[nepeckman]

It's a shame that the comments here are laser focused on the tipping parts of the article, and not the bigger picture items. The author outlines the struggles of getting service jobs filled in high CoL areas, the vicious cycle of turnover in these jobs, and all the commenters here want to discuss is the 2 paragraphs on tipping.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Is it the only aspect of the article that most on this site can relate with? I take it most have not worked service industry or it was a very long time ago.

I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/us/apt-cape-cod-restauran...

> The verbal abuse from rude customers got so bad, the owners of one farm-to-table restaurant on Cape Cod said, that some of their employees cried.

[dollarsuck]

An outcome of little to no consequences for actions.

Come visit my local grocery store. Few replace carts at the store or in the stalls, there will be 2-6 vehicle using the clearly-marked "Fire Lane - No Parking" lane as their personal parking spots plainly blocking the doors of the foyer (and this is not drop-off, not pick-up, not having their spouse load up in a rain storm). Have "About 12 Items or Fewer" - well have fun, there's two carts loaded for bear ready to use the checkout lane.

The manager will watch it all and dare not life a finger nor raise a voice.

The restaurant at which my S/O works, it's in the nice part of town. The nicest part of town you could possibly not afford. For the lunch crowd, there will be a dozen or so regular folks filtering in with absurd, demanding, bespoke requests (I want the meat of sandwich A, the bread off sandwich B, the condiments from an item on the Sunday Brunch menu). The owner will not let them refuse a request. Ever. Regardless of the problems it will cause for everyone around. Regardless of how long it will waste table space. That $18 lunch order must be fulfilled.

The local pizza joint, my go-to spot for two NY slices and a PBR for a cool $7 - they're not allowed to refuse service to rude patrons regardless of how awful. I once had the barkeep slip me a note asking that I (a large, eternally angry looking man) please wait at the bar for another patron to leave and that my drinks would be comped. Why? The belligerent customer refusing to leave, who entered the facility screaming at (we assume) "incompetent cunt" of a secretary.

It's a bit fascinating and frustrating. One makes an off-color joke on Twitter[0], or an elected official makes a frustrated comment about double-standards[1] and a lynch mob forms to harangue a corporation into punishing the textual predator. Some of those same companies (See: [1]) will not oust a belligerent man attempting to start a fight in the produce section over a road rage incident.

It's all appearance over substance.

[0] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/anheuser-busch-cuts-ties-w...

[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-pulls-palmetto-cheese-fo...

[JKCalhoun]

> Few replace carts at the store or in the stalls

Self-checkout, bag-your-own groceries, return your cart...

Can't help but think this is simply a means by which the grocery cartel can get rid of jobs that high school kids have traditionally benefited from. I guess I have never seen the "cart return" thing as something you do out of politeness.

But if they're not going to pay the high school kids enough, maybe this is the. future (present) we deserve.

[pbourke]

> I guess I have never seen the "cart return" thing as something you do out of politeness.

I see it as something you do as a participant in civilization.

[beerandt]

While I agree that "the customer is always right" attitude has actuality just become a policy of non-confrontation...

>I want the meat of sandwich A, the bread off sandwich B, the condiments from an item on the Sunday Brunch menu

If they think bread +meat +condiment is a highly demanding, needy sandwich order, then perhaps waiting tables isn't for them.

It at least suggests why they might find their tip-based compensation to be insufficient.

[milesvp]

You may not know this, but custom orders slow down service sometimes by an order of magnitude.

I worked at a takeout teriyaki joint in college, and it was as fast a food as you could find. There were 5 menu items, and I could really get in a rhythm dishing rice and chicken and coleslaw. But as soon as anyone asked for something non-standard, then suddenly muscle memory was gone, and I actually had to think about what I was doing. Just asking for no salad could halve my serving speed, especially if they asked for at the wrong time of doing the order.

I can only imagine how much worse this is in a setting with multiple people and multiple handoffs.

