Almalieque wrote:
And this is why you continually fail to understand. It makes perfect sense, you just don't understand. It's not "missing" the point, it's the entire point.
It's missing the point because people do exactly that which you insist they don't do. They do it all the time. Repeatedly insisting that people don't take into account the fact that they'll be paying a tip when deciding whether to dine out, or what to order when they do doesn't change the fact that most people do. You may be the one unique snowflake who doesn't, but that doesn't make you right, or me wrong.
Most people don't do what you're saying they do. It's that simple.
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We first decide on what we want to buy.
Yup. And part of that decision is looking at the cost of items on the menu, running it through our automatic "real cost" generator and deciding if it's worth the cost. No one looks at a menu, sees that the steak is $25 and says "I can afford to spend $25, so I'll order the steak!". People assume that on top of that $25 will be another $5 for a drink, and another $2.50 for tax and another $5 for tip. They know automatically that the real cost of the meal will be closer to $40, not the $25 on the menu. If they're not willing to spend $40 for a steak dinner, they'll order something less expensive (like perhaps the chicken).
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What we actually tip the waiter is based on their service.
But unless you are a jerk, it's expressed as a percentage of the meal cost. So you might decide that good service gets 15%, great service gets 20%, and mediocre service gets 10%. Regardless, that calculation is always going to be a function of the base cost of the meal itself. Only a complete idiot thinks that good service gets $5, great gets $10, and lousy gets nothing. Cause you'll be pissing folks off dropping your $5 tip on a $100 bill.
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Just because my meal cost twice as much as yours, doesn't mean that the waiter did twice the amount of work. So, why should that waiter get paid more for doing the same amount of work? The % is a rule of thumb with the assumption that the more money that you're spending, the MORE food that you are ordering. That isn't always the case.
I suspect that you're one of those cheapskates who don't tip properly. Which I suppose explains why you continue to insist that tipping has nothing to do with the meal itself. You're justifying your crappy tipping by telling yourself you're tipping for the service and not the meal, so your tip shouldn't reflect the meal price. It all kinda makes sense now.
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since the tip is based on the service of the waiter, we do not declare a meal with a good value, "over priced", because of a tip. You can tip nothing and just leave if you wanted to be a douche. Those are two completely different prices.
Yup. Makes perfect sense now.
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I'm referring to people who know how to budget their money. WTF would you go to a restaurant to buy a meal that you can't afford with tax and a proper tip?
You've got it backwards. I'm saying that people who can easily afford anything on the menu don't ignore the relative costs of things when making choices. They don't just think "I can afford $50 for a steak" and order the steak. They think "Is the steak at this restaurant really worth $50?" and/or "Do I feel like spending $50 for a steak dinner?". I have repeatedly told you that it's not about what people can afford, but whether they think the price is worth the meal they're going to get. And that assessment is going to include the full cost, which will include the tax and tip.
I keep explaining this to you, but you keep going back to this bizarre idea about people not being able to afford the meal. That's not it at all.
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Financially aware people primarily go to restaurants that serve food in their desired price range.
Yes. And that desired price range includes the total cost of the meal, which includes tax and tip. If I prefer to drop about $50 on dinner when I go out, I'll go to a restaurant where I estimate the entire cost of the meal, including appetizers, drinks, desert, tax, tip, etc will cost about $50. Because that's my target range. And if there's a selection of things on the menu, and some will push that total cost outside my desired range, I'm more likely to order something else instead.
The point being that if you increase all the prices on the menu by some set amount to account for higher wages for your waitstaff, it will push the cost of your meals outside that range for some people who might otherwise eat dinner at your restaurant. Again, it's simple supply vs demand.
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They also budget their money well enough that if for some reason, it costs a few dollars more than expected, they can account for that somewhere else or just pay for it with no issues. This is all because they picked a restaurant within their price range. The average person is not going to spend $50+ at Denny's for one meal nor spend $15+ at McDonald's for one meal.
Yeah. You have no clue how "financially aware people" do things. Seriously. I haven't sweated the cost of anything I've purchased for a decade or more, and certainly not the cost of a dinner bill. But that does not mean that I don't look at the prices on the menu and decide if the meal is worth the price. You're still kinda stuck on the idea of what someone can afford and failing to get that people who can easily afford to eat anywhere they want still think in terms of cost vs value. They can afford more things because they don't base what they spend on what they can afford.
This is a hard concept for most people to grasp because most people never step outside the assumption of increasing consumption to equal (or even exceed) income.
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Why you decide to eat outside of your price range is beyond me.
Yeah, still completely missing the point. I may make the decision to order one dish over another at a restaurant because one is $5 more than I think it's probably worth. I don't make that decision because I can't afford to spend the extra $5, but because
I don't think that dish is worth the amount being asked. Not sure why I have to keep explaining this to you over and over, but there you go.
If you go into a restaurant, and the NY strip is $40, and the chicken salad is $35, you'd be right to think the chicken salad would have to be some amazing salad to be worth $35 (Or the NY strip is particularly terrible). It has nothing to do with the final price, or whether you can afford it, but simply an assessment of the relative value of things on the menu. Similarly, if you go to restaurant A and they are charging $40 for NY strip, and restaurant B is charging $60, unless there's something significantly better about restaurant B (the decor, service, or food) to justify the price, you'll probably go to restaurant A instead. If the only difference is that restaurant B pays their waitstaff a higher wage and all their dishes are similarly higher priced, and the service is otherwise identical, decor is the same, both expect a tip, and food is the same, I'll be going to restaurant A instead. Only an idiot would choose differently.
Edited, Dec 17th 2012 8:20pm by gbaji