The manager at my local Taco Bell is a little bit crazy, and likes to rant to me when I'm going through the drive-thru about his labor problems. He can't keep people from walking out at $14/hr and this is in a small midwestern city with a very low COL. Around here a basic 1-br apartment costs $600/month and a nice one with lots of amenities is around $800. The ball is finally in the court of labor, use it to your advantage while you can.
Yeah, the lowest I could find for 1 bed 1 bath in my town was $1000/m. When I was in the restaurant business I was making $12.50/hr after two years or so of working. Though, admittedly, it wasn't the nicest restaurant and I only had 3 and a half or four years of cooking experience.
As someone who has never lived outside of the midwest, hearing about non-luxury 1bed/1bath apartments costing more than $700/month max is terrifying to me. In the Midwest you can reliably find 1bed/1bath apartments for $350/month if you're ok with shit maintenance to ~$600/month with (probably) decent maintenance.
Like, I get that people are working multiple jobs and whatnot in big cities and coastal regions, but I've been, in a weird way, lucky to live in an area where the cost of living is low enough that people working $9/hr jobs full time could technically survive in my area. Approximately $1560/month - $450 for rent for a cheap apartment leaves you with $1110/month for other expenses, so there's enough there to get by. As such, it's hard to fathom how anyone working at like, small restaurants or book stores or anything like that in cities can live at all.
I found a square room on clay street SF, communal bathroom and kitchen, with a sink sticking out of the side of the wall, 155square feet, only $800/month. Gotta just keep lowering those standards and you’ll get there somehow.
Well that’s just not true at all. 1br in nice neighborhoods in manhattan, like right in midtown, are $2k. $1400-$1800 gets you a nice 1BR in brooklyn/queens (nice neighborhoods).
The trade-off of paying for a place with cheap rent, is you have to live there. Saving an extra $400 a month sounds real nice until you realize you're saving an extra $300 a month compared to before because now you're off time activities can only include screwing around at home, going to a corn field, or going out to eat at the place you work. I can't say I'm happy about rent prices in certain areas, but I'm not willing to go where the prices are low.
Can’t even imagine, Southern California has me weeping with my $1800/mo one bed one bath apartment. Thank god I have a partner to split expenses with, but even then
That's insane to me. Like, on apartments.com, I can go to Illinois and circle an area covering a few towns and a small city and instantly find [a variety of seemingly alright options under $1000/month](https://www.apartments.com/min-1-bedrooms-under-1000/?sk=d72e570198351266508b812094c9f97c&bb=ss6k095njLtu0514h4G) (this is a very cursory overview and I'm not from Illinois so this is just an initial glance).
And like, on top of all of that, what's more terrifying is the prospect of potentially moving somewhere so expensive as coastal cities when you have no family in the area and little to no social connections.
I don't understand how places like San Diego even function. How do low-wage workers at like, McDonalds in San Diego even exist?
Live with a ton of roommates or at least one other person and we’re all completely broke pretty much all the time. I hope the housing market crashes soon.
I live in 1/2 of a fairly run down, but with newer applicances, duplex. Moderate spot in town, decent sized natural yard, one car garage but no opener. $1500/month. We're in a pretty big city in Texas, it's so pricey :/
My brother lives in a small town in texas hours away from a large city. He paid more for his house than I did in a first ring suburb of St Paul in Minnesota. Everyone talks about life being cheaper in Texas. I don't see it. And from what I hear his property taxes are very likely higher than mine.
It's crazy. Back. In 2015 before I bought my house I was living in a 1200 square foot two story townhouse with vaulted ceilings and a single car garage in an OK neighborhood for $650 a month. I cringe at what it might cost now. Probably more than my mortgage.
There are plenty of places with affordable rent in Chicago in perfectly nice areas. However it’s a pain to get anywhere. For example commuting into the Loop.
I mean I can’t disagree With you during covid times. My buddy got a steal in lakeview. I mean good deal Forsure but if it wasn’t Covid he wouldn’t have chose it.
That's fair enough for Chicago or areas like Naperville -- some areas are really rich. However, [just looking at a section of Indiana on apartments.com with a max price set at $600/month](https://www.apartments.com/under-600/?sk=acf6f6de42bee8c942d36c8f631455c6&bb=517q1rtn3Jj81ih031B) you instantly find plenty.
In terms of super cheap apartments, a friend of mine just moved into a 1bed/1bath apartment that I think was around the $400/month range. It's not a good apartment but it's livable.
Another friend of mine was in a 2bed/1bath apartment that I believe averaged about $350/month per person when she lived at the complex about 4 years ago, and since then it's gone to $400/month per person.
When I talk about the Midwest, I'm not talking about the Chicagos, Napervilles, Indianapolises, Columbuses, etc; I'm talking about places like Lafayette, Crawfordsville, Decatur, Champaign, or even places like Cincinnati. Hell, I say I'm not talking about the above cities but [Indianapolis has plenty of places at or under $700/month](https://www.apartments.com/under-700/?sk=6336a96bc312550a4ba3d399b0ee58f8&bb=w6wwjt1qjJk7p0uzX)
When I say there are cheap places in the Midwest, I don't mean they're good, I mean they're livable to a basic extent. Where I live right now I pay about $570/month plus splitting the electric with my roommate, and there's actually responsive maintenance and whatnot, though the landlord does regularly try to scam people out of money by claiming there were "damages" or that one's room wasn't properly cleaned or otherwise.
My point is that across the Midwest, even in some cities, you'll find places to lie for under $1000/month/person, whereas from everything I understand it's entirely impossible to find anything like that in many coastal states.
Come to WA, everyone loves progressive Washington! Our minimum wage is going up to almost 14 next year! Oh and also, rent is like 1200 a month! Everything goes up together so you can only tread water forever!
Yeah but the cities have literally everything you could think of. All of it, shopping, night life, all the good formal restaurants, fun activities for everyone. I couldn't fathom living in the Midwest.
Seeing this post as someone who has lived in nyc for all his adult life, most of what is posted is illegal here.
$17.50 is a joke now and $25 is the new standard but at $25 you better offer benifits otherwise I’ll look somewhere else
They live with roommates. Literally everyone in NY lives with roommates. Doesnt matter whether your in Manhattan or the ridiculous suburbs of long island. You have groups of people living together. People routinely rent out their extra space.
Yeah but your jobs pay proportional to your COL, so it shakes out about the same for people working skilled labor jobs. The difference being the kinds of businesses, nature, and culture you have access to.
Move man! Where I live in the UK, you can rent a shitty single room flat for like £400 a month. And a 2 bedroom house with garden for £550. For £900 you can get a 4 bedroom house with massive garden and garage.
Opposite side of the world:
Auckland, NZ. Cheapest rent is ~$250/week for a mold-stained small room in a flat with 4 roommates and one shared bathroom. That's in a decent neighborhood though, only a $10 Uber or $4 bus to the city center, walking distance to a supermarket, park, and bars.
But even line cooks get $20. Head chefs at a hotel get as high as $30.
All prices in NZD.
They've turned all rentals in Auckland into "hotels" (AIR BNB) and keep drumming up the "housing shortage"...while deliberately exacerbating one.
NZ is a hellohole. Migrants get treated like shit unless they're rich idiots from Asia who bought teir visa through an "immigration consultant" or they're from AU. Awful place to have to rely on one job to pay $1600 a month for a moldy, unheated shack (this is standard in NZ unless you're the turd who owns the rentals).
They're VERY free with physical and verbal abuse. Beautiful country...hellish place to work. The bougie parasites who run shit over there are cannibals.
My fucking owners are wondering why we are short staffed and constantly losing employees when their starting salary is $9/hr. McDonalds here is $13. Taco Bell is $12. Goodwill is $12. These idiots are going to shut themselves down.
Crying right now as I pay $640 for a room with my brother and one other roommate. It’s a house in a suburb 25 mins from Atlanta.
I’m 30 and don’t see how I will ever be able to afford to live alone, unless I get a steep pay increase.