On top of that, if the restaurant isn't being run like a short order joint, they're going to have other issues with mixing and matching menu items, like now they may have 2 less dishes they can serve, because, believe it or not, ordering for a restaurant can be a very precise thing, and they'll likely order quantities proportional to the menu ingredients. I'm not saying don't do this, but I am saying be polite when you request these kinds of things, and be willing to accept "we can't do that" as an answer.

[beerandt]

I'm not arguing for or against allowing special orders. But that's on the manager, not the customer.

The server having an issue with it (when the manager doesn't) is a problem, and blaming customers for making requests is a problem, especially if policy is to allow them.

[vinceguidry]

Gotta love HN entitlement.

It's not just the waitress. It's also the kitchen staff, which has to fulfill the orders. Low-cost special menus like brunch menus make their money on volume. At least half the food service equation relies on the kitchen to whip the orders out in time. Special requests slow the entire kitchen down. Not a problem if, say, there's not a huge rush. But a huge problem if the staff is slammed.

Maybe you should take after the former labor secretary and go try your hand at a service job.

[beerandt]

All factors baked into the managers decision to accept special orders.

This is just the server disagreeing with both the boss and customer, and then wondering why they might be having a problem with a satisfaction based compensation system.

[cxr]

I agreed with your earlier comment and was disappointed to see it in the grey, but both your follow-ups have been lacking, esp. on staff having a problem with something that the management doesn't voice a problem with.

You're ignoring circumstances where the boss okays the thing but doesn't adjust their perspective and still holds the staff to the same expectations—to deliver as if under the same parameters, when the parameters have obviously changed.

[wolverine876]

charge more for special orders?

[vinceguidry]

Like, if you're Waffle House and short-order is your bread and butter, sure. But a lot of times the kitchen will pre-set up things so they can get them out as fast as possible. There's a lot of management and prep that goes into cheap Sunday brunch that gets tossed out the window.

Like I said earlier, it's fine during normal biz hours. But the 30 seconds of extra time the kitchen staff has to put into your special order during a huge rush puts all the orders behind it 30 seconds more behind. So a whole family ordering special orders can hold up 20 people's orders for 5 minutes. And that just builds up the more it happens.

[thatjoeoverthr]

Regarding growing incivility. I moved from the US to Poland around ‘05. Not long ago I went to the US, Bay Area, for the first time in ten years, on a business trip for my employer. I didn’t expect such a culture shock but the incivility was striking. Every day I would run into absolutely savage behavior while just commuting or getting food. I wasn’t sure what to make of it and this here is the first time I’ve seen Americans discussing civility.

[bitcharmer]

It also might be that once in Europe you started soaking in our values and standards and today behaviours common in USA you might see in a different light.

I moved out of Poland to the UK many years ago and have the exact same experience as you. I'm a very different person now and many things I had thought were normal I now do not accept.

[ajmurmann]

I think this Reddit comment from a use called TheMagecite on parenting during the pandemic might get to some of it: "No.

So lets take my example I have two children one has autism.

What my son desperately needs is social interaction, how do you teach social interaction well without peers? He can't see other children and right now he has such limited exposure to other children he is about to start school and it is a nightmare.

While my son is brilliant in some ways and could read and write at age 3 however his social skills and general understanding are just so far behind. Due to the pandemic normally there would be spots in a special class but so many kids who would have normally progressed just have gone backwards has meant there are zero spots for my child. It also has meant all of the therapies which make the world of difference (and earlier intervention the better) have either been canceled or moved to remote which is no where near as good.

I used to take my son out every weekend and get exposure to kids or take him to water parks and just have fun with them. Now we are sheltered at home with very little to do and we crack out board games but the ipad has probably been his main entertainer. I have work and we have other children but we do make sure it is educational stuff but we still feel tremendous guilt.

I work, we have other children and well while everyone says we have managed to do an amazing job during the pandemic as my son has still progressed which is different from what most other children in his situation have done. My partner and I feel horrible and honestly we are just completely burnt out. We could have done more, we should have done more but I think depression and being burnt out has just fucked us.

