canyonwalker: coronavirus (coronavirus)
Earlier this week I wrote Five Years of the Coronavirus Pandemic about what has and hasn't changed over the 5 years since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic. I intended it to be a gentle reminiscing about how things have evolved. It turned, though, into a more strident criticism of the politically motivated denialism that reached fever pitch about the pandemic and then spread to other aspects of reality. So, how about those gentler musings? I'll cover there here in a part 2. Here are Five Things that have or haven't changed since the pandemic:

1. Remote Work. Working remotely was a reality for me for years before the pandemic. The crisis of the pandemic made it a reality for a lot more people. As business leaders praised how effective it was many of us thought it would become the new normal. Many leaders have subsequently yanked us back to the past with Return to Office (RTO) mandates. I've remarked before that there's absolutely value in teams being together in an office with low barriers to communication... but the reality of the business world independent of the pandemic is that companies have offshored or distributed so many jobs, especially in technology, that it makes only limited sense for people to sit in an office while still having to use phones, email, chat, and video to communicate with colleagues.

2. Prices. It didn't happen early in the pandemic, but at the impacts of supply chain disruptions, government stimulus, and changes in habits hit, inflation hit. Significant inflation hit. Monthly price changes came an annualized rates upwards of 10% at certain points. But while the overall full-year consumer price index never really rose about 5%, certain sectors saw way more inflation. For example, I've seen the prices of a wide variety of groceries increase by 50% - 100% over the past 5 years.

3. Eating at Home. Eating at home suddenly became a necessity when restaurants closed in March 2020. I'd made that shift a few days ahead of the shutdown. It was a big change for me as I was accustomed to eating nearly all lunches and dinners at restaurants. I made a knife edge transition from dining out 13 times a week to 0. As risks eased I added back dining out— or at least ordering take-out— at once a week, then twice, then more. I've gradually ramped up to dining out about 9 times a week now; but that's still down from 13 pre-pandemic.

4. Tipping is out of Control. Tipping standards increased during the pandemic. As people realized restaurants and take-out food were "essential infrastructure" even though food service workers are among the lowest paid people in our economy, people wanted a way to say, "Thank you for risking your life so I can buy this burrito." Tipping standards increased, and "Add a tip" interfaces appeared on payment kiosks where they hadn't been seen before. The sense of gratitude has lessened along with the risks of dying for a burrito, but the prompts on payment kiosks have not. In fact, kiosks prompting for tips have only continued to spread— including in silly places like self-service checkouts at grocery stores. There's now a widening backlash against expectations of tipping getting out of control.

5. Less Socializing. One of the most enduring social changes from the pandemic is that we all socialize less. Safety closures not only got us out of the habit of "third spaces"— places like coffee shops and bars where we can casually see & be seen outside of work/school and home— but also greatly reduced the second space, too, as work/school became remote much of the time. People got accustomed to living most of their lives from their bedrooms and sofas. Having gotten out of the habit of meeting people face to face— including spending the time and effort of going out to meet people face to face— it's hard to get back into it. And it's to our detriment as we humans are fundamentally social creatures. Depression is up, satisfaction with life is down, and record numbers of people report feeling isolated.

canyonwalker: WTF? (wtf?)
One of the restaurants in my regular rotation the past several years has been The Habit. It's a hamburger chain that grew out of a few successful family-run burger shops in Santa Barbara. Some number of years ago... maybe 10?... they started franchising across California. Having actually been to the original stores before they started franchising I was excited to see them opening up in the SF Bay Area.

That's the good news. The bad news is that they've been going downhill recently. Several months ago they discontinued one of my favorite orders, the ability to add grilled steak to a salad. They basically dropped grilled steak entirely from their kitchen, so in addition to not being able to get a grilled steak Caesar salad I also couldn't get a grilled steak sandwich with avocado.

Service levels have been deteriorating, too. I started visiting the Habit less often after one particular visit a few months ago when it took them 30 minutes to cook my food. (I'm aware that people often complain "I've been waiting at least an hour for my food!" when a check of the clock shows it's been, like, 12 minutes. I checked the clock. It was 30 minutes from the time marked on the register tape until my food was ready.)

Today I found the the service levels dropped even lower, with no employees willing to take orders in person anymore and customers instead directed to use self-order terminals. Then there was this bullshit at the end:

Tipping prompt... at a self-service kiosk 👎 (Sep 2024)

Yes, a tip. It's asking me to leave a tip. After employees refused to serve me and I had to serve myself, the automated system asks for a tip.

