Mayor raises taxes, prices go up, mayor calls it extortion by the businesses

[Loren Pechtel]

It is not uncommon in restaurants for the wait staff to bring refills and the bill shows your refills. So, the "transaction" is already being recorded.

I've never seen a refill on a bill where it wasn't charged for.

Once again, showing that you aren't thinking about.

You considered the cashier a fixed cost, adding a transaction doesn't increase the employee time needed. The only way that can be true is if you have so few transactions that your cashier--singular--is often sitting idle. Otherwise more transactions = more cashier hours = more money spent.

You are implicitly assuming that the increase in "transactions" will somehow overwhelm the current staffing model so that more hours will be needed. In other words, you assume facts not evidence.

You are implicitly assuming the opposite--that you can pile on more transactions without increasing the capacity to handle them. Any place with more than one cashier clearly has reached the point where you can't simply pile on more transactions without increasing the ability to handle them.

Assuming the additional transactions don't add up to a whole cashier's worth there will be places where there's no increase in staffing costs. There will be other places where they were forced to add another cashier despite not needing a whole additional cashier. These average out, overall you figure the cost of the additional transactions to be the cost of whatever fraction of a cashier you need to handle the volume.

 

[dismal]

I can't remember the last time I was charged for a refill for a fountain drink. Have you guys eaten out since 1985?

 

[laughing dog]

You are implicitly assuming the opposite--that you can pile on more transactions without increasing the capacity to handle them.

No. I am assuming that it very unlikely that the increase in transactions will overwhelm the existing capacity to handle them.

Any place with more than one cashier clearly has reached the point where you can't simply pile on more transactions without increasing the ability to handle them.

As a general statement, that is clearly false. One cashier might not have the capacity but the other(s) do.

 

[jonatha]

I can't remember the last time I was charged for a refill for a fountain drink. Have you guys eaten out since 1985?

When was the last time you dined in Philadelphia?

 

[dismal]

I can't remember the last time I was charged for a refill for a fountain drink. Have you guys eaten out since 1985?

When was the last time you dined in Philadelphia?

Probably around 1985.

 

[ZiprHead]

I would assume refills are taken into account in pricing the drinks whether before or after the tax.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I've never seen a refill on a bill where it wasn't charged for.

They do it at TGI Fridays sometimes. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that SOME beverages do NOT give free refills so when they print the receipt the system marks one refill down as free and the other not.

As an example: a glass of coke comes with free refills because it's a fountain drink. A bacardi and coke does not, because it comes from the bar. At the same time, some fancy iced tea of the week like a bubble tea or some funky summertime juice mix might also come from the bar even if it contains no alcohol and therefore doesn't come with free refills.

The server might bring you three cokes, a mojito and a PBR and you'd only get charged a refill in the latter two, but the receipt will -- most of the time -- show that you also got refills (which are free) for the sodas.

Yes, it's weird, but I've seen it done so many times I ALMOST started to think it was normal.

You are implicitly assuming the opposite--that you can pile on more transactions without increasing the capacity to handle them. Any place with more than one cashier clearly has reached the point where you can't simply pile on more transactions without increasing the ability to handle them.

Yes, but even in that case the cashier is still a fixed cost: if you have two cashiers than you have two cashiers, whether you have enough work for them or not. If your cashier is on the clock for 8 hours and processes 50 transactions in that time, his pay -- and the cost to your business -- is EXACTLY THE SAME as it would have been if he processed 200 transactions in the same time.

This is a point of sale issue: at restaurants this is NEVER a problem because the time between transactions is something like 10 to 15 minutes and the cashier is probably also a waiter hostess, server or assistant manager. In retail, they handle this problem by making the cashiers double as at least two other positions, so when customer demand soars at the checkout line, two other employees have to drop whatever they're doing and become cashiers. Again, they get paid the same amount whether they ring up 5 customers or 50, even if in the latter case it's just 5 customers who each come back 10 different times.

Assuming the additional transactions don't add up to a whole cashier's worth...

If the transactions don't add up to the cashier's worth, then you're simply losing money. As above: the only solution to THAT problem is not to hire a cashier in the first place and have one of your other employees run the register when needed. This is the preferred solution in businesses where the time between transactions is very high and it doesn't make financial sense to pay someone to do ONLY that.

There will be other places where they were forced to add another cashier despite not needing a whole additional cashier.

I can 100% guarantee you that you will never EVER find any business in America -- ANYWHERE -- that has ever been "forced to add another cashier" that they didn't need. You won't find such a business because any business owner stupid enough to do something like that would have gone bankrupt by the end of the quarter.

