Yes, while working a telemarketing job for quick cash secretly I encountered just this sort of thing. I had spent all of my graduation gift money meant for my first apartment right after high school and had to take a night shift somewhere. I found this telemarketing place and they had a dead simple test they used for prospective hires. My friends told me they would hire anyone no matter what. Surprisingly, someone failed the test and left angrily. Later I found out that they hired someone specifically to stage this event night after night. The reason was because if a group of people witnesses somebody fail it makes them feel they need to hold onto the opportunity. I saw this work time and time again- every single person who showed up for the job took that job and didn't question it. They also did this because they cashed every last check of every employee that left and there were a lot of those. It was grueling and I would even leave on a bike and ride through the woods to get there just so my family wouldn't notice. Made my money back and then some then quit all in time for college. You see, I learned that fake employees are just a part of growing up and growing wiser.
The company kept the "last check" of the employees who quit (probably by no-showing which is why they didn't pick up their last check) so the company got a few hours of free labor from each employee.
"They did this" means they had the actor convince the applicants to take the job. The more employees they hire, the more free hours they get (since the quitters don't pick up their last check)
Is that legal? Don't they have to mail the check to the employees if they don't come in to pick it up? And why wouldn't some one pick up their check? If they are working a job like that, I imagine they need the money?
A lot of people don't know their rights, or know their rights but think they'll need a lawyer to deal with it and don't have that sort of money.
In reality a call to the Department of Labor or whatever the local equivalent is will get the money, though usually with a pretty big lag time (a threat to call the DoL can be faster).
Got it, thank you. I had misread "every last check" as in "every last one" i.e. literally all of them, but actually a "last check" is just the last time the company pays you.
My guess is that this is some sort of a shady company where
1. Employees pay something for e.g. training ("check of every employee")
2. Employees make it back over time on commission
3. If an employee quits early the employee's check is cashed by the company. ("they cashed every last check of every employee that left")
A guess however, difficult to understand what is doing on.
In the first place he was given some money as a graduation gift, which he then spent, which is why he needed the job, so I assumed that was the money he made back.
Many years ago I delivered pizza while in college. When it was time to move on my manager and I decided to have some fun. For the last three days I was there I delivered to every terrible customer we had, then had a little fun at their expense. Like the guy that routinely refused to tip a single penny and said 10 pennies make a dime. I handed him a dime and told him now he didn't have to wait for 9 more pizzas.
It was terrible, but fun at the same time. Every call back to the store was greeted with an "Oh that's terrible", "we've had a few other complaints about him" and "I promise he won't be here tomorrow".
I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.
The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).
This means that when someone in the UK might withhold a tip due to bad service we're just removing a bonus, whereas in the US we're effectively removing their pay for serving us. Not tipping is a much stronger action.
To respond to your 'prices' comment directly - the person delivering the pizza doesn't get to set the prices. They have to take the job that they can in a service industry that pays peanuts on the basis that people will earn tips. And the business doesn't have any incentive to do anything about it - they get to pay people less and therefore keep margins high and/or charge lower prices to compete.
> I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.
It's not attitude, they do underpay certain people. But at the same time various US pizza places do include a service or delivery fee which still doesn't go to the driver. As a result you might pay a delivery fee which is isn't a delivery fee.
In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.
From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.
Going back to pizza delivery, in my country (not US) the delivery fee is often included in the pizza. This is done by offering a pretty huge discount for picking up a pizza.
> In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.
In principle this is true; in practice it is rarely honored.
> From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.
All customs are arbitrary to some extent, but the rule of thumb is that if you're getting a personal service from someone who's not a professional you should tip.
My barber has been cutting hair for two decades and a masseuse I go to has various certificates. I assume they're all professional yet still have to tip on top of the regular prices. I don't tip at the dry cleaner or after having clothes altered. Working as a barista in various cafes, tips were few and far between, vs pouring beers. Not much difference in the actual experience.
Good rule of thumb but I think it can still trip up non-Americans to some degree.
Best tipping I ever had was working at a fancy hotel - paid a decent service industry wage and would regular get tips of $10-20.
Well, the idea of "professional" is a bit slippery, I guess, but let's say the exempted categories are mostly tradesmen and white-collar professionals.