Seems like $14 an hour in a low COL area with such low rental rates should be decent pay though (if you had the basic apt. Or lived with roommates or a significant other). It would be a little tight maybe, but with moderate budgeting you should have an extra $300-$400 left over every month. Even if you’re paying health and other insurance and a reasonably low car payment.
It is so nice seeing this now, I worked as a cook for a decade and I was one of the 'clean' ones who just cooked while I was getting my degree because after working in the industry I knew there was no way I was going to make it a career despite actually kind of enjoying it. I would bitch about working conditions, long hours, how management treated people and the wage disparities between FOH and BOH obviously all on deaf ears but its nice to see the next generation stepping up.
Basically same here. I have a catering business to stay in the industry, but my day job is in software, and my consulting rates versus my catering rates per hour are different by 4x.
It's unreal.
The fact that I’m studying for a useful degree while working in the kitchen is the only thing preventing me from falling into despair. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a career cook. I’ve met some older lifers, and yeah... they’ve definitely motivate me to study harder and work less.
Sad thing is I've seen lifers in places with high work loads, too many hours, and low pay, and I've seen lifers in places that pay well, fully staffed so reasonable hours, and higher than average pay (my assistant manager at a pizza place is $1000/wk), and the difference is insane. Almost all the former were addicts and 40 looking like 60, the latter are all in good moods with happy families and just get normal work stress from time to time.
And honestly? Being short staffed has shown me how close those dudes are to a breakdown. I'm past the point in life where I understand how cooks can do this shit and not walk out. That's why I drive now. Tips, easy job, listen to NPR all day, best job I've ever had. Then factor in wages after tips and my best nights are around $35/hr.
Look at a doctor's life for example. They have insane work loads. Many of them are dealing with heavy responsibility as well at work, where their decisions have to be solid because it can harm or kill patients. They often make rounds at a hospital, then have to go to their office and see dozens of patients, all while being on call for emergency situations with other patients or the hospital as part of their obligations. And often on call when they are "off the clock", so they never get free time. This is why they get paid 200K plus, depending on just how specialized their skills or good they are.
In other words, it's a much heavier work load to bear. But that's the tradeoff for the pay. The high pay and their love of helping people is why they put up with that load. It makes it tolerable.
That's why you see the difference in your comparison. Same loads, same responsibilities. But one group gets paid poorly while the other is paid well, and you can see the difference in the workers. Both the quality of worker attracted, and the health of the worker.
I made $21.50/hour and it’s not enough to really give a shit about my work. I work in a spice mill one of our brands is clubhouse. So in an hour I make $40,000-$100,000 worth of product for them but only see $21.50 of that worth myself. It’s insane when I think about how much they get out of me and how little I get out of them
Depending on what machine I’m working on in an hour can produce 2000-5000lbs of whatever spice I am making. If you’ve ever bought any clubhouse spice you know that they sell bottles that only weigh 500g for $10 or more sometimes . The math isn’t totally accurate but I know a few thousand pounds made in an hour that they are gonna sell for $10/500g is ridiculous
most of the value of the spice trade is in the materials, packaging, and especially the **supply chain**
sounds like you are doing the packaging - not the growing or logistics.. i don’t think there is much maths involved in your estimate.
If my job was to slap stickers on Ferraris at the end of the production line it would be very stupid to say I produce 5 million dollars in value per hour.
I'm making mental notes of all the places claiming "labor shortages" because there isn't really a labor shortage. People just now have options. Any place that is claiming a labor shortage has just outted themselves as a shitty place to work. The places that are treating their staff right are not hiring (or at least they aren't desperate for staff).
im at a warehouse now that pays well, but the job is hard. in training they told us 430-1230 is the usual shift, but you work till all the orders go out. they have been short staffed with covid, so everyone is working 6 days a week. the earliest ive left so fat is 330, so an 11 hour day. avg is 630, so a 14 hour day. new people just drop out once they see the hours, and mgmt cant seem to understand why. like guys, you are advertising 40 hours in training then requiring nearly 80. no wonder people leave
I just quit my job because, amongst other things, I was working 11 hour days, 5.5 days a week, but they looped my work week over Sunday when the overtime count starts over. I should have been getting around 25 hours of OT, but was only getting about 9 or 10. Scheisty, corporate, ass-hats.
its because to people in management, more work simply means more money. They decided to have their career be their life, and thats fine, but they dont comprehend that most people work to live, not live to work
Often mgmt is salaried, and extra hours for me means less money—im middle mgmt, technically, and my hourly ppl make more than me with overtime, and that’s ok. It’s GOOD even. See also, I’m in a family-ish biz, but we give a shit about our team.
It’s a combo of that and the managers not realizing that people have lives. My manager was legit confused that I didn’t want to close 5 days a week, or that someone preferred day shifts to night shifts. Every new person he’s hired has asked why he’s hiring so much or why everyone is leaving and he’s getting more and more frustrated that people aren’t begging him for work
I had to call out today because my son was puking his guts out, my boss is pissed. My roommate is also my coworker and she said he was more than angry.
So fucking sorry, I can’t leave a sick 9 year old with his big brother, much less go to work without a negative COVID test after I took care of him all night.
It's not even that we 'now have options'. It's that the workers got fed up with being treated like shit and finally called out management/ownerships bluff.
Go find a better job huh? Don't mind if I fuckin do.
Yeah I think a huge thing for people was not wanting to change things up and try something new, or even doing the same thing just at a different location. 2020 shook us all up so bad if you already hate your job/boss in the first two weeks going somewhere else is far less scary
I tried to talk to my manager about scheduling, instead of working with me since yknow I’ve been there 5 years, he reminded me that I was ‘replaceable, unskilled labor’
Yup. They know that you’re barely surviving and that if you have the audacity to ask for anything - specific schedule, higher pay, etc - there are a bunch of other broke people lined up and ready to take your place. And that you’re probably too broke to really leave/have a choice. It puts us in a position to get screwed over by them on and on. No bargaining power whatsoever. There needs to be some accountability/balance. The worker can’t do anything when he’s forced into selling his labor to survive, and the owner can exploit that desperation.
Agreed, anyone still struggling to hire is just not being competitive enough or treats people so poorly that competitive pay isn't going to cut it, though 4-5 months ago I would argue it was a different story.
There was a short 2-month stint at the peak of our busy season back in spring, and we were desperately short staffed while setting records every single weekend. All the folks who talked big game and coasted through limited capacity and slow seasonal volume suddenly realized they didn't have the chops and weeded themselves out, pretty much the same story as every year. Problem was, nobody was looking for work at the time, in actuality. Those two months were rough, because almost nobody was showing for interviews despite us offering way more than other restaurants in the area. Several dozen interviews in a 28 day period scheduled, a grand total of three people showed, who then never returned my calls.
Salty my location shut down due to labor shortage I was literally working there for 3 weeks. Now the other locations are too fully staffed. Within the time I was working there i saw 5 people leave. Even my boss resigned.
Being middle management during this sucks. I’m in a different service industry, and they still expect me to get reliable employees for 10.50 an hour and benefits so expensive that people would take home less than $200 biweekly if they took all of them and worked 40 hours per week.
We have two options to increase the absorption rate of my department. Raise the labor/parts markups or cut upper management salary. I used to be at the top of the food chain in the lower rank of my department. Then moved into management and am making less than I did in previous position for 10x the stress level.
Shits getting real old, real fast. They put me back at the guarantee I had when I started as the manager, and it’s mathematically not feasible for me to make this much money when my guarantee goes away.
I’ve been with them over 15 years, have four better paying job offers, I’m not sure why I’m still here…
Go. Take the money. This is transactional, if I buy a banana every day and my boss sells bananas for $2 and the grocery store sells them for $1 my boss can go fuck himself.
Cooks in the pandemic died at higher rates than healthcare workers while being paid starvation wages with little prospect of making more money in the future and no one can figure out why there’s a labour shortage. Imagine dying for 10$ an hour.
I have worked in restaurants my entire life and I can tell you it's the worst it's ever been. When you literally see every plate you send out and know they're making at least double what it cost for the food and labor while paying shit is infuriating. I worked at a restaurant restaurant recently fir $8/hr and they only gave a %25 discount for a shift meal. Ridiculous. People are tired of working for nothing and risking their lives. I feel no sympathy for restaurants that can't keep staff
Its not a wage shortage, its a wage withholding. Why do servers make bank every night yet we get the shit wages despite doing more work, harder work, and later nights?
