Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. – Nancy Ward
That’s the second straight time we’ve quoted my unique and fascinating mother.
I’m sure she wasn’t the saying’s progenitor, but she certainly said it often enough that it may as well have been her. And it would pay (pun intended) for those Chicago progressive politicians and their giddy food server constituents to heed her warning, because forcing bars and restaurants to pay minimum wage will invoke all manner of unintended consequences – none of them good.
If all goes according to plan, and it likely will, The City That Doesn’t Work will become the largest U.S. municipality to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped employees in early October. That means those same bars and grills will be required to pay their servers the going $15.80 minimum wage rate by 2028, which will send their core labor costs skyrocketing by a whopping 66 percent.
And that burden will be unsustainable for an industry that survives on the slimmest of margins as evidenced by an astounding 80 percent restaurant failure rate by their fifth year.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, his city council minions, and worker advocacy groups hailed this fiver-year plan as “what’s just, what’s right and what’s needed,” claiming the new measure will lead to earning predictability for tipped workers, an increase in spending power, and reduced industry turnover.
No, it won’t! As a number of smart servers told those same city council members, it will have the entirely opposite effect.
First, it will hasten the demise of the majority of already-beat-down-by-COVID Chicago restaurants that are barely making it. They won’t be able to handle the additional stress of increased labor costs and a slew of servers will become jobless as a result.
Then, the iterations that do survive will be forced to pass the new operating expenses along to their customers which will have some eminently predictable deleterious effects. Diners will simply cross the border into Evanston, Oak Park, or Blue Island for a more reasonably priced meal.
Just like the Batavia single-use bag tax, this is the kind of economic initiative that only works if the entire state is onboard. (For reference purposes, I haven’t shopped in Batavia since their July 1 ten-cent per shopping bag tax was implemented. If I want something from Target or Kohl’s I order it online with free shipping.)
The more ominous consequence for servers is the increased menu price increases combined with servers making the minimum wage means that people will stop tipping. And we all know they will. This is the “be careful what you wish for part.”
Because I can already hear the baseless criticisms, unless the service is truly terrible, I rarely tip below 20 percent. Beyond an order mistake, I’ve never as much as complained to a server – I’ll appropriately take it up with management instead. And, as in the case of a recent CPK waiter, after a fascinating discussion on the vagaries of Major League Baseball, I tipped him 20 bucks on a $40 bill.
It’s quite simple. If you make an effort to make my dining experience that much better, then I’ll make your financial experience equally better. Despite the difficulties involved in ANY JOB, good servers figure out how to turn the prospect into an art form. But if you’re going to make $16 an hour, then tipping is, literally, off the table.
One savvy long-time server similarly warned the city council’s workforce committee about how workers would lose out on tips and more,
With this change we will all be working harder than ever, but will see a huge pay cut. I fear a mass exodus of service workers, including myself, who no longer want to subject themselves to the difficulty of this work for less pay. I love the idea of tips on top of minimum wage, but I can almost guarantee that’s not going to happen.”
And I completely agree with her “mass exodus” theory. It won’t happen right away, but it will happen.
Which brings us to our third issue, bad service. Anyone who’s ever eaten in a Paris, France, or Munich, Germany, restaurant as I have, will readily attest that non-tipped servers don’t give a flying you-know-what about their customers because they don’t have to give a flying you-know-what about them. They get paid regardless. It was an incredible culture shock to experience the vast difference between European and U.S. restaurants.
As if the French weren’t bad enough already.
As absurdly brutal as the American public can be on waiters or waitresses, just wait until they don’t have to rely on tips. “Customer service” is already a fascinating post-COVID oxymoron.
While everyone deserves respect, let’s not forget that being a server at the majority of restaurants was always intended to be an entry level position. C’mon! A twelve-year-old with a pen and a piece of paper can do the job. How do I know this, I was briefly a waiter in my teens.
In the end, this is just another lap in the progressive race to mediocrity where no one is allowed to feel bad because they suck at something, or have to take responsibility for their poor choices. Barring some overriding news, that dash to the least common denominator is exactly what we’ll cover next Thursday.
Meanwhile, you gotta give progressives, and particularly the Chicago variety, kudos for their single-minded propensity to make things worse. It takes real talent to be that consistent.