Yeah, I think that works. Honestly, one of the 'surprises' of American adulthood was finding out how many different categories of folks are expecting a tip. I would much rather have prices up front - whether it's someone doing a job or taxes (like a VAT) be included with prices so you actually know what to expect to pay.
> The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).
As I understand it this was promoted by business owners themselves (which makes a certain kind of sense because it offloads the risk of a slow night onto their employees).
In many states now, all employees are paid at least minimum wage. In my state that is $10+/hour. But that depends on the state.
The federal government allows tip based workers to be paid only $2.13/hour by their employer but they must make at least $7.25/hour after tips. But in my state they have to be paid at least $10+/hour before tips.
WA? CA? I personally really like the fact that servers are getting paid so well here in WA, and I've been tipping a lot less as a result. When it goes up the $13, I might reconsider it altogether. Thank goodness, I dislike the entire process. I think that it makes people mean; when you are a server working for tips you have a thousand bosses, and far too many people are terrible with even a modicum of power.
I've been in Japan for the last 6 months and I have never witnessed any tipping. You make such an attempt and it comes off as strongly rude! Different cultures for sure
Yeah, why doesn't the pizza driver just independently change the prices Domino's charges for pizza?
It's not just "a bit impolite" to not tip service staff in an American context; it's a grave insult that most people would only do in response to service they thought was shockingly below adequacy -- and likely they wouldn't even patronize the business again after doing so.
I had a long argument with two Americans of the USA variety about tipping. The attitude they displayed about tipping was that it was "criminal" if a customer didn't tip. My argument was that, since I was NOT a party to the employment agreement between business and employee, I had no responsibility to make up any shortfall between minimum wage and what the business was paying the employee.
It was interesting that they felt very strongly that even though you, as a customer, were not part of the the business/employee employment agreement, you still had a moral obligation to ensure that the employees got their due. They could not understand that the employee was a representative of the business and that the charges for service (of whatever kind) to the customer were set by the business by their prices. Any other charges had to be up front (and not called gratuities).
The Americans of the USA variety do not seem to understand that a gratuity is a freely offered gift on the part of the person giving it and it is in no way a requirement to be given. Otherwise, it is not a gratuity.
It seems to me that the attitude towards tipping in the USA makes it one of the tenth world countries where the society has no concept of an employer paying an employee a fair wage for the work being done.
Now, I don't have a problem with tipping (at my discretion) for above and beyond the call of duty service. However, for normal service being provided by a business, it is not appropriate for that business and employees to have an expectation that I make up any shortfall in living wages agreed between business and employee.
Nobody cares what your philosophical objection to tipping is. Functionally, there is no difference between you and a tightwad. The custom in the United States is to tip and the entire system is built around this expectation. Whether this meets your Platonic ideal of what a "gratuity" ought to be is really just completely irrelevant.
I'll go further: if you are visiting a different country you should make an effort to adhere to their basic norms of behavior. If I go to Japan and I see a shoe rack at the entryway of a building I am not going to traipse around the building in my shoes, even though nobody would think this behavior was unusual at home.
Also, if I were going to carry out your policy, I would not plan on visiting the same restaurant twice.
The problem here, is that you cannot see that your economy is based on establishing social injustice in all areas. Tipping, as a requirement because businesses don't pay their employees fairly, is to be treated as a moral obligation on someone who is not part of that process instead of a symptom of the basic injustice of the employer/employee relationship.
The only tightwads here are the businesses (and the employees who agree with their policies) who will not pay their employees a fair wage. Again, it is not the responsibility of the customer to ensure that a business survives and thrives. My question to you is "Are you a business owner who does this and are now trying to justify your actions?"
So, you are in agreement with the customs of other countries that women should be treated as second class citizens. You are espousing the treatment of employees by their employers as second class citizens. Your comparison to shoe removal in Japan is not even in the league of the social injustice attitude of not paying employees a fair wage.
In my country, tipping is not the custom as we have minimum wages to adhere to and if a business doesn't do this, those in charge are prosecuted.
Finally, I have no intention of ever visiting the USA. The way its citizens are treated is appalling enough, how it treats its visitors is even worse.