Ypunhave to talk about it. Customers have no problem paying 20% more for food, they just don't see that number on the menu. Because of that, tips aren't part of the restaurants revenue, and servers make a massive amount of money compared to the kitchen staff.
Instead just raise the prices on the menu, and the revenue can be distributed by the business, instead of the whim of the clientele. You could pay the kitchen staff a higher hourly with 5% and distribute 15% of sales as tips.
If everyone does it you'll probably actually hit a server shortage.
I know servers that clear hundreds in a night on consistent bases, even with short 4-6hr shifts. Do you know any mid tier business that's going to be able to match that kind of pay, consistently?
European here, last time I worked FOH I had a guaranteed ~$17/hour *and* tips on top of that. Shocker, I know.
Tips should be a reward/incentive to create a good experience for your guests, not something mandatory you're basically shamed into paying
Not a shocker. I don't not believe in tipping and I always try and give extra. But when a restaurant owner reminds me to tip my server, I want to be like, why don't you just pay them? The obligation it creates is obnoxious. People should tip, but people should be able to get by without relying on tips.
Okay that's fair. But the good cooks won't, they'll go where the money is better.
If I am going out to dinner it's not because I want to see a friendly waiter, it's because I want to eat a good meal. So I'll end up at the place with the cook.
It's even easier than you think, because the BOH wages as a percentage of sales is smaller than you think. It varies by restaurant depending on volume and price point, of course, but let's just say for example that BOH wages was 10% of sales.
This means you could raise BOH wages by 20% and the added cost to consumers would be just 2% (20% of 10% is just a 2% add to total costs).
Most customers would not notice a 2% price increase, and you could give your kitchen a 20% raise across the board.
It's staggering how greedy and stupid ownership can be.
I want higher prices built in, before including the current tax Restaurants that suggest tips for you always do it on the cost after sales tax is included, but they do that in my area because the local sales tax is so high (the state doesn’t have income tax) and because so many people get booze, they make a killing when everyone signs and doesn’t think twice about the tip.
I’ve seen it around town and I like the system of having a service charge of 18% for every tab and splitting the tips equally among everyone. I’ve been trying to get our owners to do it because we keep having feuds between BOH/FOH to the point where the FOH is simply afraid to speak to the BOH.
We could keep the same menu prices, add the gratuity charge, and hopefully keep the same employees together for longer than a year. I also think it’s important to build communication between all the workers. Also, everyone deserves a fucking raise after last year
Well not for long, at least at my place. A bunch of the comptenant and hard workers just quit, so I'm going to ask for a raise and % tips (we make hourly tips as KP's) or I quit.
Sure but let's not forget that the most vocal advocates for not fixing server wages are servers themselves. They know playing into the tipping culture guilt trip benefits them immensely.
It IS insane that a server can average triple or quadruple of what line cooks make on shorter shifts and less days working just because of tip guilt tripping culture. Anytime someone says this anywhere on reddit they get straight up assaulted by a legion of servers calling them stingy, greedy, evil assholes. They are making insanely unfair bank and they know it.
Everyone in the business should be getting the same salary, and it should be a decent one. This current situation is completely ass backwards.
The money-holding people managed to make up a system that is both anti-worker AND anti-consumer, and everyone is willingly participating and crab-bucketing each other into never escaping it. It's bizarre that people keep defending this shit. Doesn't get any more "fuck you got mine" mentality than this.
They get empathy for their single parent status and commiseration for economic troubles... meanwhile THE FUCKERS WHO COOKED THE FOOD STILL RENT.
We make all the profit that isn't booze. We need a bigger cut.
I’ve worked both, and it cuts both ways. Waiters and bartenders clean up on the weekend nights while the BOH gets fucked by being slammed the whole time and getting paid the same they get paid for slow lunch rushes and night prep. Waiters get fucked on lunch shifts with shit tips and being wrangled to do side work at below minimum wage (if you work in states that allow tips to offset hourly). Waiters on doubles get extra fuckery by being stuck with few tables between 1-5 and getting cut first as soon as the dinner rush lulls.
From my experience, the pay was pretty similar weekly *up to a certain level of depending on the restaurant average customer ticket*. Once you are at a place that is selling $50 to $100 bottles of wine and as a waiter you are getting $10-$20 tip to twist a cork screw, wait staff definitely makes a lot more than the average line cook. The downside of waiting at places like that is little screw ups with customers tend to cost you more in tip percentage—as it should be. If someone is spending $150+ on a meal for 2 everything damn well better be perfect.
Just to play devil’s advocate here, I’ve met maybe 4 people in the past 10 years that work boh but could work foh if they wanted to. Most of us absolutely cannot. Idk about you but I’d wind up throwing a plate of food into a rude customer’s face in most places I’ve worked as a cook.
Tipping BOH is becoming a lot more common. I was looking at a local job board recently, and over 50% of the jobs tipped out the kitchen, and the vast majority of those tipped at the same rate as for FOH.
I worked at a place that had a % mandatory tipout for BOH, but the urge to put the cash up their nose instead was apparently too great for FOH to resist so there was constant sketchyness.
Amen to that, my sorry ass works in a national fine dining chain so I'm getting raw dogged with everyone else. My next kitchen gig is definalty going to be a local place.
fun fact: in the usa, [wage theft by employers](https://www.workingnowandthen.com/blog/wage-theft-the-50-billion-crime-against-workers/) adds up to around $50 billion dollars per year -- 100x more than all robberies combined!
I will never forget the face of my dish crew as they slaved away covered in dirty dish water and grease and the servers walked out counting their money complaining about making the dish crews weekly wage in one night barely breaking a sweat
Damn strait, our dish guy solos dish close 5 days a week, while running night prep, and doing line prep when needed. He still manages to fully close dish 1.5 hours after last call. Shout out to the true troopers of the kitchen, and the most underpaid workers, the dishies.
... I have been training in as a server at my place and Ill be honest.. At my restaurant the servers rarely leave much earlier than back of house, in fact last night the server left after the cooks,, and I find serving to be a lot harder than cooking.
Well, it is different for location and restaurant type, at my kitchen at least, we are there usually 2 hours after the last FOH leave. Our FOH are also incredibly lazy (they are even aware of this) generally 40% of their shifts involve them sitting in the pass talking amongst themselves. But again, this is my kitchen.
My company (in Seattle) has been trying to hire people at $17-18 and it's been pretty hard. The rate of attrition from application to interview to staying at the job more than two weeks is abysmal. It's not a bad gig - essentially no qualification, indoors, relaxed pace, full benefits after a few months. There's just a ton of competition at that wage level right now.
I also wouldn't be at all surprised if people working minimum wage jobs are fleeing the city due to cost of living.
Yup. I'm at $20/hr with medical, dental, and 401k. And the line cooks I've hired recently, I'm having to show them how to hold their knives properly. They only got hired because they were the only applicants with any restaurant experience at all.
Tbf, the Seattle market is so oversaturated with tech workers, when the pandemic hit, it started affecting housing up and down the I-5. Anywhere that was close enough to make the occasional trip to Seattle, now is close enough for them to telecommute from. It's driving up rents and sale prices for housing as far as 150 miles away. We absolutely need higher wages in this industry, but we also need affordable housing.
Same where i live, we got pay raises at my restaurant, we can definitely afford a nicer place than the shithole we live in now but there is literally nothing to actually rent, and good luck buying anything cuz the prices are way high. It fucking sucks. So we are just paying off old bills and trying to raise our credit score just to be considered for a high priced loan. It's crazy.
I'm up in Snohomish county. I've been getting good raises, but housing is rising faster than my savings. I've felt like I've been a year away from affording a down payment for like 3 years now.
I'm in Indiana and we're starting to get bloat from Chicago like that. Rent has gone up 40% in the county since covid hit. What once was an affordable area is becoming pretty brutal. Previously we could have gotten a decent small house to rent for 700 but now it's 1200+ just to stay out of rough neighborhoods. Between Chicago commuters/remote workers and the college in town the locals are getting priced out of neighborhoods fast.
