an oppressive job she had because a customer complimented her work. Not because of a silent tip and a nod.
An app that intends to 'remove friction in tipping' and 'motivate employees with tips', goes against Japanese cultural values very hard. The workers are (allegedly) not motivated by tips and tipping doesn't have a friction problem unless you're the owner/manager trying to get in on it. Additionally, this is something the workers have no input on, it is a terminal on a table whose sole purpose is to add tips to the service. No employer would ever allow its workers to do this just because, let alone pay a company for this service. There has to be a split of some sorts embedded into the game, which leads me to think this will motivate only prospective employers looking to get a cut on the tip income.
According to the site, the terminal only asks if you want to tip and the customer says yes or no, with a tick note appearing in the terminal if the customer says yes. This could help cover tip stealing. How would you ever know your tips were stolen if you didn't even know you were tipped in the first place?
So not only are they importing the tip system from the United States, but also the adversarial relationship between hosts and owner/managers that encourages tip stealing, and a form of tip stealing that the workers can't stop because it's in an app controlled by the owner/manager, not a jar tallied at the end of the day by the same workers that filled it.
Maybe I'm reading too deep into it, I tend to do that sometimes.
I really dislike tipping. I can’t remember the last time that service was so amazing that a tip was required. Of course, I’m not sure I would be happier if the bill was the same with the tip component removed. I suppose it does give the consumer some leverage if the service was horrible. I think I’ve just convinced myself that tips are ok.
Sure, but they may make some noise which could lead to better service next time (i.e. a feedback loop). Otherwise, only the consumer is punished and it is less likely that things will improve.
And then we’re right back to the crux of this article: pitting employees and customers against each other. So now our mechanism is to punish employees in hope that it forces improvement from the company?
So if my law firm sent an invoice that had a tip line on it, that would indicate the lawyers are underpaid?
I am going to need a better definition of overpaid and underpaid, and the Reservoir Dogs quip about women only being able to be economically independent due to tips is also going to need a source.
How do you find it a reasonable argument to compare upper-end office workers to service industry employees? Are you saying lawyers and engineers are paying their mortgages with tips?
No, I was responding to the logic (which I think is erroneous) of:
> If a business is pushing for tips (those dumbass Toast POS consoles that now often start tipping at 20%), the workers are underpaid.
If the argument is “if workers are paying for their mortgage with tips, then they are underpaid”, then I would respond that analyzing each individual’s cost structure to determine how much you should pay them is, at the least, very inefficient.
I think the much more obvious point was that you generally only tip (and therefore would see a tip popup on the POS) at places where the tips really are an important part of their take home. I don't think that line of thinking is erroneous. Where I'm located in one of the provinces, until only recently places could pay subminimum wage to service staff under the assumption that it was covered by tips.
I dont know about Canada, but here in the US people often misrepresent these provisions. i.e "places could pay subminimum wage to service staff under the assumption that it was covered by tips" in the US a place can pay submimimum wages provided the over all gross pay IS MORE than the minimum. Not the "assuming it will be" it has to actually be counted, and be paid more than. If not the business has to make up the difference
This is done (in part) to incentive the business to ensure their workers are reporting their tipped income, it is not uncommon for people to try to evade taxation by not reporting tipped income
What's your definition of "underpaid"? What does anyone deserve to get paid?
It's really really difficult to create some sort of moral framework around the jobs people do and the rewards they get for doing them (does a plumber deserve to get paid more than a dental hygienist?). Capitalism is efficient because it doesn't try to. It just rewards people for supplying the things others want.
"Underpaid"/"overpaid" would have to be relative to what markets pay. But if all servers receive tips, that's just what the market is doing.
More simply, you wouldn't argue that janitors are correctly paid, just because they don't receive tips. They just don't have the surface to collect them.
Any business can add a tip to any bill. There is no reason why the civil engineering firm I hired to do a survey could not give me a quote that says “mandatory x% gratuity on final invoice”.