No, I do not employ anyone. But I find this entire line of argument ridiculous. If someone wants to take a stand against tipping, they should make the sacrifice themselves by not eating out or going to restaurants that accept tips. What they should not do is go to an establishment where they know full well it's expected they'll tip and then refuse to do it. There's nothing honorable about a stand taken at someone else's expense. Stiffing your waiter does nothing to affect the systemic issue. It is, morally, the worst of all worlds, since you benefit from a system you describe as morally unjust and then refuse to participate in the expected palliative behavior.
The idea is that if you don't get good service, you don't have to pay the tip. People whose incomes consist mainly of tips can make absolutely crazy amounts of money if they're good at their jobs and work hard. It's not for everyone but it works for some people. I wouldn't want to rely on being tipped out because I really don't have the personality for it.
Yes they can. It is a mindset that says you will treat your clientele (they are not just customers) with the absolute highest service and consideration. Most people cannot get to this point.
I don't have the personality to do this - I am considered to be far too blunt and abrasive. Yet, even though I am this, I consider it extremely important to treat my clients in a manner that says that I will solve their problems and actually do this. None of this work ever involved tips, it was a part of the service that I thought necessary.
I think there's a difference between not-tipping and telling the employee you're not going to tip them, especially by some stupid "10 pennies make a dime!" saying, as if the employee wasn't smart enough to know that or save money.
I can't say I held a grudge, but I found it very funny in my pizza delivery days when somebody would tip a penny. Pulling the dime trick would have made me go out as a hero to my fellow drivers.
If no one paid a tip, people wouldn't want the job so the company would have to raise wages to compensate. This extra cost can be passed on in higher pizza prices.
If everyone poured a bucket of water on the driver's head, the company would eventually be obligated to give the drivers ponchos. So really I'm doing the driver a favor by pouring a bucket of water on his head.
But it isn't. The customer has no part in the wage negotiations between business and employee. All it shows is that they (business and employees) are not being honourable towards each other or to their customers.
A business should set it prices so that it fulfils it responsibilities (including to it staff). If the business cannot run at the prices so set then it fails. That is not the responsibility of the customer to make the business successful. It is the business' rite of passage to provide services or goods that customers want to buy,
If you get on a packed morning commuter train and start playing music on a boombox, you're not breaking any laws and nobody can stop you. Nevertheless, anybody with their head screwed on is going to think you are acting like a jackass.
Agreed. However, the jackasses in relation to employer/employee wage negotiations are not the customers but the two parties involved.
If I was to negotiate with some other party that whenever you came within 100 metres of my awesomeness that you would be required to pay me 4000 drachma, what would your response be? The acting of tipping is a personal acknowledgement that the person has placed your actions so far above the norm that they consider it appropriate to honour you in some way.
What you are wanting is to have other people say that your actions are so outstanding that, even though they are nothing actually extraordinary, you should get something extra because of your awesomeness.
If you are not getting paid for doing your job, why on earth are still working for the tightwad (your words) who has employed you?
You are conflating a private negotiation as though it is a public interaction. It's not.
I have worked for lots of different companies over many years. My own attitude is that if the employer is not worth working for, then you don't work for them. If they pay rubbish wages for serious work, you don't deal with them. If they are tardy paying you, then you finish up with them and move on.
If I need to work in a remote place to cover the bills I have, then I work in a remote place. If I have to change industries or learn a new job then I will and have done so. If you don't consider yourself worthy of fair wages then that's a problem you have to get over.
Too many people think they are constrained by their circumstances and instead of doing something, they wallow in self pity. I have met those who had nothing or had lost everything due to circumstance and they have been an inspiration because they made a choice to do something about it.
> The acting of tipping is a personal acknowledgement that the person has placed your actions so far above the norm that they consider it appropriate to honour you in some way.
That is not really what tipping means in the United States.
> I have worked for lots of different companies over many years. My own attitude is that if the employer is not worth working for, then you don't work for them. If they pay rubbish wages for serious work, you don't deal with them. If they are tardy paying you, then you finish up with them and move on.
Yeah, I don't think your experiences as a computer programmer are necessarily applicable to someone who works as a waiter at a greasy spoon or as a pizza delivery driver. I'm gonna guess you've never been in a position where you had to do low-wage work. It's not a negotiating kind of a situation; it's a "take it or leave it" kind of situation.
> Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.