Oh, but that wasn't even the final straw. The final straw was, uh... next to the literal straws:

"Is Pepsi okay?" "NO." (Sep 2024)

Pepsi. They fucking switched to Pepsi. I hate Pepsi— as do a lot of other people, apparently, as the brand's slogan might as well be, "Is Pepsi okay?" That's what staff at restaurants serving Pepsi are required to say if someone orders "A Coke". Or, in my experience, even "A cola."

I've seen a few other restaurants switch to Pepsi. It's always been a cost-cutting move. Pepsi runs cheaper than Coke. It kind of has to, because people like it less. And to me it's the final straw of breaking my Habit habit.
canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
Right after I posted my almost-leaving-for-Mexico blog from the United Club Lounge yesterday morning I saw this little number: a robot busing dishes.



The first thing that struck me was, "Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens when we raise the minimum wage." I'm not anti-labor or anti-paying people living wages. It's just the reality of the situation; actions have consequences. Increasing the cost of hiring people increases the number of situations where business find it more cost-effective to employ technology instead. That's a big part of why ordering kiosks are replacing workers at fast food restaurants, there's self-checkout (SCO) at grocery and hardware stores, and— here, for example— robots are doing menial tasks.

The second thing that hit me was, "I wonder if the screen on the back of the robo-cart is asking for a tip." 🤣 Tipping has gotten out of control... especially in cases where automated systems prompt for tips. Like, if I'm ordering from a kiosk and/or paying via SCO, WTF am I tipping for? Whom am I tipping? *I* am literally doing the work!

As far as the first point, this robot has not entirely replaced staff busing tables. There are still a number of people at the United Club Lounge clearing tables. It's likely this robot is an experiment on feasibility and cost-effectiveness.

canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
New Zealand Travelog #13
Te Anau, NZ - Thu, 11 Apr 2024, 7pm

It's a well known fact for Americans (well, some Americans) that when we travel pretty much anywhere else in the world we have to convert distance measurements to/from kilometers. New Zealand is no exception to that.

Similarly, in most countries we have to convert US dollars to/from the local currency. (I say most because in some countries businesses cheerfully accept US dollars. A few even give fair exchange rates. 😅)

New Zealand dollars are in km, just like distances (Apr 2024)A few of us know that the km/miles conversion is 0.6. We remember it, perhaps, from physics classes where we used it on a daily basis. But what about the various currency conversions? New Zealand makes that simple for us US folks. The NZD-to-USD exchange rate is also about 0.6.

As we've been traveling in New Zealand the past several days I'm often stuck with a moment of sticker shock seeing prices advertised in "dollars" with the $ symbol. They're New Zealand dollars, of course, but my gut reaction because of the naming and symbol is to read them as US dollars. The momentary reaction passes when I remind myself, "These prices are in are kilometers!" 🤣

So, how good or bad are the prices after converting to metric? Well, it depends. Restaurant food isn't too bad. A main dish in a restaurant listed at "$24.50" on the menu, similar to what I've paid for dinner orders the past few nights, looks spendy at first (see above) but multiplying by 0.6 brings it to $14.70 US. Furthermore, considering that taxes are already included and there's no tipping— laws and cultural norms in New Zealand require businesses pay employees fair wages, what a totally no-this-is-not-socialism concept!— makes it equivalent to a "$12" menu price in the US. For what I've ordered for the pre-tip-and-tax equivalent of $12 US, I've gotten pretty decent amounts of dinner.

Not all foodstuff is cheap, though. My dearly beloved Coke Zero, like all sodas in most countries outside the US, is expensive. Soda fountains are virtually unheard of, so you're buying it by the can or bottle in restaurants. That gets expensive quickly. I tend to drink water in restaurants and buy my sodas at the grocery store to enjoy back at my hotel room.

Oh, and the money itself? Like Australia, the "paper" currency is plastic. And it's colorful. It makes me feel like we Americans are cavepeople with our monochromatic "greebacks" printed on... fabric.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Australia Travelog #24
Leura, NSW - Thu, 28 Dec 2023, 8pm

Hawk and I are back at the hotel now after a long day of hiking. First we hiked the Three Sisters then a big loop down into the canyon and back up at Wentworth Falls. We worked up a pretty good appetite from all that. We drove next door to Katoomba for supper, as that's the town with the most restaurants.

We picked a Thai restaurant for dinner this evening. The food was good. We experienced a moment of sticker shock, though, seeing the prices on the menu. $28 for a typical entree.... Katoomba's definitely a tourist town; are these tourist trap prices? Not really. Do the math on the prices and you'll see they only look high to our American eyes.