I fucking hate myself for this and I probably will feel guilty the rest of my days. I am sick of being told we have done an amazing job considering. Considering Covid doesn't help my child.

This just SUCKS.

Also my child's experience with Autism is probably better than most. I feel horrible for the vast majority which have it worse than me and I can't imagine what they are going through." https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/s8wpsz/covid_p...

Edit: added more context to the comment.

[thatfrenchguy]

This is where the overprotective nature of American parenting comes to bite you: your kid will be fine playing with other kids outside, why not… do it?

[lazide]

Because you’ll be constantly worried about getting Child Protective Services called on you if anything goes wrong or some random neighbor decides stranger danger is real.

[dlp211]

While this does happen, this is not normal and CPS isn't going to do anything to a healthy family that let's their kids go out and play.

[lazide]

I would hope not, but how realistic of a concern it is depends on your neighbors, the local CPS folks, and how well you’d come across to them at the time. It adds a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

That near as I can tell no one lets a kid out alone is indicating how big a problem it really is. The most I’ve seen here is when they’re paired up and 12+, and here is one of the safest places in the county in a very child friendly place, literally 2 blocks from the police station - and the police here have some of the best reputations in the country.

[PaulAJ]

Not necessarily. Kids with poor social skills get bullied.

[ethbr0]

I'd counter that getting bullied is a critical component of learning social skills.

Put rails on it with teacher or parent supervision, so it doesn't get out of hand and the worst excesses can be avoided.

But if children can't navigate social situations... they grow up into the adults we are literally talking about.

(Said as someone who had a difficult time socially as a child, and put in and continue to put in considerable work to improve myself)

[DarylZero]

Social situations in which you're NOT bullied are critical to learning social skills.

[ianai]

I think I'd ask that commenter whether that guilt is doing any good for him/her/it. If he's simply unable to do more and it's still not enough, then the problem wasn't going to be solved by anything he could do. He probably still did good. That's unfortunately all anyone can do - good. Can't guarantee success when you "swing that bat", but you can try.

[orwin]

For context, which country do you live in?

[ajmurmann]

I only posted the quote and live in the US. Looking are the Reddit history of the author, I think they likely live in Sidney, Australia.

[solarmist]

Sounds like the US or Canada to me.

[mcv]

The tipping situation is absolutely stupid, but hardly the only problem. And shitty entitled customers contribute to both issues here: they treat employees poorly, and they tip poorly. Businesses should probably just kick those customers out. If you can't behave like a decent person, the business shouldn't have to accept you as a customer.

Ultimately, of course, the market will correct itself. If these service jobs are terrible enough, nobody will do them anymore, and those customers will just have to cook their own food, or accept shitty overpriced service from the few companies willing to serve them, and willing to pay employees enough to deal with that shit.

But it will be a loss to all decent people who treat people with respect and want to pay well for good service. If you want to keep those, your only option is to kick the entitled assholes out. Or you'll have no employees left.

[inetknght]

> Ultimately, of course, the market will correct itself.

We're at where we are because of market forces. I doubt the market will "correct itself" when the market doesn't see anything wrong.

[mcv]

What we are seeing is the market correcting itself: service jobs are unattractive, so people leave those jobs. If nobody is willing to pay more and offer better customer behaviour for those jobs, those services will simply disappear. That is how the market "corrects" itself.

I'm all for better wages and labour conditions, but as long as that doesn't, happen, these jobs and services will continue to disappear. I hope people are aware of the fact that they're currently effectively voting for no fast food, no restaurants, and no theatres, because that's what they're going to get if nothing changes.

[lostlogin]

The way this gets ‘fixed’ will be hilarious to see. Maybe low cost housing provided by a mega-corp but paid by the taxpayer.

Higher wages will not be the solution I’m sure.