> workers who are paid well usually dont have tip jars.
I'm sure that's why I don't see tip jars at grocery store checkouts, because the workers there are so well paid. Moreover, if you work at a job that society thinks is socially acceptable to ask for tips, why would you leave money on the table just because you're paid $25/hr?
Tipped services are tied to cultural expectations, not wages. You don't tip your gas station clerk (who's probably making minimum wage), but you normally tip your bartender at a nice bar.
One perspective on tipping that made me feel a little different is that it can act as a form of progressive pricing or a sliding scale or “pay what your can afford”
It allows places to keep base prices as cheap as possible, which means lots of people can afford to eat out, but people who can afford to pay more can do so. It’s sort of like raising the minimum wage but but having the costs only impact people with higher incomes.
Yes, plenty of rich people are stingy and terrible tippers, so it’s not a perfect analogy. But I try to tip a lot everywhere I go and that’s how I think about it.
You are just doing the same class division we’re pointing out but consumer to consumer. Even sillier than the worker to consumer reality.
Corporations are in competition with other corporations, which is why there is not dynamic pricing. They are not offering anything worth more than they are offering. Your perspective fails on those merits when the solution is to pay employees correctly and see which corporations were never economical after all.
> Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company
Absolutely. Prices should be raised to cover reasonable salaries (making up the gap covered by tips nowadays), and then if you were really happy with the service and want to tip more, you can.
This is most likely a very US-centric view of the world. As someone who primarily worked in India and the Middle East, where tipping culture doesn't exist, it wasn't so much of an issue.
With that said, workers in the US tend to have significantly more bargaining power than those in countries with more diverse and relaxed labour laws.
I prefer systems that encourage near universal tax fraud. That is why tipping culture is a feature, not a bug. If someone can propose another way of compensating workers that provides equal ease through which workers can skirt the law, I could easily be swayed, but this feature must remain.
I'm not sure why rampant fraud can ever be justified in a democracy. You take direct control of forming establishment to the greatest percentage of the populace who will ultimately choose the rules (how representationally biased being completely dependent on your nation). Vs the anarchism/libertarian model you seem to espouse which sets control in the hands of those who bully the rest. Those that drive corruption and cheating the max are the winners in this world and that's not the world I want to live in.
Since you're quoting the part about QR codes for restaurants:
I have had good experiences at bars and restaurants where I input my orders online whenever I want, perhaps multiple times throughout the meal, and the waitstaff bring them out promptly. I obviously don't have data, but it feels twice as fast since I never have to wave people down just to relay my orders.
This isn't for everyone, and it's not for every situation. But for the right circumstances applications, this is really quite convenient and pleasant.
I went to 2 different hot pot restaurants in the last 2 days with wildly different experiences. Both were "all you can eat" style, where you periodically ask for additional orders of meat and vegetables to add to the hot pot.
The first had QR codes at the table, where you _must_ order using your phone. You cannot have multiple phones ordering at the same table at the same time. It hard-limited you to making orders only once every 10 minutes. This can be particularly problematic when the same limit applies to all tables, regardless of the number of people at the table. Orders would variably be delivered by a person or one of those BellaBot serving robots [1]. I had no problem pulling my plates off the tray and pressing the button to dismiss it, but other tables clearly struggled with it. At some larger tables, the robot would stop near the far end of the table and a person would have to get out of their chair to fetch their own food. Sometimes a server would see it happen and assist the table, but it was sad to see older people struggling with it.
The second place I went to had paper menus which you just checked off what you wanted. There was no limit on how much you could order at once, and they didn't arbitrarily throttle you.
Both restaurants had a similar number of tables with 3-4 staff in the dining room at any given time. The first restaurant was actually a miserable customer experience, with the only take-away being how interesting it was that the novelty made the experience so much worse. I will unlikely go back to that first restaurant, while the second one will always be on the rotating list that me and my wife go to.