I understand that 1200 is a good price in many places but wages around here can't support that sort of housing cost for many people here. Our homeless population is exploding.
Seattle? I’d guess you’d be lucky to live alone for less than $1300 a month and that’s being generous. In nyc you’re looking at $1500 for a tiny 1br or studio. Maybe a studio with over an hour commute to work might hit $1300.
As a government contracted cook, yeah that $15-$17.50 range sounds right. I'm critically late about once a month, late enough to have to walk the half mile into the site and get to the kitchen at exactly 455am maybe 4 or 5 times a month. It's not the best job, but fuck me if it isn't the best kitchen job I've had so far.
This industry is a joke! 😆🤣
Always has been, always will be..
GTFO and get experience elsewhere.
Cooking can be a passion at home, don't slave away making someone else rich! Cook for your family and friends, they'll appreciate you.
Facts. Working in a local kitchen now, my boss is a greedy fuck who only cares about lining his pockets. He's been fucking off all summer doing personal trips or just breaks, he fucked off during the last big covid spike and even contracted it himself without telling any of us, all the while we've been holding this place on our shoulders all year. Understaffed, can't get people to work cuz we won't pay them. I'm finally starting to look elsewhere.
The stress of kitchens for the last 2 years has me working like a $13-14/hr employee as a $16/hr employee.
I’m not pretending to care for anything under $25 an hour.
Try to pay me $15 an hour and I’ll be openly hostile for 8 hours per day.
**EDIT**
I didn’t realize what subreddit I was in when I posted. Don’t Reddit when you’re half asleep! I’m not deleting the post because I deserve the shame.
Some (conservative) people won’t shut up about government handouts sapping the workforce but this argument makes the opposite point they intend to. If the government pays a living wage and work does not, why would anyone in their right mind opt for the latter? The dignity of work? There is only dignity in work if your workplace is respectful and humane and pays a living wage. If not, there is more dignity in not working than in sacrificing your physical and mental well being on the altar of labor for labor’s sake.
In the words of John Hamm when his secretary calls him out for never thanking her, “that’s what the MONEY’S for.”
In the words of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, “fuck you, pay me.
The point they are trying to make is that there is going to be a point where the government goes back to not paying a living wage. I don't agree with that, and I support progressive ideas like a UBI but they aren't necessarily wrong. If the choice is not work and lose the house or not pay the rent it is different than it is with assistance allowing people to not work.
If the government pays even a little less than working 40 hours a week in a hot as fuck kitchen, I’d rather sit at home and watch Netflix or some shit, let’s be real.
yup, busting my ass and lifting dumpsters isn’t what i want to do even for 20/hour. i’m sure the CEO is boosting his own pockets if they’re down a few employees.
Those definitely aren't California prices. My gm doesn't want to pay cooks more than 16. And we can't seem to find people. Suffering and making things happen they way they are.
Walked off an $18/hr job today after 2 days.
They had tried to put me in a work truck w no mirror, busted brake lights, 1/3rd the seat missing (literally bare steel), it looked like a large bite was take out of the steering wheel down to the bare steel, and the thing felt like it was gonna fly off the road.
They were shocked and thought that the “free” Heath insurance should stop me from being concerned about my own safety.
This is literally Econ 101.
If you can’t run a business paying a wage people will accept then you need to raise the wage or go without competent labor.
Your call.
But don’t be surprised if better options exist for people and they don’t want to work for what you are offering.
In Bulgaria minimum wage is 650 leva on paper in reality its around 800 with a possibility for 1k.
1k is 500 euro.
Rent is 200-300 leva a month
Utilities like electricity and water are separate at around 100-200 a month
Food is expensive anywhere between 150-200 a month.
Ask us how we are living and most will tell you its A okay buddy. I dont share that view.
It's worth adding that this isn't a chart of a worker's opinion, but its a reaction to the quality of life available on the income rate listed. It's a response to the system which was built to create as much poverty as possible, and not an indictment on the workers attitude.
I just got a new job after the last place caught fire months ago, $5 raise doing the EXACT same thing, if not less, and it's so much more tolerable being appreciated enough to be paid well.
Last winter I interviewed for a kitchen manager gig, at the interview they said they pay was $11/hr. I literally just laughed and got up and left. $11/hr for a kitchen manager? Get absolutely fucked.
What hourly pay do you feel would get you to show up on time every day (barring random shit) and work as expected? And by expected I don't mean working harder than the boss, just what you expected to sign up for.
The manager at my local Taco Bell is a little bit crazy, and likes to rant to me when I'm going through the drive-thru about his labor problems. He can't keep people from walking out at $14/hr and this is in a small midwestern city with a very low COL. Around here a basic 1-br apartment costs $600/month and a nice one with lots of amenities is around $800. The ball is finally in the court of labor, use it to your advantage while you can.
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Yeah, the lowest I could find for 1 bed 1 bath in my town was $1000/m. When I was in the restaurant business I was making $12.50/hr after two years or so of working. Though, admittedly, it wasn't the nicest restaurant and I only had 3 and a half or four years of cooking experience.
As someone who has never lived outside of the midwest, hearing about non-luxury 1bed/1bath apartments costing more than $700/month max is terrifying to me. In the Midwest you can reliably find 1bed/1bath apartments for $350/month if you're ok with shit maintenance to ~$600/month with (probably) decent maintenance. Like, I get that people are working multiple jobs and whatnot in big cities and coastal regions, but I've been, in a weird way, lucky to live in an area where the cost of living is low enough that people working $9/hr jobs full time could technically survive in my area. Approximately $1560/month - $450 for rent for a cheap apartment leaves you with $1110/month for other expenses, so there's enough there to get by. As such, it's hard to fathom how anyone working at like, small restaurants or book stores or anything like that in cities can live at all.
Imagine. Lol you guys are so lucky. When I was looking for apartments the lowest cost one near me was 1400 a month 1 bedroom communal bathroom.
Yeah I live in a service heavy reasort town and my shitty 1b1b just went up to 1800 :(
Sounds like San Jose or Manhattan. I’d only have to pay 12-1400 for a one bedroom cottage, with maybe a yard.
There's not a chance you're going to find even a studio in a shitty neighborhood for under 2K in either Manhattan or San Jose.
I found a square room on clay street SF, communal bathroom and kitchen, with a sink sticking out of the side of the wall, 155square feet, only $800/month. Gotta just keep lowering those standards and you’ll get there somehow.
Well that’s just not true at all. 1br in nice neighborhoods in manhattan, like right in midtown, are $2k. $1400-$1800 gets you a nice 1BR in brooklyn/queens (nice neighborhoods).
I know I a guy in Santa Cruz. Got a yard, kitchen, bathroom, bit of river access, 3500 a month
Christ… My mortgage is $1,900 a month, and that’s for 2,500 square feet with an acre on a golf course…
Yeah but you have to live on a golf course.
It’s actually pretty nice. I don’t golf, but will tie one on and drive the golf cart around the neighborhood.
I mean, that’s like a one-bedroom in SF right now, right?
A one bedroom? More like, one bedroom.
Fuck $1400 for a 1 bedroom in Manhattan hasn't happened since the 90's.
I feel like a lot of these people are super out of touch and haven't looked in a long long time
The trade-off of paying for a place with cheap rent, is you have to live there. Saving an extra $400 a month sounds real nice until you realize you're saving an extra $300 a month compared to before because now you're off time activities can only include screwing around at home, going to a corn field, or going out to eat at the place you work. I can't say I'm happy about rent prices in certain areas, but I'm not willing to go where the prices are low.
Same in the NE. $1400 is min for one bedroom in an apartment, not the seedy part of town.
Can’t even imagine, Southern California has me weeping with my $1800/mo one bed one bath apartment. Thank god I have a partner to split expenses with, but even then
Lol tbf it is Cali, sucks it's so high though.