In the case of restaurants and stores, anyone who doesn't completely fail at logic is going to take an employee from any other task and have him run the second cash register during rush times and then return to his normal duties during the slowdown. Or, a manager or supervisor will come out and fire up that extra register and multi-task. It's simply easier and more efficient to have one of your existing employees temporarily change hats than it is to bring in a whole NEW person just to wear that hat for 3 and a half hours; nobody does that.

The only possible exception is a store or a restaurant that is anticipating a SUSTAINED boost to patronage because of a holiday or special event and accidentally hires too many temporary workers. That has nothing to do with the needs of the business and everything to do with the anticipation of a business boom and the need to maintain smooth operations and customer satisfaction to maximized profit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, it's weird, but I've seen it done so many times I ALMOST started to think it was normal.

Perhaps it's some sort of internal accounting thing.

You are implicitly assuming the opposite--that you can pile on more transactions without increasing the capacity to handle them. Any place with more than one cashier clearly has reached the point where you can't simply pile on more transactions without increasing the ability to handle them.

Yes, but even in that case the cashier is still a fixed cost: if you have two cashiers than you have two cashiers, whether you have enough work for them or not. If your cashier is on the clock for 8 hours and processes 50 transactions in that time, his pay -- and the cost to your business -- is EXACTLY THE SAME as it would have been if he processed 200 transactions in the same time.

You are still assuming there is sufficient slack in the system. Sometimes there will be, sometimes there won't. The fact that they have two cashiers shows that sometimes the load exceeded what one cashier can handle. That shows that the transaction load can push it to the point of needing another cashier.

This is a point of sale issue: at restaurants this is NEVER a problem because the time between transactions is something like 10 to 15 minutes and the cashier is probably also a waiter hostess, server or assistant manager. In retail, they handle this problem by making the cashiers double as at least two other positions, so when customer demand soars at the checkout line, two other employees have to drop whatever they're doing and become cashiers. Again, they get paid the same amount whether they ring up 5 customers or 50, even if in the latter case it's just 5 customers who each come back 10 different times.

Do they have more than one person filling these roles? If so it's already shown that the load exceeds what one person can do.

Assuming the additional transactions don't add up to a whole cashier's worth...

If the transactions don't add up to the cashier's worth, then you're simply losing money. As above: the only solution to THAT problem is not to hire a cashier in the first place and have one of your other employees run the register when needed. This is the preferred solution in businesses where the time between transactions is very high and it doesn't make financial sense to pay someone to do ONLY that.

Now it's not only an infinite pool of profit but an infinite ability to add duties to your workers.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You are still assuming there is sufficient slack in the system.

The system is DESIGNED to have slack, LP. That's the whole reason why "cashiers" are even a thing (they're not REALLY, but more on that later): so that people don't HAVE to drop whatever they're doing and process a transaction every time a customer buys something. A business run by a single person who manages the entire store completely by himself (say, 7/11 or a gas station food mart) has no slack whatsoever: he has X number of tasks to perform and Y number of customers to ring up. The customer's are a constantly shifting variable, so if he gets alot of customers in the day it takes him longer to do all the OTHER things he has to do other than run the cash register. If, on the other hand, he hires a cashier to work an eight hour shift, then for those eight hours he is free to focus on all other tasks involved in running his store. He MIGHT, if things get to busy, open up a second register until the rush slows down, but the difference between "normal operations" and "boom period" is called "slack" and it is EXACTLY what is accomplished by hiring a cashier in the first place.

The fact that they have two cashiers shows that sometimes the load exceeded what one cashier can handle.

No, it shows that their manager is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand how to delegate responsibilities. It's simple: if the load DOESN'T exceed what one cashier can handle, then you have one cashier go do something else.

Do they have more than one person filling these roles?

Holy shit, you've never worked retail before in your life, have you? Consider yourself blessed -- truly blessed -- that you can even ASK this sort of question!

Let me put it like this: the term "cashier" has actually become a colloquialism, because very few businesses actually have anyone on their staff that fits this role. It is, if anything, a sub-category among five or six other duties any given employee might have. When I worked at Walgreens ten years ago, for example, all the line employees were called "Service Clerks." Well ALL had a login at the register, we were ALL responsible for facing and organizing aisles, we were ALL responsible for cleaning and closing, and we were ALL responsible for overstock, loading and unloading inventory, cleaning the bathrooms and cleaning the offices. Hell, the fucking managers managed to get us to do half of THEIR work too when we didn't look busy enough. I wound up having to rotate stock in the refrigerator section to put the milk/eggs/cheese with the nearest expiration date at the front of the display. A fifteen minute task that wound up taking 40 minutes because I kept getting interrupted when somebody called IC3 (which means "more than three people in the line, so drop whatever you're doing and open the second register"). If there are no customers in the store at all, NOBODY is at the register, everyone's facing, cleaning, rotating stock or helping with inventory.