  • For one, the Australian dollar is about two-thirds of the US dollar (technically it's trading at 0.68 this week) so that $28 AU dinner is only $19 US.

  • Two, and this is a biggie, there's no tipping and no tax on that price. In Australia the price of these is included in the price shown on the menu, unlike in the US where tax is added on at the register and figuring out how to pay a fair labor wage to the staff is left to customer guesstimation. Backing out the cost of tax and tip added separately in the US further reduces that menu price to the equivalent of $15 US.

It was totally in line with a "$15" dinner in the US.

There's still the matter of sodas being expensive in Australia. Soda fountains are rare here, and there's no such thing as unlimited refills. You've got to buy sodas by the individual can or bottle, and those are generally $4-5. Having a few glasses with dinner gets expensive. I'm adapting my habits to drink more water with meals and enjoy just 1 soda.
canyonwalker: Mr. Moneybags enjoys his wealth (money)
A few days ago I posted "Tipping is Getting Ridiculous", a blog entry about some of the recent excesses of the growing custom of tipping in the US. The thing is, tipping is not just getting ridiculous, it already is ridiculous.

Tipping was almost nonexistent in the US up through the Civil Ware era. It was brought over by wealthy travelers in the late 1800s who saw it in Europe— where it was a vestige of aristocracy and master/serf economic systems. The wealthy started doing it in this country to seem more sophisticated. (Evidence also exists there were racist motivations to suppress the wages of Black people in service jobs.) Except as European countries modernized into democracies with advanced economies in the mid-20th century and left tipping behind— instead requiring employers to pay all employees fair wages— the US enshrined tipping into law.

Minimum wage law was created by the federal government in 1937 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. That Act excluded several categories of labor, though. Employers were able to continue paying restaurant workers as little as nothing. That didn't change until 1966, when minimum wage law was amended to require employers to pay a minimum base wage. Called the tipped wage it was originally half of the full minimum wage, though it was last increased in 1991 to $2.13/hour. As poor as the federal minimum wage has been at keeping up with costs of living, it is $7.25 today. The tipped minimum wage remains $2.13, just 30% of that.

States and localities are able to set minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage. California, for example, chose to abolish the two-tier system of tipped wages. All employees must be paid at least full minimum wage. And statewide that wage is $15.50. In the city of Sunnyvale, where I live, it's $17.95. But at least 19 states retain the tipped minimum wage of $2.13.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Tipping is getting ridiculous.

If you follow news media at all that's probably not a new sentiment. In my newsfeed, at least, I've seen a handful of articles with that headlines like that over the past few months.

Tipping, which is already an archaic practice sadly enshrined in employment law in much of the US, grew during the Coronavirus pandemic. People were thankful for restaurants, bars, hair salons, etc. that reopened early, and for the generally poorly paid employees who risked their health to work there. Norms for tipping increased, both in size of tip given and which jobs were considered tippable.

As the pandemic has faded into the rearview mirror changes in tipping have not. Arguably they've accelerated. Things the articles talk about, and which many people have noticed when buying food at restaurants, is that point-of-sale (POS) terminals prompt for tips in more places now— and the prompted amounts are larger, too. What was once 10%-15%-18% became 15%-18%-20%, and now even prompts like 18%-20%-25% are not uncommon.

More frustratingly, these inflated tipping rates are for order at the counter service. Once upon a time— by which I mean, like, four years ago— tipping in restaurants was understood as being for table service. Now it's built into the payment process even for restaurants where you wait in line, order from the cashier, and then wait for your own food... oh, and clean your own table when you're done.

The most outrageous example of tipping prompts I've heard of is grocery stores adding them at self checkout machines. The staff is literally doing nothing to assist you. You've serving yourself... and you're supposed to tip someone else 25%?!

I haven't seen that self checkout tipping nonsense in person, but I did see encounter a tipping prompt a few days ago that was more annoying than usual. I was at a restaurant that has chosen to do away with even having staff take your order. The cash register is kind of blocked off, with a self-service kiosk in front of it. Signs instruct customers to order from the kiosks. The staff in the cooking area didn't even acknowledge my presence as a customer. I greeted them and they ignored me. Then, when the tipping prompt came in the POS system, "skip" or "no tip" wasn't even an option! I had to press the button for "custom tip" then enter zero. All for zero service! And of course the prompts were 18-20-25%. For a restaurant where the employees don't even stop chatting amongst themselves or reading their phones to say, "Hi! Thanks for coming in."

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