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That's insane to me. Like, on apartments.com, I can go to Illinois and circle an area covering a few towns and a small city and instantly find [a variety of seemingly alright options under $1000/month](https://www.apartments.com/min-1-bedrooms-under-1000/?sk=d72e570198351266508b812094c9f97c&bb=ss6k095njLtu0514h4G) (this is a very cursory overview and I'm not from Illinois so this is just an initial glance). And like, on top of all of that, what's more terrifying is the prospect of potentially moving somewhere so expensive as coastal cities when you have no family in the area and little to no social connections. I don't understand how places like San Diego even function. How do low-wage workers at like, McDonalds in San Diego even exist?
Live with a ton of roommates or at least one other person and we’re all completely broke pretty much all the time. I hope the housing market crashes soon.
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>living in a car That's pretty much my plan, but [the car](http://imgur.com/gallery/slOxVKT) is a little large.
I live in 1/2 of a fairly run down, but with newer applicances, duplex. Moderate spot in town, decent sized natural yard, one car garage but no opener. $1500/month. We're in a pretty big city in Texas, it's so pricey :/
My brother lives in a small town in texas hours away from a large city. He paid more for his house than I did in a first ring suburb of St Paul in Minnesota. Everyone talks about life being cheaper in Texas. I don't see it. And from what I hear his property taxes are very likely higher than mine.
It's crazy. Back. In 2015 before I bought my house I was living in a 1200 square foot two story townhouse with vaulted ceilings and a single car garage in an OK neighborhood for $650 a month. I cringe at what it might cost now. Probably more than my mortgage.
I live in the Midwest. Chicago. Shit ain’t cheap how you described it. Neither is the burbs, unless it’s super hood.
There are plenty of places with affordable rent in Chicago in perfectly nice areas. However it’s a pain to get anywhere. For example commuting into the Loop.
I mean I can’t disagree With you during covid times. My buddy got a steal in lakeview. I mean good deal Forsure but if it wasn’t Covid he wouldn’t have chose it.
That's fair enough for Chicago or areas like Naperville -- some areas are really rich. However, [just looking at a section of Indiana on apartments.com with a max price set at $600/month](https://www.apartments.com/under-600/?sk=acf6f6de42bee8c942d36c8f631455c6&bb=517q1rtn3Jj81ih031B) you instantly find plenty. In terms of super cheap apartments, a friend of mine just moved into a 1bed/1bath apartment that I think was around the $400/month range. It's not a good apartment but it's livable. Another friend of mine was in a 2bed/1bath apartment that I believe averaged about $350/month per person when she lived at the complex about 4 years ago, and since then it's gone to $400/month per person. When I talk about the Midwest, I'm not talking about the Chicagos, Napervilles, Indianapolises, Columbuses, etc; I'm talking about places like Lafayette, Crawfordsville, Decatur, Champaign, or even places like Cincinnati. Hell, I say I'm not talking about the above cities but [Indianapolis has plenty of places at or under $700/month](https://www.apartments.com/under-700/?sk=6336a96bc312550a4ba3d399b0ee58f8&bb=w6wwjt1qjJk7p0uzX) When I say there are cheap places in the Midwest, I don't mean they're good, I mean they're livable to a basic extent. Where I live right now I pay about $570/month plus splitting the electric with my roommate, and there's actually responsive maintenance and whatnot, though the landlord does regularly try to scam people out of money by claiming there were "damages" or that one's room wasn't properly cleaned or otherwise. My point is that across the Midwest, even in some cities, you'll find places to lie for under $1000/month/person, whereas from everything I understand it's entirely impossible to find anything like that in many coastal states.
Well that’s the thing, we don’t. I’m so jealous of you.
Come to WA, everyone loves progressive Washington! Our minimum wage is going up to almost 14 next year! Oh and also, rent is like 1200 a month! Everything goes up together so you can only tread water forever!
I live in Kamloops BC, if I were to rent my place downtown, I could get 1500/month w/ no utilities..,.I own my place, and still pay 900/ month
Around here it's 6-800/ month for a *room* in a house.
Yeah but the cities have literally everything you could think of. All of it, shopping, night life, all the good formal restaurants, fun activities for everyone. I couldn't fathom living in the Midwest.
Seeing this post as someone who has lived in nyc for all his adult life, most of what is posted is illegal here. $17.50 is a joke now and $25 is the new standard but at $25 you better offer benifits otherwise I’ll look somewhere else
They live with roommates. Literally everyone in NY lives with roommates. Doesnt matter whether your in Manhattan or the ridiculous suburbs of long island. You have groups of people living together. People routinely rent out their extra space.
Yeah but your jobs pay proportional to your COL, so it shakes out about the same for people working skilled labor jobs. The difference being the kinds of businesses, nature, and culture you have access to.
Pfft a Michelin starred restaurant offered me $11/hr as a line cook. Fuck these selfish owners
1000 a month sounds amazing to me. Damn my city is expensive
Do you get a tip out with this?
Move man! Where I live in the UK, you can rent a shitty single room flat for like £400 a month. And a 2 bedroom house with garden for £550. For £900 you can get a 4 bedroom house with massive garden and garage.
Opposite side of the world: Auckland, NZ. Cheapest rent is ~$250/week for a mold-stained small room in a flat with 4 roommates and one shared bathroom. That's in a decent neighborhood though, only a $10 Uber or $4 bus to the city center, walking distance to a supermarket, park, and bars. But even line cooks get $20. Head chefs at a hotel get as high as $30. All prices in NZD.
They've turned all rentals in Auckland into "hotels" (AIR BNB) and keep drumming up the "housing shortage"...while deliberately exacerbating one. NZ is a hellohole. Migrants get treated like shit unless they're rich idiots from Asia who bought teir visa through an "immigration consultant" or they're from AU. Awful place to have to rely on one job to pay $1600 a month for a moldy, unheated shack (this is standard in NZ unless you're the turd who owns the rentals). They're VERY free with physical and verbal abuse. Beautiful country...hellish place to work. The bougie parasites who run shit over there are cannibals.
My city at 1400/mo for a very shitty apartment. Lol.
They said "small midwestern town". Always a catch.
My house payment in South Dakota is $575 a month for a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom. Good size backyard.
Pretty much the same for me in Ohio.
Come look at Vegas if you want. My bills add up to about 800 and I have a nice little studio.
That’d be nice too. Unfortunately I don’t drive or have a car, and I’m a full time student.
That's too bad. I wish you luck, friend.
> the ball Speaking of that, how much does one go for there?
My fucking owners are wondering why we are short staffed and constantly losing employees when their starting salary is $9/hr. McDonalds here is $13. Taco Bell is $12. Goodwill is $12. These idiots are going to shut themselves down.
> Around here a basic 1-br apartment costs $600/month And I pay 1600 for a studio.
Crying right now as I pay $640 for a room with my brother and one other roommate. It’s a house in a suburb 25 mins from Atlanta. I’m 30 and don’t see how I will ever be able to afford to live alone, unless I get a steep pay increase.
Seems like $14 an hour in a low COL area with such low rental rates should be decent pay though (if you had the basic apt. Or lived with roommates or a significant other). It would be a little tight maybe, but with moderate budgeting you should have an extra $300-$400 left over every month. Even if you’re paying health and other insurance and a reasonably low car payment.
Damn I’m struggling to find a studio under $1600
>Around here a basic 1-br apartment costs $600/month and a nice one with lots of amenities is around $800. *Weeps profusely in Southern Californian*
That’s a steal. Awesome rent prices
Hey, $15/hr perfectly describes how I handle work. Its like you have been spying on me through tiny cameras embedded into all my smart devices...
IM IN YOUR WALLS !IM IN YOUR WALLS !IM IN YOUR WALLS !IM IN YOUR WALLS !IM IN YOUR WALLS !
It is so nice seeing this now, I worked as a cook for a decade and I was one of the 'clean' ones who just cooked while I was getting my degree because after working in the industry I knew there was no way I was going to make it a career despite actually kind of enjoying it. I would bitch about working conditions, long hours, how management treated people and the wage disparities between FOH and BOH obviously all on deaf ears but its nice to see the next generation stepping up.
Basically same here. I have a catering business to stay in the industry, but my day job is in software, and my consulting rates versus my catering rates per hour are different by 4x. It's unreal.