[rnk]

We already have a portion of that with minimum wage being paid to 100s of thousands of Walmart workers whose workers also qualify for various forms of welfare, and walmart also campaigns against raising minimum wage.

[ZeroGravitas]

> Ultimately, of course, the market will correct itself.

Or it'll be a "market for lemons" situation and someone will need to rewrite the rules of the market in order for the best thing to happen and/or it just won't get better.

[stainforth]

> the market will correct itself

When we can abandon this kind of thinking we will be able to solve problems again.

[bostik]

> Ultimately, of course, the market will correct itself.

Historically major corrections have been called something else, and the adjustments have been administered through blood and steel.

[MattGaiser]

> I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people.

Is it growing, or is it just unpleasant/impolite to state that a large segment of the population consists of jerks so we keep forgetting?

[oneforty4]

> Is it growing

I'm not sure how to empirically measure incivility but it seems like it might be... There's certainly been an uptick in things from reckless driving to drinking to drug overdoses. There's a lot of anecdata from nurses, airline attendants, teachers, etc. about bad behavior being on the rise.

Maybe it's all just due to the stress of the ongoing pandemic. But, some of the articles below point out that these trends began before the pandemic.

Examples:

[1] All kinds of bad behavior is on the rise https://www.slowboring.com/p/all-kinds-of-bad-behavior-is-on...

[2] As America reopens, businesses — from airlines to arenas — see an uptick in bad behavior https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/as-america-reopens-businesse...

[3] America Is Falling Apart at the Seams https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-a...

[ethbr0]

Correlation is not causation, but we've been on a 50+ year crusade in American culture to destroy any sort of multi-economic-strata commons.

IMHO, the affluent suburbs in the article are both a symptom- and cause-of rudeness. Most of these kids have never worked a customer service job for minimum wage. It's possible even their parents haven't.

And that's not bad, per se, but if the problem is "People treat customer service workers like shit," then you could start at worse places than empathetic employment experience.

Personal vendetta, but Starbucks is emblematic of all that is wrong with American culture. We took the coffee shop -- a local, counter-culture, loitering-tolerant, independently-run staple of American life -- and replaced it with Walmart (+some feel-good PR).

And as a result, any unreasonable adult is catered to, because corporate policy is to make you feel special. When in reality, you should be banned from the premises after your second meltdown. /gripe

[spaetzleesser]

“large segment of the population consists of jerks “

I think it starts at the top. People are realizing that companies are run for the benefit of a few and these few also have an outsized influence on politics. It’s not surprising that people are feeling disenfranchised and mainly out for themselves.

For me the 2008 bailouts were the turning point. A lot of the Wall Street people who had preached “creative destruction” for a long time suddenly demanded government bailouts when the destruction reached them. And unfortunately they were given bailouts. And they were given the bailouts in a way that mainly benefitted the wealthy while homeowners still lost their homes. Same happened with Covid: the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. No wonder a lot do people don’t feel at home in this society anymore.

[ianai]

I think it's social media. I quit social media years ago. I've also noticed people becoming just increasingly hostile for "no apparent to me reason".

[ethbr0]

It's funny. We used to joke about how IRC turned everyone into an asshole, in the 1990s.

And then we recreated that same factory (Facebook, Twitter) and signed the world's entire population up.

[MomoXenosaga]

I wonder, we only tend to remember that one asshole today not the other 50 people who were normal.

[ianai]

The a-holes are becoming the rule and not the exception. Just my experience, though.

[brodouevencode]

I've long been a fan of being able to fire your customers. This can be done in very civil, very respectful ways.

[spaetzleesser]

“I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people.”

I think that’s a natural consequence of a society that measures everything by money.

[readthenotes1]

I think it's the natural consequence of several generations of telling kids their special and not curbing a child's natural self-centeredness.

[uoaei]

Some people forgot what it's like to be punched in the mouth

[tejtm]

"Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." -- Mike Tyson

[ethbr0]

Fighting words. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

Maybe the Supreme Court has been going the wrong way on its adjustment to them, in trying to clarify whether or not they were protected under the First Amendment.