In US most states have to make up to ensure people are paid at least minimum wage. Even if that's not the case, it's the governments responsibility (in case employers don't) to ensure people get paid enough. This as individual employees don't have a strong negotiation ability.
A customer is not obliged at all to tip; not unless the definition didn't suddenly change from "a sum of money given to someone as a reward for a service.". It should be a reward, not an expectation or even an insult when you don't receive it.
Such rules are routinely violated. Perhaps tips "should" be a reward, but they aren't; they're an essential part of compensation, and you're not striking a blow against the system by denying your server their tip. You're just being a cheapskate.
Why should I be considered a cheapskate when I don't tip? I choose to buy goods and service from whomever I please. The prices are set and that is what the agreement is. The agreement is between me and the business. Wages are an agreement between the business and the employee. If the two want to agree to a specific wage regime that is their right. But it in no way, obligates any customer to supply any shortfall between wage and minimum wage.
Any services provided by the employee to the customer are as a business representative. They are a function of the agreement between the business and the employee. If the employee decides that he or she should, by their own estimation, provide a service that is well and truly beyond what they are doing as the business representative then they are doing so on their own behalf. If the customer then believes an appropriate reward is to be given for that exemplary service, then it is the customer's right to choose such an action.
It is not an obligation but a freely chosen reward.
Because everyone who lives in the United States understands that there is an expectation that if you go to a restaurant you will tip the server in all but the most egregious circumstances. You may as well ask why it's considered rude to eat with your hands while making loud noises when, after all, there's no rule you have violated by doing so.
Furthermore, I'm going to make the assumption that, since you're posting here, you're probably living a pretty comfortable life, and yet here you are making your point by picking the pockets of low-wage workers. What word do you think describes someone who does this better than "cheapskate"? If you are so troubled by this structure that you feel you must take a stand, stay home or visit a restaurant that doesn't accept tips.
I care full-time for my wife and I don't have the resources to eat out. That is a luxury for us. It takes much time to afford such treats. I have less income than many who cry poor, but live comfortably because we manage what we have so that we can. I have worked in very low paying jobs and that was my choice at the time. When it become infeasible to continue working in that area, I left and found other work that paid better.
The only ones picking the pockets of low-wage workers are those who are responsible for paying those workers - the businesses they work for (they are the cheapskate - not the customer). A customer is not responsible for the workers failure to negotiate a fair wage nor are they responsible for the failure of those workers to find better employment.
If you want it fixed then fix it where it needs to be fixed first - the negotiation of wages between business and employee. If you work for a robber baron then expected to treated like a serf or villain.
Well, no, both parties in that scenario are cheating the worker. You can't really walk into a restaurant, pay the lower prices that are possible because of tipping culture, deliberately skip the expected tip, and then wash your hands of any complicity in the scheme. It's like people who are themselves comfortable but talk about how all social programs should be eliminated so the poor see the inherent injustice of capitalism and rise up to overthrow it -- it sounds like a bold stance but ultimately volunteers someone else to make the sacrifice.
That's the beginning of the excellent book "au bonheur des ogres", where you learn that the hero's karma is to be a scapegoat. It's his job. It's his relationships.
Also when a bomb explodes, of course, all evidences point toward him even though is the very definition of innocence.
Wonderful work from the great Daniel Pennac, which can stand on it's own, but has follow up tomes that are just as nice.
And I just looked it up, it's been translated to english.
I loved the book, and that part has stuck through the years. (amongst other remarkable parts of this book) Now I wonder if Pennac had heard about this story and if he was inspired by it.
It always made me think of L'Arrache-Coeur by Boris Vian, where we can find "La Gloïre", this old man whose job was to literally swallow the shame of everybody else.
This reminds me of the jobs in China where you can get paid literally walk around being white. For example, being a white guy who cuts the ribbon of a factory opening and walks around shaking hands can make $1k/wk.
Maybe we should revisit our immigration policy that punishes China for having "too many" immigrants to the US and also our University policies which racially discriminate against the Chinese for being over-represented. If this trade/economic war is going to keep heating up, we might as well try to steal as many of their best and brightest as possible.