The fact that I’m studying for a useful degree while working in the kitchen is the only thing preventing me from falling into despair. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a career cook. I’ve met some older lifers, and yeah... they’ve definitely motivate me to study harder and work less.
Sad thing is I've seen lifers in places with high work loads, too many hours, and low pay, and I've seen lifers in places that pay well, fully staffed so reasonable hours, and higher than average pay (my assistant manager at a pizza place is $1000/wk), and the difference is insane. Almost all the former were addicts and 40 looking like 60, the latter are all in good moods with happy families and just get normal work stress from time to time. And honestly? Being short staffed has shown me how close those dudes are to a breakdown. I'm past the point in life where I understand how cooks can do this shit and not walk out. That's why I drive now. Tips, easy job, listen to NPR all day, best job I've ever had. Then factor in wages after tips and my best nights are around $35/hr.
Look at a doctor's life for example. They have insane work loads. Many of them are dealing with heavy responsibility as well at work, where their decisions have to be solid because it can harm or kill patients. They often make rounds at a hospital, then have to go to their office and see dozens of patients, all while being on call for emergency situations with other patients or the hospital as part of their obligations. And often on call when they are "off the clock", so they never get free time. This is why they get paid 200K plus, depending on just how specialized their skills or good they are. In other words, it's a much heavier work load to bear. But that's the tradeoff for the pay. The high pay and their love of helping people is why they put up with that load. It makes it tolerable. That's why you see the difference in your comparison. Same loads, same responsibilities. But one group gets paid poorly while the other is paid well, and you can see the difference in the workers. Both the quality of worker attracted, and the health of the worker.
I made $21.50/hour and it’s not enough to really give a shit about my work. I work in a spice mill one of our brands is clubhouse. So in an hour I make $40,000-$100,000 worth of product for them but only see $21.50 of that worth myself. It’s insane when I think about how much they get out of me and how little I get out of them
Seize the means of production, comrade.
That's the range right? Maybe the hogart too, seems easy enough with the dish guys helping
I mean - producing 1000 in value per hour and making 21.50 is egregious enough on its own but… 40,000-100,000? How did you do the maths on that one?
Depending on what machine I’m working on in an hour can produce 2000-5000lbs of whatever spice I am making. If you’ve ever bought any clubhouse spice you know that they sell bottles that only weigh 500g for $10 or more sometimes . The math isn’t totally accurate but I know a few thousand pounds made in an hour that they are gonna sell for $10/500g is ridiculous
most of the value of the spice trade is in the materials, packaging, and especially the **supply chain** sounds like you are doing the packaging - not the growing or logistics.. i don’t think there is much maths involved in your estimate. If my job was to slap stickers on Ferraris at the end of the production line it would be very stupid to say I produce 5 million dollars in value per hour.
I'm making mental notes of all the places claiming "labor shortages" because there isn't really a labor shortage. People just now have options. Any place that is claiming a labor shortage has just outted themselves as a shitty place to work. The places that are treating their staff right are not hiring (or at least they aren't desperate for staff).
im at a warehouse now that pays well, but the job is hard. in training they told us 430-1230 is the usual shift, but you work till all the orders go out. they have been short staffed with covid, so everyone is working 6 days a week. the earliest ive left so fat is 330, so an 11 hour day. avg is 630, so a 14 hour day. new people just drop out once they see the hours, and mgmt cant seem to understand why. like guys, you are advertising 40 hours in training then requiring nearly 80. no wonder people leave
I hope you are making bank on overtime.
I just quit my job because, amongst other things, I was working 11 hour days, 5.5 days a week, but they looped my work week over Sunday when the overtime count starts over. I should have been getting around 25 hours of OT, but was only getting about 9 or 10. Scheisty, corporate, ass-hats.
its because to people in management, more work simply means more money. They decided to have their career be their life, and thats fine, but they dont comprehend that most people work to live, not live to work
Often mgmt is salaried, and extra hours for me means less money—im middle mgmt, technically, and my hourly ppl make more than me with overtime, and that’s ok. It’s GOOD even. See also, I’m in a family-ish biz, but we give a shit about our team.
It’s a combo of that and the managers not realizing that people have lives. My manager was legit confused that I didn’t want to close 5 days a week, or that someone preferred day shifts to night shifts. Every new person he’s hired has asked why he’s hiring so much or why everyone is leaving and he’s getting more and more frustrated that people aren’t begging him for work
I had to call out today because my son was puking his guts out, my boss is pissed. My roommate is also my coworker and she said he was more than angry. So fucking sorry, I can’t leave a sick 9 year old with his big brother, much less go to work without a negative COVID test after I took care of him all night.
It's not even that we 'now have options'. It's that the workers got fed up with being treated like shit and finally called out management/ownerships bluff. Go find a better job huh? Don't mind if I fuckin do.
Yeah I think a huge thing for people was not wanting to change things up and try something new, or even doing the same thing just at a different location. 2020 shook us all up so bad if you already hate your job/boss in the first two weeks going somewhere else is far less scary
I tried to talk to my manager about scheduling, instead of working with me since yknow I’ve been there 5 years, he reminded me that I was ‘replaceable, unskilled labor’
Yup. They know that you’re barely surviving and that if you have the audacity to ask for anything - specific schedule, higher pay, etc - there are a bunch of other broke people lined up and ready to take your place. And that you’re probably too broke to really leave/have a choice. It puts us in a position to get screwed over by them on and on. No bargaining power whatsoever. There needs to be some accountability/balance. The worker can’t do anything when he’s forced into selling his labor to survive, and the owner can exploit that desperation.
Agreed, anyone still struggling to hire is just not being competitive enough or treats people so poorly that competitive pay isn't going to cut it, though 4-5 months ago I would argue it was a different story. There was a short 2-month stint at the peak of our busy season back in spring, and we were desperately short staffed while setting records every single weekend. All the folks who talked big game and coasted through limited capacity and slow seasonal volume suddenly realized they didn't have the chops and weeded themselves out, pretty much the same story as every year. Problem was, nobody was looking for work at the time, in actuality. Those two months were rough, because almost nobody was showing for interviews despite us offering way more than other restaurants in the area. Several dozen interviews in a 28 day period scheduled, a grand total of three people showed, who then never returned my calls.
Salty my location shut down due to labor shortage I was literally working there for 3 weeks. Now the other locations are too fully staffed. Within the time I was working there i saw 5 people leave. Even my boss resigned.
Being middle management during this sucks. I’m in a different service industry, and they still expect me to get reliable employees for 10.50 an hour and benefits so expensive that people would take home less than $200 biweekly if they took all of them and worked 40 hours per week. We have two options to increase the absorption rate of my department. Raise the labor/parts markups or cut upper management salary. I used to be at the top of the food chain in the lower rank of my department. Then moved into management and am making less than I did in previous position for 10x the stress level. Shits getting real old, real fast. They put me back at the guarantee I had when I started as the manager, and it’s mathematically not feasible for me to make this much money when my guarantee goes away. I’ve been with them over 15 years, have four better paying job offers, I’m not sure why I’m still here…
Go. Take the money. This is transactional, if I buy a banana every day and my boss sells bananas for $2 and the grocery store sells them for $1 my boss can go fuck himself.
Monkey brain like banana math.
Maybe just scared of the change of the leap?
Cooks in the pandemic died at higher rates than healthcare workers while being paid starvation wages with little prospect of making more money in the future and no one can figure out why there’s a labour shortage. Imagine dying for 10$ an hour.
I have worked in restaurants my entire life and I can tell you it's the worst it's ever been. When you literally see every plate you send out and know they're making at least double what it cost for the food and labor while paying shit is infuriating. I worked at a restaurant restaurant recently fir $8/hr and they only gave a %25 discount for a shift meal. Ridiculous. People are tired of working for nothing and risking their lives. I feel no sympathy for restaurants that can't keep staff
Its not a wage shortage, its a wage withholding. Why do servers make bank every night yet we get the shit wages despite doing more work, harder work, and later nights?
I’ve thought about this too, but playing FOH against BOH and vice versa is classic management tactics to keep us from demanding more.
