Latest / Chuck Douglas / We Dont Need No Stinking 15 - 93% disagree with effort to raise their wage 5 23 2024

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We Dont Need No Stinking 15 - 93% disagree with effort to raise their wage 5 23 2024 · Chuck Douglas

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The Power Hour with Chuck Douglas constantly bantered around as that placating anestegia. The
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politicians try to give you about a living wage, a minimum wage, that's
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a living wage. But you know what, they don't work the minimum wage
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jobs. They don't know truly what the people who do those jobs are thinking,
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feeling, and wanting. Well, guess what, at least for the
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state of Ohio, they know now. Interesting statistic I ran across today from
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a survey of hospitality workers. The organization used to be the Ohio Restaurant Association.
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They've got a big, fancy new name now, the Ohio Restaurant and
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Hospitality Alliance, and a great website and attractive logo and all that kind of
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stuff. But I saw one of their surveys I think I think ten TV
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might have had it on their website where they said ninety three percent of the
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people working in this industry that are tipped employees are saying they don't want fifteen
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dollars an hour. It's detrimental to their livelihood. But here's the thing.
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How often have I said I am so sick of people who have no clue
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making up rules for people that live it every day. It's a constant.
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You have people that are completely they've got no intimate knowledge of what you do,
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but they decide what the licensing qualifications are for what you do. Can't
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stand it when I see some rich person, some rich politician, get up
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on my screen and explain to me the plight of the poor. This is
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what people are talking about at their kitchen table tonight. I ain't seen a
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kitchen table since you got out of fifth grade. Man, stop it,
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stop it. Or they bring in somebody, somebody who is so white that
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you can almost see through them, and they want to explain to you the
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plate of black America. Well, black people don't believe, Well, how
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do you know? Or it's the opposite extreme. They go to the official
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black represent you know, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, whoever, the person
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of the day is like they speak for all people as if your skin is
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this color, you must think this way or agree with this thing. Just
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don't like it. And I think, honestly, this minimum wags thing,
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it's a craze like started one place and just moved around because a bunch of
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do gooders think they know something that they don't. They they're not waiting tables,
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they're not busting tables, they're not serving up the drinks, they're not
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carrying the place. But you know, people deserve a living wage, so
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they inject themselves into a situation with which they have no familiarity except maybe the
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anecdotal evidence of their next door neighbors kid who works part time at the local
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restaurant as a busboy. And that's always a problem. President of the Ohio
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Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance, is John Barker kind enough to join me on very
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short notice today to elaborate on these numbers and tell me the extent of the
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surveying and everything. John, how are you good evening? I'm good,
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nice too, Nice to be on. I appreciate you being being able to
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do it on such short notice, sir. Ninety three percent. It sounds
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like a very big number, now, is it? Indeed a big number?
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Was this a large sample that you did for the survey? Yeah,
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this is a slam dug. We got about nine hundred and ninety people who
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responded. And if you know how surveys work, you know we actually had
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a professor from Carnegie Mellon University over in Pittsburgh do the survey. He has
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a company that does these kinds of things for Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh,
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and he's done many of these and he normally gets maybe three to four
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hundred responses. That he got nine to ninety. You have a very motivated
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group of people here in Ohio to voice voice their opinion on this. And
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every one of us who go to work every day, no matter what we
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do, whether it's hospitality or construction or or this stupid thing called radio,
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we all go to what get a paycheck? That is the the ultimate end
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of our journey is to get that paycheck every two weeks, every month or
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whatever. This by by forcing this minimum wage requirement on the industry, most
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of these folks will be making less money, wouldn't they. It's the ironic
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thing. You know often you were saying it earlier in your in your comments.
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So you know, people bring these ideas to the table and oftentimes they're
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they couldn't be further from what the actual individuals sort of want oftentimes, and
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you know it's sad. In this case, it's it's this is not legislators.