Instead, they could have looked at liability shielding for limited assault in reaction to such language.

If there's a possibility that a server punches me because I berate him or her, I'm probably going to be on better behavior.

[uoaei]

The obsession with "intention" as opposed to "outcome" in legal judgments continues to mystify and mortify me.

But I still don't see an easy way to fit the scenario of "I mouthed off to a server and they punched me in the mouth" into a legal framework that supports repeatable judgments in a way that supports civility writ large.

[ethbr0]

The same way we do auto accidents? Collect what physical evidence is possible, interview witnesses, and attempt to assign fault.

And I'm not advocating for a return to duels at dawn with pistols!

But simple or criminal battery (e.g. I punch someone, with my fists, and then de-escalate) that could not have been expected to result in permanent injury? I can think of worse things for culture.

[uoaei]

Auto incidents happen in relatively constrained scenarios, and the resulting damage can strongly imply the actions that led up to the incident. Not so with humans beefing over mundane matters.

My first thought is to re-tool the concept of self-defense, but this would require the acknowledgement that verbal abuse constitutes violence, which I am not sure many are willing to accept, and could get out of hand when it comes to what exactly "disproportionate retaliation" means in context.

[oramit]

I've noticed growing incivility as well and it's a slow moving culture change that I think we're all going to really regret. I don't think it's caused by just one thing and it has been brewing for a while but Covid just pushed it over the edge like so many other trends. Some ideas on the causes:

- The fish rots from the head. Trump was elected in 2016 and he's an asshole. His whole schtick is to mock his opponents and never admit he was wrong. Hell, him being an asshole was a huge selling point to his base. If you elect that guy to the most powerful office in the land then it signals that being an asshole is acceptable. That sort of thing filters down into the culture at large. Politics isn't the only place you see this though, sociopathic behavior seems to be almost a requirement in big business. Where are people being rewarded for kindness and compassion?

- Pandemic burnout. There are a lot of threads on HN about guarding your attention like a currency and I think other emotions work similarly. After more than 2 years of this I know my well of empathy is nearly bone dry. Most issues like some particular thing being out of stock, or slow service because of staffing don't bother me but every once in a while I get really angry at an inconvenience I would normally shrug off. Multiply this across society.

- Being an asshole kind of works? This echoes my first idea but in a different way. All real decision making has been taken away from the people who actually interact with the public. Executives and managers who have the power to change things (like increase wages to bring more employees in) are insulated from the public. There are so many layers of indirection within corporate America that even if you have a legitimate grievance it can be an enormous pain to get it resolved and you have to be kind of a dick sometimes to fix things. So you end up with this situation where powerless employees are being yelled at by a powerless public.

There are certainly more threads here but those are some ideas i've been toying with.

[ethbr0]

> All real decision making has been taken away from the people who actually interact with the public. Executives and managers who have the power to change things (like increase wages to bring more employees in) are insulated from the public.

Had to scroll down a bit, because I knew this comment had to exist, but wholeheartedly agreed.

Managers in customer-facing jobs don't (and can't!) manage customers anymore. They manage employees.

Used to be, the manager was the one who would come out and say "Sir or madam, I have to ask that you hold your tone and speak more respectfully to our employees." And if the customer persisted, ban them from the business.

That authority has been stripped from them, because it's complicated, requires capable and trained managers, and gets in the way of copying and pasting a franchise.

Instead, corporate policy has been to raise the brand above its employees. If that burns out folks working there, they can be replaced.

[lotsofpulp]

> Managers in customer-facing jobs don't (and can't!) manage customers anymore. They manage employees.

They are managers so they do not have to be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours per week. The business owners/directors let the manager hire just enough people, but not at a wage that can afford reliable workers. So, the manager will be stuck covering for the people that do not show, and if something goes wrong, they serve as a nice “fall guy”.

