I’ve seen this a lot around here too, but I’ve taken it as a way to pay workers slightly more, so maybe a good thing?
I would prefer for them to just add the 3% to their prices, but maybe there’s a reason for them not to do that.
it’s really insane how many of them are just off the deep end with tinpot dictator syndrome. there are a few who are down to earth but sooo many who think they’re like curing cancer.
some percentage of startup founders have this same disorder but it’s a much smaller group (the involvement of VC investors probably tamps this down a lot)
I see this shit on linkedin all the time, founders who think they’re literally jesus
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we need a WHAT THE FUCK reac
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coffee shops where you need a password for the wifi
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coffee shops where you need a password for the wifi and they have it hidden somewhere you’ll never see it so you have to go up to the counter and ask like a schmuck and of course you know they’re going to tell you ITS RIGHT THERE DUMMY DIDN’T YOU SEE IT IN 2 pt TYPE IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR MENU
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At first I was like, “taking checks instead of cash or card sucks for the restaurant and this makes total sense”. Then I realized they’re talking about adding 3% to ever order at the restaurant when the could just raise prices by 3%
I do agree that when people do the whole thing about buy local support mom and pop businesses they’re not considering whether mom and pop are decent people. In my town there’s a locally owned pharmacy and a Walgreens. The owner of the locally owned shop is a Trumper who ran for school board on an anti critical race theory / anti transgender platform. I’m fine with them going out of business. Next door is a toy store run by wonderful people, I happily pay 20% more than Amazon and I think the toys are more appreciated because my son has usually seen them in the store and asked for weeks before I have an occasion to buy him something, versus seeing a picture on a web site a day before it arrives in a nondescript box.
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There are a couple restaurants around me that added “temporary inflation increase” fees onto the check at the end when inflation got bad. I guess the logic is people will spend more money if you hit them with the fee at the end. I wonder if they were stupid and they thought input prices would go back down and they could drop the fee, or they just thought nobody would notice that the temporary fee was still there two years later.
If they’re not decent people, it’s not a mom and pop business IMO. I don’t think “mom and pop business” just means a local family owned business. I think it is the kind of local family-owned business that is run with good ethics and a moral code to give back to the community. The kind of place that doesn’t hit you with a 3% surcharge at the end of the meal, that would eat the costs itself for probably longer than they should, then apologetically raise prices without trying to hide it in the corner of the menu.
I am reminded of the words of SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”
I feel like you walk into a mom and pop business and you can just feel it.
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The service charge controversy is huge in Los Angeles. Lots of restaurants adding up to 20% and still having a tip line without telling anyone ahead of time. And they’ll be like “oh just ask to have it removed and we will” so that’s fun.
I am very much in favor of every restaurant raising prices, eliminating tipping, and distributing the money more equitably among their workers. It is insane how servers make crazy money and the back of the house gets (often) minimum wage. Which ethnic/cultural groups are getting rewarded in this system, and which are getting fucked? Unfortunately they’re adding these charges, still asking for a tip, and then still paying the back of the house like shit, which sucks. And that behavior is so prevalent that even the restaurants trying to do it right are getting scorned because people are now conditioned to be angry at anything other than the old system, because they’re (mostly correctly) assuming that any change is another way for the business to screw their workers.
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My success rate with being angry at changes because they’re mostly to screw either the customers, the workers, or usually both… Batting 1.000 so far.
I got mixed feelings about the 3%, like to me it would be almost physically painful to look at a menu where the prices are all like 8.24 so I would kinda rather this than them just making it 9 dollars instead
Playing Old McDonald in a public waiting area. Get your kid some fucking headphones.
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Someone has got a leaf blower going on Thanksgiving next to my mom’s house 
That really blows.
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This is all I can ever think of when I hear a fuuuucking leaf blower:
“The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a [Ford F-150] Raptor”
At least in LA, leaf blowers aren’t used for anything other than just blowing shit from one place to another. It’s not like anyone’s bagging anything up. It’s insanity.
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They are not doing that.
To make it less obvious to the customers that they raised prices. This should be illegal.
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That can’t possibly be correct, based solely on the amount of fuel burned for those two activities.
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It definitely seems like some laws of physics were being violated there, but reading the article it looks like they are talking about the generation of certain specific compounds. Even then, it seems sus.
It’s not total emissions. It’s emissions of specifically non methane hydrocarbons. Turns out a massively optimized internal combination engine burns fuel more completely than a cheap two stroke.