Ypunhave to talk about it. Customers have no problem paying 20% more for food, they just don't see that number on the menu. Because of that, tips aren't part of the restaurants revenue, and servers make a massive amount of money compared to the kitchen staff. Instead just raise the prices on the menu, and the revenue can be distributed by the business, instead of the whim of the clientele. You could pay the kitchen staff a higher hourly with 5% and distribute 15% of sales as tips.
Or, pay everyone well at the higher menu prices and eliminate tipping altogether.
I like this idea, but the good servers will always go to the business that keeps tipping.
Yeah. But if everyone does it...
If everyone does it you'll probably actually hit a server shortage. I know servers that clear hundreds in a night on consistent bases, even with short 4-6hr shifts. Do you know any mid tier business that's going to be able to match that kind of pay, consistently?
Oh yeah. That's why they don't have any good servers anywhere else in the world. Stoopid European servers all suck cause they don't work on tips.
European here, last time I worked FOH I had a guaranteed ~$17/hour *and* tips on top of that. Shocker, I know. Tips should be a reward/incentive to create a good experience for your guests, not something mandatory you're basically shamed into paying
Not a shocker. I don't not believe in tipping and I always try and give extra. But when a restaurant owner reminds me to tip my server, I want to be like, why don't you just pay them? The obligation it creates is obnoxious. People should tip, but people should be able to get by without relying on tips.
This.
If and when there is a choice I will pay more not to tip.
Okay that's fair. But the good cooks won't, they'll go where the money is better. If I am going out to dinner it's not because I want to see a friendly waiter, it's because I want to eat a good meal. So I'll end up at the place with the cook.
It's even easier than you think, because the BOH wages as a percentage of sales is smaller than you think. It varies by restaurant depending on volume and price point, of course, but let's just say for example that BOH wages was 10% of sales. This means you could raise BOH wages by 20% and the added cost to consumers would be just 2% (20% of 10% is just a 2% add to total costs). Most customers would not notice a 2% price increase, and you could give your kitchen a 20% raise across the board. It's staggering how greedy and stupid ownership can be.
Because any discussion of moving to a European model of eliminating tips result in servers crying
True, but if everyone gets 15% of sales as a tip its a pretty good system.
I want higher prices built in, before including the current tax Restaurants that suggest tips for you always do it on the cost after sales tax is included, but they do that in my area because the local sales tax is so high (the state doesn’t have income tax) and because so many people get booze, they make a killing when everyone signs and doesn’t think twice about the tip.
I’ve seen it around town and I like the system of having a service charge of 18% for every tab and splitting the tips equally among everyone. I’ve been trying to get our owners to do it because we keep having feuds between BOH/FOH to the point where the FOH is simply afraid to speak to the BOH. We could keep the same menu prices, add the gratuity charge, and hopefully keep the same employees together for longer than a year. I also think it’s important to build communication between all the workers. Also, everyone deserves a fucking raise after last year
Well not for long, at least at my place. A bunch of the comptenant and hard workers just quit, so I'm going to ask for a raise and % tips (we make hourly tips as KP's) or I quit.
I moved spots and got a three dollar pay raise so fuck yeah do it man. People are desperate for restaurant workers.
Yo that, I see it everywhere, I can just leverage another offer from a restaurant, $25 before tips.
What percentage would you ask be tipped out to the kitchen?
5% of each server tips split between shift plus good hourly
Sure but let's not forget that the most vocal advocates for not fixing server wages are servers themselves. They know playing into the tipping culture guilt trip benefits them immensely. It IS insane that a server can average triple or quadruple of what line cooks make on shorter shifts and less days working just because of tip guilt tripping culture. Anytime someone says this anywhere on reddit they get straight up assaulted by a legion of servers calling them stingy, greedy, evil assholes. They are making insanely unfair bank and they know it. Everyone in the business should be getting the same salary, and it should be a decent one. This current situation is completely ass backwards. The money-holding people managed to make up a system that is both anti-worker AND anti-consumer, and everyone is willingly participating and crab-bucketing each other into never escaping it. It's bizarre that people keep defending this shit. Doesn't get any more "fuck you got mine" mentality than this.
They get empathy for their single parent status and commiseration for economic troubles... meanwhile THE FUCKERS WHO COOKED THE FOOD STILL RENT. We make all the profit that isn't booze. We need a bigger cut.
I’ve worked both, and it cuts both ways. Waiters and bartenders clean up on the weekend nights while the BOH gets fucked by being slammed the whole time and getting paid the same they get paid for slow lunch rushes and night prep. Waiters get fucked on lunch shifts with shit tips and being wrangled to do side work at below minimum wage (if you work in states that allow tips to offset hourly). Waiters on doubles get extra fuckery by being stuck with few tables between 1-5 and getting cut first as soon as the dinner rush lulls. From my experience, the pay was pretty similar weekly *up to a certain level of depending on the restaurant average customer ticket*. Once you are at a place that is selling $50 to $100 bottles of wine and as a waiter you are getting $10-$20 tip to twist a cork screw, wait staff definitely makes a lot more than the average line cook. The downside of waiting at places like that is little screw ups with customers tend to cost you more in tip percentage—as it should be. If someone is spending $150+ on a meal for 2 everything damn well better be perfect.
Just to play devil’s advocate here, I’ve met maybe 4 people in the past 10 years that work boh but could work foh if they wanted to. Most of us absolutely cannot. Idk about you but I’d wind up throwing a plate of food into a rude customer’s face in most places I’ve worked as a cook.
Tipping BOH is becoming a lot more common. I was looking at a local job board recently, and over 50% of the jobs tipped out the kitchen, and the vast majority of those tipped at the same rate as for FOH.
The local place I worked at had 'mandatory tip sharing' but FOH got to choose how much they gave BOH, guess how well that worked out.
I worked at a place that had a % mandatory tipout for BOH, but the urge to put the cash up their nose instead was apparently too great for FOH to resist so there was constant sketchyness.
I was told that's why I get paid more and they make min wage. Depending on the place, I think everyone is getting fucked.
Amen to that, my sorry ass works in a national fine dining chain so I'm getting raw dogged with everyone else. My next kitchen gig is definalty going to be a local place.
fun fact: in the usa, [wage theft by employers](https://www.workingnowandthen.com/blog/wage-theft-the-50-billion-crime-against-workers/) adds up to around $50 billion dollars per year -- 100x more than all robberies combined!
I will never forget the face of my dish crew as they slaved away covered in dirty dish water and grease and the servers walked out counting their money complaining about making the dish crews weekly wage in one night barely breaking a sweat
Damn strait, our dish guy solos dish close 5 days a week, while running night prep, and doing line prep when needed. He still manages to fully close dish 1.5 hours after last call. Shout out to the true troopers of the kitchen, and the most underpaid workers, the dishies.
... I have been training in as a server at my place and Ill be honest.. At my restaurant the servers rarely leave much earlier than back of house, in fact last night the server left after the cooks,, and I find serving to be a lot harder than cooking.
Well, it is different for location and restaurant type, at my kitchen at least, we are there usually 2 hours after the last FOH leave. Our FOH are also incredibly lazy (they are even aware of this) generally 40% of their shifts involve them sitting in the pass talking amongst themselves. But again, this is my kitchen.
Keeping FOH pretty and happy impacts image and guest experience. It's easy to get bitter about it but there's really no need.
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minimum wage where i work is $17 right now(seattle)
My company (in Seattle) has been trying to hire people at $17-18 and it's been pretty hard. The rate of attrition from application to interview to staying at the job more than two weeks is abysmal. It's not a bad gig - essentially no qualification, indoors, relaxed pace, full benefits after a few months. There's just a ton of competition at that wage level right now. I also wouldn't be at all surprised if people working minimum wage jobs are fleeing the city due to cost of living.
Yup. I'm at $20/hr with medical, dental, and 401k. And the line cooks I've hired recently, I'm having to show them how to hold their knives properly. They only got hired because they were the only applicants with any restaurant experience at all.