The cashiers at your local grocery store have at least three other jobs besides running that cash register. When volume gets low enough, you'll see one or two of them close their lane and disappear. They're not going off to take a nap, they're actually going off and running the entire rest of the store.

If so it's already shown that the load exceeds what one person can do.

The load ALWAYS exceeds what one person can do. The thing is, different loads come into play at different times. If it takes 5 people to clean the store at closing time, 5 people to face the aisles all day, 5 people to keep the stock rotated, 5 people to run the cash registers, and 5 people to unload the truck on tote day every thursday, how many employees do you hire?

Answer: 5. For the simple reason that none of those tasks have to be done at the SAME TIME. You get the same five employees to do all of them, and then you pay them a shit wage to do it all and leave them just on the ragged edge of being overworked because if they had any place better to go, they wouldn't be working fucking retail.

Now it's not only an infinite pool of profit but an infinite ability to add duties to your workers.

It's not infinite for either of those things. But you can pile up a SHITLOAD of responsibilities on an employee you're sure isn't going to quit (this is, in fact, the MAIN source of workplace tension in America and one of the biggest sources of animosity between employees and managers). In service industries, given a choice between hiring more workers and making the existing workers do more -- without actually raising their pay for doing it -- managers INVARIABLY choose the latter. It's easier, cheaper and more efficient to fill an employee's time with additional tasks than it is to hire an extra person and leave the first employee with flex time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The system is DESIGNED to have slack, LP. That's the whole reason why "cashiers" are even a thing (they're not REALLY, but more on that later): so that people don't HAVE to drop whatever they're doing and process a transaction every time a customer buys something.

Nothing in your post addresses the fundamental issue--when you add tasks you need more labor. Sometimes slack can cover it, sometimes it means hiring another person.

What you label that person's tasks has nothing do with the fundamental issue. More tasks to do = more labor needed, no amount of misdirection can change this.

It's not infinite for either of those things. But you can pile up a SHITLOAD of responsibilities on an employee you're sure isn't going to quit (this is, in fact, the MAIN source of workplace tension in America and one of the biggest sources of animosity between employees and managers). In service industries, given a choice between hiring more workers and making the existing workers do more -- without actually raising their pay for doing it -- managers INVARIABLY choose the latter. It's easier, cheaper and more efficient to fill an employee's time with additional tasks than it is to hire an extra person and leave the first employee with flex time.

And you're advocating increasing it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Nothing in your post addresses the fundamental issue--when you add tasks you need more labor.

Yes. And usually that means more labor BY THE SAME PERSON. You have 20% more work to do, that simply means your employees do 20% more work.

Sometimes slack can cover it, sometimes it means hiring another person.

It only means hiring another person in a situation where there is no slack. This only happens when the business is under-staffed in the first place and its employees are already handling every conceivable task the business requires and cannot possibly fit more work into their schedule.

And even then, most businesses will simply make their employees work longer hours to cover the difference. It's only in situations where serious overtime pay is at risk where they will actually hire more staff to keep up with the workload.

OTOH, there's a whole school of thought out there that having all of your employees be happy, well rested and focussed on providing the best service possible will make your business prosper and grow, in which case it actually pays to be OVER staffed and the "slack" is profitable in an intangible way. Such businesses would have a tendency to add more employees just to make life easier for their existing staff who can now focus on quality of tasks rather than just the quantity of them. This is, of course, the sort of business model that is wholly incompatible with puerile bitching about a 30 cent increase in labor costs because of fucking drink refills.

[What you label that person's tasks has nothing do with the fundamental issue. More tasks to do = more labor needed

Which means more TIME, not more PEOPLE. You either add hours to a shift, or you squeeze some of the idle time out of the existing work shift. Or you do both.

I'm not gonna let you prance away from the fact that we're talking about register transactions that take less than twenty seconds to process. 180 people all ordering refills in a day adds up to all of one whole hour of additional labor; you can be a complete dumbass and hire a whole cashier just to deal with that additional hour of extra work (who then spends 7 hours with his thumb up his ass getting paid to do basically nothing) or you can get your other 12 employees to each spend five fewer minutes every work day idling around doing nothing. Or -- if you're a manager who cares about your business -- you can do some of the work yourself, since you're salaried and don't actually make any more money for the additional work.