[ryandrake]

My wife used to work retail and yes, customers have definitely learned they can get their way by raising their voice, demanding to see a manager, and the manager will sheepishly do anything they can to mollify them. All consequence-free. And if they don’t get what they want, they can go berserk and trash the store—again, consequence-free. Store management can’t physically do anything to neutralize the threat.

I can’t put my finger on it but something happened in the last 5 years or so, some change in the country’s moral North Star, that ushered in this era of consequence-free obnoxious behavior. It’s almost as if some leader embodied and emboldened this behavior and normalized it.

[daveevad]

> The fish rots from the head. Trump was elected in 2016 and he's an asshole. His whole schtick is to mock his opponents and never admit he was wrong.

Obama roasting Trump at the White House Correspondents likely contributed to his decision to run for President. I agree your points by the way, I just think the fire started prior to 2016.

[oramit]

Another comment somewhere else in this thread mentioned 2008 and the bailouts for banks, bankruptcy for the public, as the place we should look at. With big society wide trends like this it's impossible to have a clear cause and effect. It's all a muddle which is why I've listed a few different ideas all of which contribute in their own way.

Covid is such a unique situation though and I think it will serve as a clear turning point where preexisting trends were shattered and others were turned up to 11.

But ultimately, we didn't start the fire, but we can try to fight it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

[daveevad]

I'm probably being naive but the assassination of JFK is the most interesting alternative history moment for me.

Should he have finished his term and steered the US clear of Vietnam (I know very debatable) and seen man go to the "moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," I think things would have gone much better.

[nebula8804]

My history is a little fuzzy but would we have gotten the Civil Rights Act? From what I understand, JFK was having some serious trouble getting it passed (instead of some watered down piecemeal legislation) but a combination of the state of a mourning country post-assassination + Johnson betraying the people who elected him(he was the good ol boy from the south placed there to represent their 'values') provided the catalyst for getting this difficult legislation through. Unfortunately this also had the consequence of further alienating the south and made them run into Reagan's arms a few elections later.

I shudder to think what would have happened if the Civil Rights Act wasn't passed. I may not have even been born in this country.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There's this idea of "punching down" and "punching up". I'm fairly sure that in 2012, Obama mocking Donald Trump was generally considered closer to "punching up" than "punching down" (whether that was really accurate depends a lot on the true state of Trump's financial affairs, but in general he projected a persona that involved being uber-wealthy, uber-famous and generally able to do whatever he wanted).

By contrast, Trump's mocking of, variously, Mexican and central American migrants, the disabled, media reporters etc. is generally seen as "punching down".

In our culture, those further up the ladder are generally expected to take a "punching" (i.e. mockery, jokes, satires, ridicule) from below in good stead. We generally expect them to not "punch down" at those less enabled by power and wealth.

[daveevad]

I'm having a hard time accepting that the President ever punches up. He's the most powerful person in the world and has the sole authority to authorize the use of U.S. nuclear weapons. The office enjoys the Bully Pulpit and it is valuable to have this arrangement in my opinion.

At any rate, watch the clip if you haven't recently.

https://youtu.be/n9mzJhvC-8E?t=574

It's pretty interesting actually, to me at least, that Obama roasts Biden pretty much just as well for his off-the-cuff remarks and age immediately after his digs at Trump, which are less derogatory than I had remembered.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If the president was trying to "punch up" with respect to national and international policy, I would totally agree with you.

But consider the moment right now. Do you think that if President Biden were to satirically mock Jeff Bezos about wealth, space travel, employee care, or putative drone delivery, that he would actually be punching "down" from the white house? I certainly don't think so.

[nebula8804]

>The office enjoys the Bully Pulpit and it is valuable to have this arrangement in my opinion.

A lot of good that is doing in the Biden years. :/

[kansface]

How about we just not punch people in any direction?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I think that it is extremely important that our leaders, and to some extent even our idols, should be subject to satire and perhaps even mockery on occasion. That's what "punching" means in the context we're talking about.

