News and notes from around the interweb:
- Average restaurant tips are now below 20% with the lowest tips in California (17.4%) and Washington State (18%).
- Airports are expensive to operate in. Not only are rents astronomical, and airports usually also take a cut of sales (frequently passing on to airlines), but it’s difficult to hire workers (so they cost more) and you usually are limited to monopoly suppliers for many inputs.
And yet since airports are owned in the United States by governments, high prices are unpopular, and they often have ‘street pricing’ rules requiring prices to the passenger to me no more than 10% higher than they they’d pay off airport. Retailers play games to make the numbers work.
$12.99 at the airport now. I remember a time where they at least gave you the second half of the wrap. KLAS pic.twitter.com/xlVdckqgCB
— SEAN (@121_5MHz) September 19, 2023
- I appeared on the Miles To Go podcast discussing Delta SkyMiles and Sky Club changes along with Clint Henderson from The Points Guy.
- It looks like British Airways is renovating London Heathrow Concorde Room cabanas, in anticipation of finally re-opening them.
- And this is after opening a second JFK Sky Club
those @Delta sky club changes cant come soon enough
always a ridiculous line at jfk terminal 4 no matter what day or time pic.twitter.com/RET7b6OVG3
— Ali DiBarba (@alisaysdance) September 18, 2023
- New hotel construction project by a beleaguered public pension fund, a prerequisite for graft? Their last hotel investment went so well.
- Tourist calls police after being surprised by $1,000 restaurant bill $20 per ounce crab, the restaurant showed them the whole crustacean and they thought the cost was going to be… $20.
Why do airport shops fleece their customers? Because they have a captive market!!
This isn’t a trash CA post but I recall visiting a lady in the Santa Clara/San Jose area 15+ years ago and we went to a restaurant and they had all of these extra “fees” on it. It looked like extra money for the staff, so I did the wise thing and greatly reduced the tip. If a restaurant is adding fees to my bill and saying it is going to pay the staff (who knows if it does) then that means the tip doesn’t matter as much.
No idea how common that is but it might explain the lower tips in CA.
Also how are the percentages calculated? Ideally you tip based on the bill PRIOR to taxes and not after. So a $20 bill with 5% tax would be $21 but to me a 15% tip is $3 and not $3.15. 20% would be $4 and not $4.20.
If it is a regular place I go, I usually tip 20% and round it up to the next dollar amount.
Airports are just another way to layer additional hidden taxes onto the public, with a captive audience. More tax revenue means politicians can be increasingly sloppy or inept as stewards of taxpayer money. “Why work hard and distract us from re-electiin, when we can just invent new discreet tax revenue streams”.
See also the rental car tax and fee racket.
Tip: when going to an airport- AVOID all pay for services…. simple.
As Mom would say, “this is an accident waiting to happen”.
The report on restaurant tips lumps a lot of different traditionally tipped services with picking up fast food at a drive through window and other traditionally not tipped services so the overall results are unclear. The full service restaurant tips are probably pretty good but there are some people who pay by card but tip with cash. California may have the lowest tips due to the mix of full service restaurant to fast service restaurant spending.
The Japanese tourists’ complaint about being overcharged is unbelievable to me. They were charged a high but reasonable price for the class of restaurant that they went into (with nice waterfront dining). To me, they were trying to pull a fast one on the owner but the owner was not going to take a loss for serving the five of them. Crab is expensive and live Alaska (Red?) King Crab is a lot more expensive with all of the transportation costs involved as it is flown in live. First, at this time a Singapore Dollar is worth only 0.73 United States Dollar so the whole meal is around 965 USD before discount. This is definitely not an all you can eat Asian buffet with soggy ordinary crab legs. The price is around 7.60 Singapore Dollars per ounce before tax and service charge (about 5.55 USD) and less after the discount. BTW, I steer clear of expensive restaurants such as this.
I was in Kyiv almost 10 years ago. At a very nice restaurant, I was depending on pictures in the menu, and ordered the from the picture of a Black Sea Bass, expecting a filet. I was
very surprised when they rolled out a very large, cooked whole fish on a cart, maybe 2kg. The fish was exactly like the picture on the menu! The waiter never cracked his professional demeanor, and I just grinned and acted as though this was exactly what I intended. I did have to leave the restaurant to fetch the cash to cover the meal, over $200. I imagine this was not the first time this happened, and the staff were laughing in the kitchen. Needless to say, I barely put a dent in my dinner, although it was delicious.
Lower tips in California and Washington state may be related to the minimum wage laws: it’s not lower for tipped employees like at the federal level.
You DON’T tip on taxes and fees (no tip to the government!), so this report is junk.
The crab did not cost “$20 per ounce.” It was priced per 100 grams, which is a bit over 3 ounces. And the price was something like $26/100 grams, though a modest discount was offered as a concession when the bill was disputed.
There was recently a hearing on these “junk” fees. It should absolutely be clear, simple, and transparent to know exactly what you are paying for.
I hope our congress critters will do something productive other than do nothing, shutdown the gov’t, and go home.
This is why I pack my own. PBJs Chips Cookies then They provide the beverages.