There ARE situations where a workload increase will prompt a business to hire more staff to deal with it. "We have to charge people for refills now" sure as shit aint one of them. "My employees are tired and demoralized, which is affecting the quality of our service, which is costing us a lot of customers" IS a good reason, however. But to imply that has anything to do with soft drink prices is like saying the Invasion of Iraq was caused by a sudden drop in the price of bullets.

It's not infinite for either of those things. But you can pile up a SHITLOAD of responsibilities on an employee you're sure isn't going to quit (this is, in fact, the MAIN source of workplace tension in America and one of the biggest sources of animosity between employees and managers). In service industries, given a choice between hiring more workers and making the existing workers do more -- without actually raising their pay for doing it -- managers INVARIABLY choose the latter. It's easier, cheaper and more efficient to fill an employee's time with additional tasks than it is to hire an extra person and leave the first employee with flex time.

And you're advocating increasing it.

I'm not "advocating" anything, I'm just telling you why the service industry doesn't work the way you think it does. This is just another one of those issues where your complete lack of direct experience is glaringly obvious. You, who have never worked for this kind of job or ever run a business like this, are in absolutely NO position to make any kind of predictions about how business owners are likely to behave.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And even then, most businesses will simply make their employees work longer hours to cover the difference. It's only in situations where serious overtime pay is at risk where they will actually hire more staff to keep up with the workload.

More hours or more employees, it's the same--more labor costs.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And even then, most businesses will simply make their employees work longer hours to cover the difference. It's only in situations where serious overtime pay is at risk where they will actually hire more staff to keep up with the workload.

More hours or more employees, it's the same--more labor costs.

No it isn't. Not even CLOSE. Most of the extra work simply absorbs the employee idle time during the shift and won't actually require more hours SCHEDULED unless you've front-loaded them with too many tasks in the first place.

You don't hire someone to work JUST the twenty extra minutes required by an increased workload. Nobody does that, it's not a thing. You don't even make your employees work overtime unless the increased workload FAR exceeds the amount of downtime they have during a given shift, or if your employees simply avoid giving up their slack time and work the extra hours because they really like money.

If you're running a business that is so under-staffed that they can't spare 20 seconds ringing up a goddamn drink refill, the increased labor costs are the LEAST of your problems. Rather than nickel-and-time their customers just to stick it to the mayor, some of those business owners should probably take a long hard look at their employee morale.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, these employees work in a fast food restaurant. What exactly can be done to improve their morale? Isn't any attempt to cheer them up immediately undercut as soon as they realize that they work in a fast food restaurant?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, these employees work in a fast food restaurant. What exactly can be done to improve their morale? Isn't any attempt to cheer them up immediately undercut as soon as they realize that they work in a fast food restaurant?

That's just it, a lot of managers take the "nobody gives a shit about service, especially my employees" route and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume the crappy service is a given, then crappy service is what you're going to give. There's no reason it HAS to be that way, but American industry is full of managers, bosses and supervisors who are actually horrible at their jobs and whose franchises only manage to stay in business because sooner or later someone from corporate office will come and bail them out and/or fire everyone.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, these employees work in a fast food restaurant. What exactly can be done to improve their morale? Isn't any attempt to cheer them up immediately undercut as soon as they realize that they work in a fast food restaurant?

That's just it, a lot of managers take the "nobody gives a shit about service, especially my employees" route and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume the crappy service is a given, then crappy service is what you're going to give. There's no reason it HAS to be that way, but American industry is full of managers, bosses and supervisors who are actually horrible at their jobs and whose franchises only manage to stay in business because sooner or later someone from corporate office will come and bail them out and/or fire everyone.

They probably just need more flair. The guys from corporate should ensure that all employees wear at least six pieces of flair.

 

[KeepTalking]

More hours or more employees, it's the same--more labor costs.

No it isn't. Not even CLOSE. Most of the extra work simply absorbs the employee idle time during the shift and won't actually require more hours SCHEDULED unless you've front-loaded them with too many tasks in the first place.

You don't hire someone to work JUST the twenty extra minutes required by an increased workload. Nobody does that, it's not a thing. You don't even make your employees work overtime unless the increased workload FAR exceeds the amount of downtime they have during a given shift, or if your employees simply avoid giving up their slack time and work the extra hours because they really like money.

If you're running a business that is so under-staffed that they can't spare 20 seconds ringing up a goddamn drink refill, the increased labor costs are the LEAST of your problems. Rather than nickel-and-time their customers just to stick it to the mayor, some of those business owners should probably take a long hard look at their employee morale.