[fallingfrog]

Yeah, I once got screamed at by a red-faced old man driving a mercedes because he had to wait 4 and a half minutes for a McChicken sandwich. Old rich people are just the most sociopathic people.

[codpiece]

I'm getting oldish, and I feel like it's my duty to be courteous and pleasant in order to have a civil civil society.

[spaetzleesser]

Unfortunately current society rewards sociopathic behavior and selects them for leadership positions.

[fallingfrog]

What really rubs salt in the wound is when those exact same people refer to the poor kids who are just barely scraping by as "entitled". I always think, do you hear yourself?

[ajmurmann]

What's always disappointing to me is how for many the first instinct is "lazy young people" while often times the exact same people espouse "the free market". It seems to me that often times the same people really only care about low taxes for themselves and making away with regulations that annoy them, rather than truly embracing the mechanism and tradeoffs that come with a free market and for sure don't understand the circumstances needed to make the market effective to work towards a given goal.

[thrill]

Not as disappointing as those who denigrate free markets when there isn't one.

[glup]

Besides the author’s v points about the poor working conditions, I was struck by the points about transit costs. I am curious how much of the current labor situation in the US can be explained by the combination of 1) geographic wealth segregation —- richer consumers clustering together while generally poorer service workers have to live far away —- and 2) high gas prices / underdeveloped public transit. At some point as both of these factors increase, there should be a big drop off in available workers. Is this consistent with the pattern we are seeing?

[gravypod]

It's not even just lower class workers. Taking public transit to my FAANG job each day would be ~$20 total and be ~2hrs of commuting each day. That comes out to ~5k/year in commuting costs and about 65 workdays in hours wasted on trains and subways.

I can eat this cost but I'd feel extremely bad for someone who doesn't get paid as much as I do who had to do this kind of commuting (which MANY people do daily).

[dboreham]

> ~5k/year in commuting costs and about 65 workdays in hours wasted on trains and subways

Welcome to London.

[SuoDuanDao]

There's a saying I like, "A rich country isn't one where the poor can afford cars. It's one where the rich take public transportation"

[JKCalhoun]

So, Tokyo.

[kfarr]

Basically cars are a huge relative cost for the working class. With our land use and transportation policies we have created a world where the costs of getting around are so high that it can trap you in poverty for life. Sorry for the paywall but this was the quickest article I could find on the topic: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-seven-year-auto-loan-americ...

If you calculate the total cost of owning car(s) during your lifetime and consider alternative use such as interest bearing savings account some estimates have shown it costs you approx $1M during your life.

[whoknew1122]

Public transit in Austin is terrible, and nonexistent in the suburbs. And there is a lot of wealth (and racial) housing segregation in Austin. I'd say you hit the nail on the head for Austin, at least. Speaking as someone who grew up in Austin poor without a car, and lived there until adulthood. Now work at a FAANG in a city much lower cost of living.

[CPLX]

Indeed. The part about getting your income on an ATM card with mandatory fees no matter what you do seems like the best anecdotal example of how fucked things are for the little guy these days.

[mynameishere]

For many low-wage employees the alternative to this is check cashing fees which is even worse. The issue of why so many people are unbanked is a separate discussion.

[michaelt]

This writer isn't unbanked, though - he's a former labor secretary.

He was charged a "fee" to get his pay despite that.

[mcv]

Having to pay a free to get your pay is ridiculous and should be illegal. Your pay should simply be deposited in your bank account with no other obstacles to access.

[mindslight]

Access to banking is indeed a problem, but pragmatically there is always cash or a non-fraudulent [0] check drawn on a local bank. And for tips specifically, they can just be bundled with the rest of the pay rather than creating a second problem.

[0] for example checks drawn on Bank of America accounts are generally fraudulent, as BoA refuses to pay the specified amount when presented for payment at a branch. They're trying to run a similar scam to the ATM card fee described in the article, but they're doing it with the much older technology of checks and thereby inducing their customers to commit check fraud.