East Asians have some of the best outcomes of any demographic: higher income, more educated, lower criminality, lower divorce rate, etc. In a country that is arguably designed to maximally benefit whites, they are beating white people at basically everything. This goes far beyond gaming credentials, it's real world outcomes. We could stand to lower our bar with them a little and still get ahead.
or you could say we are for the most part only taking in a certain segment of the population from these countries. Educated and already middle class or higher. You are not comparing apples to apples.
One need not suppose anything.
Look who has a majority of the H1-B visas or who comes here for higher education.
Those who are not educated from East Asia can't easily come to the US illegally as those who can cross overland (Mexico and central America) can. Poor Chinese villagers are not boating to America.
How is that significantly different from Western Europe? Or the Middle East? Or Sub-Saharan Africa? Are the poorest of the poor there making it here? Why are East Asians over-represented in higher education or H1-Bs compared to other places?
First, much of East Asia has extremely demanding placement tests for elite high schools (and sometimes lower schools). You might reasonably say that we're only taking students from good high schools around the world, but that's a comment about school quality, not students. As people often point out, Harvard dropouts are almost as successful as Harvard grads - merely getting in represents a powerful filter. So it's plausible that we're taking rich/educated elites worldwide, but in East Asia we've got a talent/skill filter comparable to college admissions being applied in advance.
Second, your point: there's a non-trivial penalty for being a Chinese applicant to a US college, and it's not particularly obvious what impact that has. I suppose it could be that the harsher requirements for acceptance are driving the difference, and we don't have any real evidence on how responsive outcomes are to changing that restriction. (Is there a good breakdown of outcomes for a given group by visa type? That might show whether nation-specific admission rules on some visa types are changing outcomes.)
(The third thought, of course, is "it's a huge multifactorial mess and there's probably not enough data to trust any conclusion we come to".)
First: Great, so their culture is what is causing them to outperform us in virtually every positive metric. That certainly doesn't make me want to be less welcoming to them.
Second: The non-trivial penalty came AFTER Chinese people became over-represented.
It's not as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be. Something is causing East Asians to outperform us in basically every positive trait. They have higher IQs, higher incomes, lower criminality rates, lower poverty rates, etc. And these stats hold true even generations after immigration. Maybe it feels complicated because you're concerned about the root cause analysis. I'm not. They're doing great, we should want great people here.
I wasn't the same person you were replying to upthread, and I'm certainly not arguing against offering more visas. I just thought your "given that we're taking elites, what's different?" question was interesting, and wanted to raise a possible answer.
(I agree that if the penalty came after better outcomes, it's not a relevant factor. I wasn't familiar enough with which restrictions were in place when to say.)
But yes: the complicated part is root causes, and that's not relevant to whether we should expand our visa/citizenship program; we certainly should. If someone in the thread disagrees with you there, it's not me.
It's almost certainly IQ. IQ also correlates to all those other positive traits. East Asians have higher average IQs than most other people, particularly spacial reasoning and math which explains their over-representation in engineering. Conversely Ashkenazi Jews have higher than average verbal IQs which explains why they appear over represented in media. But that doesn't get us very far because it just gets us back to East Asians outperforming us on IQ tests created by mostly white people and is supposedly culturally biased to have white people outperform. There's something definitely going on here. Maybe it's genetics, maybe it's diet, maybe it's culture. Possibly a combination. It's not really helpful to try to have a discussion on IQ, so I just focus on the positive traits that are derived from IQ. It tends to trigger people less and raw IQ isn't actually important to me compared to things like criminality and economic output.
I'm only [something]-ist with China because we're in a trade war with them. Let's go out of our way to make sure we're welcoming as many of the best Chinese as possible. But generally speaking, I'm happy to open the door to anyone who is likely going to up our averages.
It’s already happening. I have a friend in China and like many ex pats he had several jobs - teaching at a college, tutoring English at home and some IT consulting.
He’s back in the UK now, last summer several of his ex pat friends and colleagues were busted by investigators parachuted in from Beijing. They were detained, their visas were revoked and given a week to get out of the country. Fortunately he was in Beijing when it happened and got Chinese colleagues to clear out his stuff and any paperwork from the college, but he had to roll up all his gigs.
Considering it is mostly just for photo ops (my understanding is that is what they're mostly used for), it probabbly doesn't get much attention. They could pay the dude cash and get the same thing.
Not surprising that large companies would have 'stooge' employees in place for just this sort of thing. I have heard of it happening in at least one major store chain here many years ago.
