For a lot of years, the whole “tip economy” has not just baffled but irritated me. And for a lot of years, some people I know have ragged on me for not properly valuing unskilled menial labor, “Somebody’s got to do that work and they should be properly compensated for it.” Teaching entitled Millennials about reality-based concepts is one of the most painful things I have ever experienced and at this point in my life I’ve found that it is also the least rewarding. Turns out, reality is doing a fairly good job of it without my contributions.
We’re currently experiencing a fairly impressive awakening of the US labor force. Some are calling it “The Great Resignation.” Been there, done that but not on a scale anywhere near this one. In the 70s, the after-effects of unrestrained irrational Vietnam War spending sent the country into an economic death spiral that didn’t end until Reaganomics and the rest of the Republican delusionary dribble-down thinking was briefly replaced by Bill Clinton’s “it’s about the economy, stupid” and actual conservative fiscal policy that resulted in the only balanced national budgets since Jimmy Carter (the only other economic conservative President in that period). For 30 years of my career’s 55-year lifetime, the economy was changing, collapsing, and relocating so quickly that a 3-year employment seemed like a whole career. My kids were conditioned to start throwing away toys and saying goodbye to friends on a triennium schedule.
Musicians and other semi-skilled food service and bar laborers have long depended on tips for the majority of their income and that is an aspect of that kind of work that has grated against my pride for as long as I’ve been associated with the “entertainment” business. In fact, my billing system was partially determined by coming up with an hourly rate that would guarantee my customers did not feel the need to add a tip to my invoice. At one point around 2011 that number was as high as $225 per hour. After I retired, I volunteered to run the sound system and help out at a couple of the local venues in Red Wing. That ended, in each place, when my contribution was so disrespected that someone offered me a pittance of a tip for my work that evening. I figured that if they really needed my help, the next time they could pay me a decent wage, say $225 per hour, so that they wouldn’t have to feel sorry for me. I fuckin’ hate tipping.
With that lifelong attitude in mind, I have often voiced my opinion about unskilled laborers bitching about receiving insufficient tips for their easily-replaced or automated “work.” This bullshit has gone so far as practically requiring tips for cash register operators and fast food janitors when you pay for something at the counter. Really? You have the gall to ask for 15-25% tip for punching the keys on a math-ability-disabled cash register and handing a piece of pie across a counter? That opinion has gotten me all sorts of nasty and entertaining feedback mostly from young people who wasted lots of money getting a “higher education” at a “follow your passion” institution of con-artistry and discovered that those kinds of passion also require a lot of skill, work, commitment, and sacrifice. Who knew that a job that 99% of the population would do for free might be hyper-competitive?
So, now to this moment of the “The Great Resignation” where all sorts of people are either going back to their old jobs, back to their old offices, or looking at finding work in either the business where they worked before the COVID moment or looking for something new. There is lots of faux-conservative jabber about how “people just don’t want to work when they get that $300 Unemployment boost,” but the fact is that many (95% of) people have discovered how much time and energy they are giving to dead-end, unskilled, pointless (bullshit) jobs that don’t pay well enough to even be considered worthy of Minimum Wage protection.
This week, I discovered a couple of Facebook “Notification” flags on comments I’d made on this subject more than 2 years ago. Normally, I just clear Notifications without bothering to see who made them or what group or person they came from, but these near-ancient flags made me curious. Sure enough, they were responses to an argument we’d had about tips and tipping from exactly the kind of folks I was describing above, kids who had wasted time and money at good old MSCM, pretending to be wannabe musicians or “producers,” and working at restaurants and bars after discovering how hard that business really is. The responses could be summed up to “you are right.” These young people had followed their mildly-held passions deep into debt and the panhandling restaurant lifestyle and COVID disrupted that long enough to force them to re-evaluate their priorities. One of those newly discovered priorities turned out to be finding a sustainable and functional lifestyle and career.
This brief moment in our weird-assed economy has opened up a lot of manufacturing jobs that include old-style training and education benefits to attract labor back to work. Even in small towns like Red Wing, there are opportunities like this available to anyone willing to learn skills that actually require some study, knowledge, and pride. Once you’ve done that kind of work, going back to being a food service drone is, apparently, close to inconceivable. (I don’t know. I’ve never been tempted by food service employment, at least not since I was 13 working at the Boothill concessions in Dodge City.) If you think my opinion of the panhandling/tip-based economy is radical, you really don’t want to read the opinions of the recently converted.