[exhilaration]

Why single out Bank of America? Nearly every single (big) bank will refuse to cash a check for non-customers. The days of taking a signed check to a local branch for cashing have been over for decades. I'd love to find out why this changed, I suspect it's because they can go after their own customers if a check turns out to be fraudulent but not some guy walking off the street.

[mindslight]

It seems like another illegal scam that will rake in a decade of ill gotten gains, then there will be a class action slap on the wrist and a promise not to do it again, while they move on to the next decade's scams. The entire nature of a check is that it is a promise that a third party custodian will pay a specific amount, and the custodian then demanding to take a cut directly invalidates that. I suspect it's monkey-see-monkey-do, unless there is some behind the scenes rule change (Check 21?) that would seem to condone such nonsense.

[rnk]

Can you explain. You left off your reference, but are you saying boa refuses to pay legit checks or what exactly?

[mindslight]

It was a reference to clarification, which was the following paragraph.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/where-to-cash-check-wit...

Apparently it's not just BoA, but also Chase, Suntrust, TD, and Wells Fargo now want to demand a nonsensical "check cashing fee" to cash a check drawn on one of their accounts. But the entire purpose of a check is that it is an order to your bank to pay someone an exact amount of money, and thus subtracting such a fee is impermissable. The proper way to assess such a fee would be to the account holder as an additional amount out of their account.

If you're a customer of one of these banks and write someone a check for "$100.00", they are seemingly unable to present it to your bank and receive $100 as you had promised. As such, you have written a bad check and stand to be prosecuted for check fraud.

Of course only the powerless will get tripped up by this corner case, as it's much easier for anyone with a bank account to present the check to their own bank who will turn around and present it via ACH. But I'd love to see someone in just the right position record their interaction with the dishonoring bank, return the dishonored check to the payer, and demand a proper payment plus a $35 rejected check fee.

[rnk]

Wow, that's horrible. Yes, a huge tax on people without bank accounts.

[hotpotamus]

Keep in mind that the majority of money these days goes through credit card processors that take a percentage off the top. Not saying they don't provide a service for the money, but it doesn't seem that different.

[DarylZero]

It's very different. The credit card companies are offering credit! And they handle chargebacks! It's not just a bank transfer.

[ashtonkem]

Personally it took me a second to get past "Death threats drove him from town and to Austin". That is quite the fact to cover in a single sentence.

[sjostrom7]

There's a link further down but tldr, he ran a department that struggled to disperse unemployment benefits to the people of New Mexico during 2021. Hard to say if anyone else would have done better in his place, but his address and family info were getting shared online and a car got blown up at his place of work.

[ashtonkem]

I understand the anger (but not to the point of terrorism or threats), but it's also pretty obvious to me that blaming one guy for the failures is kind of missing the point. The entire unemployment system has been deliberately undermined for ideological reasons, with the goal being making it as hard as possible to get and keep benefits. It's not shocking that one person could fix a decade or two worth of systemic rot when suddenly the system is strained to the max.

[chiefalchemist]

Welcome to HN. An early comment goes off target and too many others follow. But we're all intelligence free-thinkers, yes?

But then make an unpopular observation on the aryicle / topic and you get down-voted.

Humans are "complicated", to put it kindly.

p.s. Yes, I senses the irony.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> But then make an unpopular observation on the aryicle / topic and you get down-voted.

Isn't that tautological?

Anyway, it's also not true as a general rule. The comments I see net-downvoted on HN are ones that either contain falsehoods and/or are poorly (often "rantily") written. I've seen many comments about a topic generally downvoted because they fit that pattern, but comments that express the same POV but avoid falsehoods and are reasonably written end up without a net negative.

If you're going to have votes, some things will get net-downvoted. There's no way around that - people have different opinions and scoring systems, and some comments will do poorly with some people.