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This is an outside activist group that's bringing this to Ohio, and you
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know, they're not from Ohio. They're from Massachusetts. They're led by a
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person from Berkeley in California. And what they're trying to do is kind of
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just completely disrupt the fabric of these various states and cities that they're trying to
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do this, because we're not the only one, but they're trying to do
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it here in Ohio, and we're just you know, we just said,
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look, we're going to find out exactly what our operators, our servers,
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our bartenders want and rather than having them make things up, which they do,
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when we get the facts, so give you go out and you survey
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and you do sign you know, scientific work. And that's the results that
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you talked about earlier, ninety three percent of big number. That is very
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unusual to have that, you know, not more than nine out of ten
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agreeing on a subject, the actual income. And I know this is hard
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because I'm one of these people if I go out now, honestly, in
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this economy, I have not gone out very much before things started going downhill.
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I was a pretty generous tipper, and I tried to tip in cash
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because the less that goes on plastic and in some records the better. As
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far as I'm concerned. It's a tip. So I know it's hard to
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figure. But with your knowledge and experience, if you were to realistically say,
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if you're in let's say casual dining situation and Applebee's, O Charlie stuff
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like that, what would you make an hour waiting tables and place like that
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tips at all included. Yeah, So we actually have the data coming out
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of the survey because that was one of the questions to answer, and I
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have two ways to answer that. One is just my general knowledge of being
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in this industry for way over twenty five years and being in the industry.
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All of my kids work in restaurants. Most people do at some point,
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right, so you have that first hand knowledge of what that is. And
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the reason we all do it is you can make really good money and you
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don't have to be all that experience to do it if you're waiting tables.
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But the survey came back, as we asked them to answer it, in
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the average for all types of restaurants if you're a server bartender is twenty seven
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and if you break that down a little bit further, sixty four percent of
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the people that responded, make between twenty five dollars per hour all in or
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more than forty up to more than more than forty, and that more than
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forty would be at your fine dining restaurant around town, you Samer Mitchell's,
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your Barcelona, your Jeff Ruby's, places like that, you know where.
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It's quite an occasion, right, and your average scheck would be a little
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bit higher. But even in your mom and pops, you know, people
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were making twenty five twenty six dollars an hour because they're busy, and Americans
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are still pretty generous, you know, when it comes to tipping at a
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restaurant. They're a little bit pissed off about tipping at you know, at
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airport where you're picking up a water. That's that was what else I wanted
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to ask you. John Barker, by the way, joining me on the
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Legacay Retirement Group dot com phone lines. He's president of the Ohio Restaurant Hospitality
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Alliance. John, how is that affecting traditional what I refer to as traditionally
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tipped employees waiters and waitresses and so forth, and bartender when you when you
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go to you know, pick up your your I don't know your shirts from
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the laundry and they got a tip jar out. Everybody wants a tip for
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everything. Now I got people that want me to tip them because they they
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need extra tips. I don't know, is that bringing down what people who
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are traditionally tipped are seeing now because it's like the consumer is feeling like,
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man, I got to throw a couple of bucks in everything anymore. It's
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like winning a trophy for just participating, you know. But you know,
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when you ask Americans, do you really understand the difference between something that's not
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really a tipping opportunity in a restaurant? They do, right around nine out
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of ten get it at a restaurant, and they're very comfortable because American culture,
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you know, the tip in a restaurant, not not all these other
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crazy places right when you get asked to. And I think people are starting
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to wake up to that and not tipping it, you know again, getting
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the you know, the candy bar at a grocery store, not going to
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tip somebody for that, right, But at restaurant, you know, not
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out of ten people get it. And Highlands are pretty generous. Because we
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look at this data really across states and even cities and Ohiolands are pretty generous
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because we're from the Midwest. We're nice people, and the average tip is
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still around eighteen nineteen percent, you know in a restaurant, which which means
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you know, for server working, you know, maybe a table for an
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hour, hour and a half makes some pretty good money from taking care of
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people. My tradition general is that twenty percent mark. If you are just
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excellent, you're ridiculous, yeah, I'll jump it up to twenty five.