Kind of reminiscent of one of the first episodes in the series 'Suits' where Louis Litt is interviewing a new junior employee for the firm, and he pulls in another junior mid-interview to dress him down and dismiss him in front of the new employee, just to put the fear of his authority and power into the newbie. The 'fired' employee then just goes back to the bull pen to await being called in for the next new recruit interview so he can walk past and be 'randomly' called in.
I also heard the story of a digital agency that rented a huge space, painted the walls with bright colors and hired a bunch of actors to pose as employees. The idea was to deceive and close a deal with a potential big client that insisted in visiting their offices.
As a student I was hired as a temp for a 1 day contract. When I arrived they were just setting up the open plan office. We were asked to bring laptops and given stacks of paper and a phone, and told to work though the files, calling the numbers.
It was weird to recieve little training for what seemed to be an investigator type role.
Mid way though the day a bunch of suits arrived, toured the office, and went into a meeting. Later they left and we were told to go home.
Clearly we were faking something, maybe an inflated company sale or a bid for a contract.
The wierd thing was, the stacks of paper were real classified police files, with genuine contents (we were phoning people).
Uh, a good friend of mine did that a couple of years ago when he started a new design agency. He was going for a large government contract and they insisted on an in-house meeting as part of the pre-tender process.
He had a large office space already, in preparation for growth, but only 1 employee at that stage, so he got his high school aged daughter in, as well as some of her friends to sit in the empty desks and pretend to work. A couple of the PC's at the back facing away from the meeting room weren't even plugged in, and were just screens on the desk and keyboards attached to nothing.
It worked - he got the contract, and as a result, now has REAL employees at those stations, and in fact has to look at a bigger space to expand into.
That reminds me of a 19th century con man I read about in the wonderful book "Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present" [1].
He came to some big city posing as a successful businessman seeking investors for some new enterprise. He would give as a reference the president of a local bank located on the other side of town.
When the potential investors went to that bank to check out the reference, they found a busy, well equipped, and well furnished bank, full of well dressed obviously upper class clients conducting business. When they spoke to the President and other officers all they heard was praise for the honesty and business skills of the con man. The marks would then make a large investment.
When the con man left town with their money and they realized something was wrong, and then went to the bank to try to find out what was going on, they found an empty building with a "for lease" sign, and many of the people they had seen as customers and employees in the bank were now seen to be beggars, prostitutes, and such from the neighborhood that the con man had hired to play customers and employees.
Back when his agency was a one man band, a friend pointed out that one advantage of a trendy shared workspace is that nobody ever asked how many of the people they saw in 'his' corner actually worked for him.
I've also met people who've earned temp "work" in China being nothing more than white faces in the background to make the company look international to visitors
I keep hearing this about Chinese companies but I've never actually met someone who has done this or have any concrete example beyond "oh I've heard that people do that", and I've talked to a lot of white expats in China. You've actually met these people? Did they explain any other details?
I ran into an old friend at my brother's wedding who was recently back from Beijing. He studied there and was put onto the rowing team without much active choice on his part. He took occasional jobs for a few hours as the western guy. He'd get picked up and given a briefcase to hold. Sometimes he'd be taken on a tour of a factory. Sometimes it was his job to take something out of the briefcase and give it to someone. At least once his employer was a local police officer. He said that the impression he had was that he was evidence of working with some overseas company.
Villain du jour, Cambridge Analytica changed their name and rented a office in Cambridge filled with London based employees to win over the intellectual Steve Bannon
Even within this well-educated microclimate, the irony in that statement might not be clear enough to everyone.
May I suggest either crystal clear irony ("the most eminent intellectual of our times Steve Bannon") or a more accurate description ("the racist firebrand Steve Bannon")?
I knew a guy who ran a business which designed and sold PCBs. He'd make up different names to stamp on PCBs. Designed by Joe Bloggs, Code by Derek Smarts, Layout by Jamie Simple, etc. He wanted the business to seem bigger than it actually was.
There's actually a good Freakanomics episode on this[1]. How tickets are undervalued and part of Ticketmaster's value is that they take blame for the high prices.