I _really_ dislike having to read a menu on my phone or struggle with some low-quality ordering software. From what I could tell, the first restaurant saved nothing on staffing from their "automation."
The all you can eat was not trying to save money on staffing. Slowing the ordering was the goal of the system. All you can eat is only profitable if people eat every little
That may be true, but if a given group wants to eat a certain amount of food, either they are throttled and stay at the table longer, or they get their food quickly and the table will get turned over sooner. The throttling limits the ability to turn over tables.
Regarding the staffing, I think the robot server is designed to help save on staffing (not the throttling policy, which may also be intended to not overwhelm the kitchen).
I haven't tried all-you-can eat restaurants with QR codes.
My (good) experiences have been at bars and outdoor restaurants, where normal process of placing additional orders is usually slow in my experience, giving the new approach a chance to shine.
I agree with you re: the novelty aspect and personally I dislike ordering on my phone, but will tolerate it for the places where it makes the overall experience better.
I ate at Jonathan's recently. I liked how they're reducing staff. Every table had a tablet for ordering. However, if you did not wish to use the tablet, you could press a button that was installed on the table to summon waitstaff.
My beer was brought swiftly by waitstaff. My meal was delivered on an automated cart. I had to get up to get my order, but I was to impressed by the automated cart to be annoyed at any inconvenience.
Yeah I don’t know what it has to do with unionized labor necessarily. IAH was renovating and bought a contract with OTG to provide all concessions at the airport. I think the Houston Airport System got scammed, personally, as OTG’s prices are gouging-level exorbitant, and they’ve secured an effective monopoly on services inside the facility. It’s a deplorable situation, and I’m sure workers are suffering. But I think that’s a side effect of OTG’s strategy, which is predatory and abusive overall.
I like most self service things but ordering at e.g. McDonalds is much quicker in person usually. I think even the pared-down menu that is in-vogue is pretty complicated for ordering for more than one person.
I also started phoning in orders instead of using most other services too (Uber Eats, Grubhub, Yelp) because it’s just quicker
It would be a mistake to suppose that more automation would have resulted in a different outcome. For example, an update to a critical system can also result in operator/interface breakdowns, leading to failures. In fact, according to some accounts, this is exactly what happened and it exacerbated things (some spreadsheet software was updated).
The automation in this case would be a means other than live telephone calls to confirm/update crew locations and, no, it would not be a mistake to assume other methods would scale better.
At restaurants with menus that don't require explanation, manually taking an order is more error-prone and distracts wait staff from providing higher value services.
The most passive aggressive solution here — instead of getting annoyed at the customer services person, look up a union they can join and explain the benefits.
> WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) customer service employees overwhelmingly ratified a new five-year collective bargaining agreement that includes an immediate 13.1% wage increase, the IAM union said on Thursday.
> The agreement covers 8,300 customer representatives and service agents and includes a 25.1% general wage increase over four years, which IAM said will put its members at the top of the airline industry’s pay scale for customer service employees.
> The labor deal also includes other benefits such as higher bonuses and improved mandatory overtime protections for all employees.
> Only if you view the world as a first year poly sci major with a penchant for Marx
> The world is way more complex than just "class".
You don't have to be a Marxist to recognize that class is one of the most important characteristics of our society. A black woman living in poverty has far more in common with a white man living in poverty than an upper-class Ivy-league educated black man. People are systemically exploited and robbed of the value they create and deserve. Some of the hardest working people, who provide essential services, struggle to stay afloat.
I am by no means a Marxist or Communist, I just grew up under the poverty line and recognize how fortunate I have been in my life compared to many other people. I'd encourage you to reflect on your own fortune and have more empathy for those who are less fortunate.
This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possible, as a follow-up to the email. I am sure people here need no instruction on how to find the appropriate person in the corporate structure to contact with their concern. These are the people who can get things done -- not just for you, but for everyone. Oh, don't forget that if you have a 401k you may legitimately be a stockholder in the company, so you can mention that if true.