From my experience, they don't even need to worry about paying the overtime. Those retail/fast food employees are only getting 30 hours a week, on average, so you can set them to doing 10 more hours worth of other tasks before having to incur overtime costs. When the store sees that they are actually starting to pay people overtime, that's when they will hire another employee, or tell the current employees that they have to work X amount of time off the clock if they want to keep their job (probably a bit of both).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

More hours or more employees, it's the same--more labor costs.

No it isn't. Not even CLOSE. Most of the extra work simply absorbs the employee idle time during the shift and won't actually require more hours SCHEDULED unless you've front-loaded them with too many tasks in the first place.

You don't hire someone to work JUST the twenty extra minutes required by an increased workload. Nobody does that, it's not a thing. You don't even make your employees work overtime unless the increased workload FAR exceeds the amount of downtime they have during a given shift, or if your employees simply avoid giving up their slack time and work the extra hours because they really like money.

If you're running a business that is so under-staffed that they can't spare 20 seconds ringing up a goddamn drink refill, the increased labor costs are the LEAST of your problems. Rather than nickel-and-time their customers just to stick it to the mayor, some of those business owners should probably take a long hard look at their employee morale.

You sound like a creationist--no amount of microevolution adds up to macroevolution.

And I said nothing about overtime. The initial math did not assume overtime, just the normal fully-loaded cost of an employee/hour.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's just it, a lot of managers take the "nobody gives a shit about service, especially my employees" route and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume the crappy service is a given, then crappy service is what you're going to give. There's no reason it HAS to be that way, but American industry is full of managers, bosses and supervisors who are actually horrible at their jobs and whose franchises only manage to stay in business because sooner or later someone from corporate office will come and bail them out and/or fire everyone.

They probably just need more flair. The guys from corporate should ensure that all employees wear at least six pieces of flair.

- - - Updated - - -

No it isn't. Not even CLOSE. Most of the extra work simply absorbs the employee idle time during the shift and won't actually require more hours SCHEDULED unless you've front-loaded them with too many tasks in the first place.

You don't hire someone to work JUST the twenty extra minutes required by an increased workload. Nobody does that, it's not a thing. You don't even make your employees work overtime unless the increased workload FAR exceeds the amount of downtime they have during a given shift, or if your employees simply avoid giving up their slack time and work the extra hours because they really like money.

If you're running a business that is so under-staffed that they can't spare 20 seconds ringing up a goddamn drink refill, the increased labor costs are the LEAST of your problems. Rather than nickel-and-time their customers just to stick it to the mayor, some of those business owners should probably take a long hard look at their employee morale.

From my experience, they don't even need to worry about paying the overtime. Those retail/fast food employees are only getting 30 hours a week, on average, so you can set them to doing 10 more hours worth of other tasks before having to incur overtime costs. When the store sees that they are actually starting to pay people overtime, that's when they will hire another employee, or tell the current employees that they have to work X amount of time off the clock if they want to keep their job (probably a bit of both).

Which is a good point. And also you'd be surprised how many of those restaurants manage to weasel out of paying people overtime hours AT ALL on the assumption that none of them are ever going to hire a lawyer and complain about it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You sound like a creationist--no amount of microevolution adds up to macroevolution.

No, I sound like an evolutionary theorist who is telling you "the microevolutionary changes you describe are changes within a species and do not lead to speciation except under very specific circumstances."

I also see you backpedaling to empty rhetoric now that it has become clear how little knowledge you actually have on this subject, but that's not really surprising.

The initial math did not assume overtime, just the normal fully-loaded cost of an employee/hour.

And your math is based on an assumption about "normal" workloads that does not bear any resemblance to the real world. Remember, this whole thing started with your claim:

"You considered the cashier a fixed cost, adding a transaction doesn't increase the employee time needed. The only way that can be true is if you have so few transactions that your cashier--singular--is often sitting idle. Otherwise more transactions = more cashier hours = more money spent."

It has been pointed out to you that:
1) Cashiers DO NOT sit idle under normal circumstances because they have multiple other duties to attend to during their idle time
2) Of those additional duties, most of them are not time sensitive and can be "put off" or transferred to someone else's workload
3) Even filling their time with other tasks, there is STILL a significant amount of idle time in an average workday, more than enough to absorb the need for added transactions

For the reasons above, an employee salary can indeed be considered a fixed cost, since most of them will only work the hours you tell them to work anyway. It is ALWAYS possible to squeeze a little more work out of your employees in the same amount of time, but as this comes at a cost of morale and employee performance overall, then the REAL reason to hire additional workers is to increase the quality and effectiveness of service over the same time period, and that comes with the very real expectation of increased revenue to offset it.

In short, you're trying to apply second grade arithmetic to a derivative function. It doesn't work the way you think it does.