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If you are really terrible, I'm probably still gonna get you the twenty percent,
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but you're probably going to get a note left on the table of why
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I'm doing this out of sympathy and not gratitude, because there there have been
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times where you know, the service has been horrendous, and unfortunately, because
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it's a youthful business in a lot of ways, we have young people coming
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along that just don't they don't grasp that reaching for excellence that previous generations have
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as easily or as quickly as widely as we did. And they, you
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know, they show up for work and they they think, you know,
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I'm worth something because I know you're you're worth your wage because you have the
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job. But to ask me to step up, and so another twenty percent
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on top of this, you know, one hundred dollars bill for a two
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person quick meal or something you want, another twenty throwe on there, show
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me a little something, may give me a smile, say thank you.
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Is there anything else I can get for you? And please don't ask me
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if I need a refill on the water while I'm chewing the food. Now,
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look at you. Think about all the things you learn working at a
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restaurant job, hospitality job, ice cream store, coffee shop. You learn
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all that stuff, right. You learn how to be polite, you learn
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how to be nice to people, you learn how to have that. We
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call it the heart for hospitality, I mean, you know, and it
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teaches you I'm good at this, and I maybe want to keep doing it,
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or I'm not good at this. I'm going to go be an accountant,
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you know, or something else. So it's a great learning opportunity.
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And I think again, most people are really happy when they're out to eat
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and they're taking care of really well, you know, to leave a nice
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chip. You know, we have this thing today called the Internet and Yelp,
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and you can immediately give feedback, you know, to the restaurant and
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about the restaurant if they do a bad job. So it's pretty quick.
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Yeah, in in addition to this not giving a big, big amount of
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tips. So that system is pretty good actually today. And I always urge
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people to do that, especially if it's a great experience and it's a locally
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owned mom and pop type joint man, because they need all the help they
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can get, So jump on yelp and sing their praises when something goes Well,
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we're down to about a minute here. Let me ask you, John,
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You've got the numbers. You've got a great, great survey base here,
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nine hundred and ninety respondents and so forth. Does the legislature hear this?
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Do the powers that be here this? Or is this still an uphill
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battle to get Ohio to kind of wipe this off, wipe this off the
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agenda? Yeah, there's really two pieces to your question. First of all,
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what we're fighting is a ballot initiative which would change the constitution, and
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so that's moving its way through and they have to get signatures. They have
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to get enough signatures to put something on the ballot. That's the Higos constitution
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acy can be amended. We are separately working on a bill with a Senator
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Bill Blessing Cincinnati to put a much lower move on minimum wage, you know,
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still moving up like it it should, but much slower and more reasonable
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for businesses to be able to handle. And then continue to have the tip
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credit, which is basically fifty percent. So if you're a tip worker,
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you get a fifty percent of the minimum wage. You get that from your
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employer, and then you make up anything else with tips. If you don't
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make any tips, you're required by a lot to be paid by your company.
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So everybody gets at least the minimum wage. So we're working on both
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of those right now. We're trying to stop the ballot initiative, and we
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are supportive of what Senator Blessing has moved forward. It's a center build two
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five six that we're working on. You are well informed, well connected,
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and a good conversation list John. I appreciate your time tonight, and I
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hope that you know if things develop here, have me on speed dial.
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You've got a microphone here anytime you need one. I appreciate that. Thank
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you. Your listeners will be better served to hear of the fact. Thank
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you very much, John, Barker. He is again the president of the
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Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance. They are they are the people who serve you,
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bring you your food and your drink and and ninety three percent surveyed sample
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size was nine hundred and ninety ninety three percent of said we don't want the
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fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage. We'll lose money. Good conversation there with
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John Berker, and I'll tell you what this is the problem we have when
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we let other people decide what our value is. You go in and you
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get as much as you can get, and if you can't get enough,
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you go somewhere else. And if you can't get enough somewhere else, maybe
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you're not as valuable as you think you are.