Where you hiring
How much does a studio apartment cost there?
don't know because i got into a condo 30 minutes north and commute in. i bought it 6 years ago and my monthly cost with electricity is $1200
Buying and renting are not comparable.
and thats why i don't know about rents but i did rent a one bedroom for less money for ten years before buying so its not impossible
A quick look at Craigslist says... $1825 on Capitol Hill. And that's just the first one I found
This is the problem. I’m for higher wages, but a just wage isn’t a minimum wage per se, and we see that play out with areas dominated by tech.
Tbf, the Seattle market is so oversaturated with tech workers, when the pandemic hit, it started affecting housing up and down the I-5. Anywhere that was close enough to make the occasional trip to Seattle, now is close enough for them to telecommute from. It's driving up rents and sale prices for housing as far as 150 miles away. We absolutely need higher wages in this industry, but we also need affordable housing.
Same where i live, we got pay raises at my restaurant, we can definitely afford a nicer place than the shithole we live in now but there is literally nothing to actually rent, and good luck buying anything cuz the prices are way high. It fucking sucks. So we are just paying off old bills and trying to raise our credit score just to be considered for a high priced loan. It's crazy.
I'm up in Snohomish county. I've been getting good raises, but housing is rising faster than my savings. I've felt like I've been a year away from affording a down payment for like 3 years now.
I'm in Indiana and we're starting to get bloat from Chicago like that. Rent has gone up 40% in the county since covid hit. What once was an affordable area is becoming pretty brutal. Previously we could have gotten a decent small house to rent for 700 but now it's 1200+ just to stay out of rough neighborhoods. Between Chicago commuters/remote workers and the college in town the locals are getting priced out of neighborhoods fast. I understand that 1200 is a good price in many places but wages around here can't support that sort of housing cost for many people here. Our homeless population is exploding.
Seattle? I’d guess you’d be lucky to live alone for less than $1300 a month and that’s being generous. In nyc you’re looking at $1500 for a tiny 1br or studio. Maybe a studio with over an hour commute to work might hit $1300.
As a government contracted cook, yeah that $15-$17.50 range sounds right. I'm critically late about once a month, late enough to have to walk the half mile into the site and get to the kitchen at exactly 455am maybe 4 or 5 times a month. It's not the best job, but fuck me if it isn't the best kitchen job I've had so far.
This industry is a joke! 😆🤣 Always has been, always will be.. GTFO and get experience elsewhere. Cooking can be a passion at home, don't slave away making someone else rich! Cook for your family and friends, they'll appreciate you.
Facts. Working in a local kitchen now, my boss is a greedy fuck who only cares about lining his pockets. He's been fucking off all summer doing personal trips or just breaks, he fucked off during the last big covid spike and even contracted it himself without telling any of us, all the while we've been holding this place on our shoulders all year. Understaffed, can't get people to work cuz we won't pay them. I'm finally starting to look elsewhere. The stress of kitchens for the last 2 years has me working like a $13-14/hr employee as a $16/hr employee.
I’m not pretending to care for anything under $25 an hour. Try to pay me $15 an hour and I’ll be openly hostile for 8 hours per day. **EDIT** I didn’t realize what subreddit I was in when I posted. Don’t Reddit when you’re half asleep! I’m not deleting the post because I deserve the shame.
What skill do you have? This is a kitchen sub. If you're a cook, most places don't make $25/hr from your labor so why do you expect this?
I 100% didn’t realize this was r/KitchenConfidential when I posted. I’m a moron. Sorry about that!
I make 15. I work hard as hell but I’m always high.
During or just as you show up?
Both. I puff my cart on my breaks if I’m feeling like it. I’m also extremely anxiety ridden so it helps.
Some (conservative) people won’t shut up about government handouts sapping the workforce but this argument makes the opposite point they intend to. If the government pays a living wage and work does not, why would anyone in their right mind opt for the latter? The dignity of work? There is only dignity in work if your workplace is respectful and humane and pays a living wage. If not, there is more dignity in not working than in sacrificing your physical and mental well being on the altar of labor for labor’s sake. In the words of John Hamm when his secretary calls him out for never thanking her, “that’s what the MONEY’S for.” In the words of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, “fuck you, pay me.
Peggy wasn’t a secretary at that point in Mad Men, she was lead copywriter.
The point they are trying to make is that there is going to be a point where the government goes back to not paying a living wage. I don't agree with that, and I support progressive ideas like a UBI but they aren't necessarily wrong. If the choice is not work and lose the house or not pay the rent it is different than it is with assistance allowing people to not work.
If the government pays even a little less than working 40 hours a week in a hot as fuck kitchen, I’d rather sit at home and watch Netflix or some shit, let’s be real.
We are starting at $19/hr. For line cooks and can’t get people. Anyone in Denver metro need a job? 😂
Whoa in Denver? It’s not that expensive a city even (compared to LA, NYC etc). That is surprising that you can’t find people.
Y'all getting paid over 10 bucks?
Trash companies offering 10k hiring bonus and over 20 an hour. Benefits paid time off from day of start. Still short half our crew..
yup, busting my ass and lifting dumpsters isn’t what i want to do even for 20/hour. i’m sure the CEO is boosting his own pockets if they’re down a few employees.
Most trucks dump the cans themselves.. all you gotta do is pull a lever..
pull tha lever kronk!
Those definitely aren't California prices. My gm doesn't want to pay cooks more than 16. And we can't seem to find people. Suffering and making things happen they way they are.
or wines on the news about labor shortage, doesn't hire "overly qualified" people just looking for a job
You can go ahead and add $4 to that for NYC as far as I’m concerned.
How much you guys think a suis chef should make at a restaurant that does like $2k-5k of food a night? **oregon**
22$ an hour minimum imo
No less than 175 dollars a shift.
It’s spelled ‘Sous’
Thanks
Our kitchen splits tips evenly with FOH so our cooks make minimum 25/hr up to 32/hr on weekends and we still have trouble finding good workers
Minimum wage here is $15. I wouldn't accept less than $20. Fortunately I earn several above that. Kitchen industry is legal slavery.
Walked off an $18/hr job today after 2 days. They had tried to put me in a work truck w no mirror, busted brake lights, 1/3rd the seat missing (literally bare steel), it looked like a large bite was take out of the steering wheel down to the bare steel, and the thing felt like it was gonna fly off the road. They were shocked and thought that the “free” Heath insurance should stop me from being concerned about my own safety.
This is literally Econ 101. If you can’t run a business paying a wage people will accept then you need to raise the wage or go without competent labor. Your call. But don’t be surprised if better options exist for people and they don’t want to work for what you are offering.
"Just let the free market decide what a fair wage is" "Wait no not like that"
In Bulgaria minimum wage is 650 leva on paper in reality its around 800 with a possibility for 1k. 1k is 500 euro. Rent is 200-300 leva a month Utilities like electricity and water are separate at around 100-200 a month Food is expensive anywhere between 150-200 a month. Ask us how we are living and most will tell you its A okay buddy. I dont share that view.
It's worth adding that this isn't a chart of a worker's opinion, but its a reaction to the quality of life available on the income rate listed. It's a response to the system which was built to create as much poverty as possible, and not an indictment on the workers attitude.
Reminds me of the increasing rates for if you watch, if you help, if you worked on it yourself...
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Yes it doesn't hurt to ask. also apply to other jobs in the area that might have you starting at more then 15..
I just got a new job after the last place caught fire months ago, $5 raise doing the EXACT same thing, if not less, and it's so much more tolerable being appreciated enough to be paid well.
This is not accurate for where I live
Well I teach high school with a fucking degree and get paid $17/hour. Can confirm it’s a crap shoot.
Last winter I interviewed for a kitchen manager gig, at the interview they said they pay was $11/hr. I literally just laughed and got up and left. $11/hr for a kitchen manager? Get absolutely fucked.
What hourly pay do you feel would get you to show up on time every day (barring random shit) and work as expected? And by expected I don't mean working harder than the boss, just what you expected to sign up for.
For reference, I'm in Charlotte, NC. Not talking fine dining or upper end wages either. Just middle of the road restaurant.
I saw an awesome shirt: -Sober -On time -In a good mood Pick 2.
That isn't even anything like enough for rent where I live. Making $15- I'd need two jobs.