Thank you, this led me to an excelent piece of research by one of the economists invited, Eric Budish, on market design and how current continuous trade architectures of most financial markets strongly favor the negative aspects of HFT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvNJID_7iHI
There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship.
It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people.
The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher than face value. That was implemented some years ago here, and scalping is a minor issue now. Fans are generally very good at self-policing and reporting price-gouging scalpers. Ticket prices did increase slightly over time, but certainly not on the level of $50 becoming $500, as posited in the article.
They do touch on that, but I don't think the solution is to completely stop resale. Just limit it to face value or less.
If artists were only interested in short-term profit, they would jack up the prices and only sell to their richest fans. But most of them look at the long perspective, the fact that there's a lot more to be gained in the long run by having a loyal fanbase that doesn't feel exploited.
For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
If events get sold out, the onus is on the organizers and artists to either book additional shows, or come back again in 6 months or a year, possibly at a bigger venue.
If someone is a true fan, they'll be bummed about missing out, but also adamant to not miss out next time. And they certainly don't fly across the Atlantic for a Broadway show without having somehow secured a ticket beforehand. That's just silly.
> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
These same arguments are / were used in favor of unpaid internships. Except, of course, that it takes a certain level of financial freedom or support to do things like wait in lines for concert tickets. Just because your paying time instead of money in these queues, does not mean that it doesn't carry a cost.
I don't it's the same as unpaid internships. You can never completely eliminate the cost, as there is a limited supply and you can't give away the tickets for free. But you can certainly minimize the costs.
The tickets have to be put up for sale at some specific time that is usually advertised well in advance, which allows (most) people to plan for it. For some artists, a number of tickets are sold earlier to members of the official fan clubs and so on.
What is the alternative? Putting the tickets up for sale as a slow drop? I'm pretty sure that would significantly harm sales.
That's the entire point. Anything other than random chance means that someone has "priority". Priority which is typically decided by spending resources. Either time by waiting in queue. Or money by buying at higher than face value from a scalper -- who probably waited in queue, thereby exchanging their time for money.
If the principle being striven for is fair, then most fair to me would be to allow all potential attendees to participate in the sale. If there are more participants than tickets, then the most fair mechanism which does not reward time-rich participants is random lottery, not a queue. A queue rewards those who happen to be available for registration the moment it opens.
Fans don't want a lottery, though. They want to be 100% sure they have a ticket to the show. It's a gratification thing.
Not everything can be 100% optimal and profit maximized. The current ticket sales method works great, if you eliminate the rent-seeking scalpers, through simple regulation.
However, ideally we should also consider it shameful to buy from scalpers. You run a high risk being scammed, they can resell the same ticket multiple times, and you have no recourse.
Your original response was that there wasn't a similarity between unpaid internships and concert ticket sales. And now your response is that more optimal systems are less desirable, which is a fine answer. But it's certainly a choice to choose the less-optimal system, with the understanding that that choice is going to lock out some people due to resource constraints. And the current method rewards time-rich people in a very similar way as unpaid internships. They receive access to experiences that others can't "afford".
Isn't a better system to just hold a lottery? Yes, maybe now you have fans with dedication, but it just feels like an enormous waste of time for everyone to be online refreshing a page for an hour when it will boil down to luck anyway who will get a ticket
Do I have to pay to play the lottery? If that case, it's practically equivalent to a ticket price of (lottery price)*(probability of winning), so you haven't really solved anything, the scalpers will buy many lottery tickets. Double more so if the lottery is free, then the price becomes expressed as the grinding of multiple identities, straw buyers, etc. into fooling the system to give them more chances; scalpers are even better positioned to game a free lottery since they have the economies of scale to produce a very large number of straw identities.
Any friction you introduce other than "being a fan" is just a convoluted way to hide the real market prices, and that's exactly the margin where scalpers operate. As for "being a fan", it's very hard to quantify and operationalize.
Well what are you trying to fix? What are you trying to do? Profit maximize? Or ensure that only people that are going to watch the concert buy tickets?
Why not a blind auction? Have everyone who wants a ticket choose any value above $10 (including $10). The highest 10,000 (presumed seat capacity) priced bids get their tickets. If there is a tie at the end, sort by first come, first serve, excluding excessive bulk orders.
I had a boss that used to scold me in front of others to show that he was tough and impartial. It took two or three times to see the pattern (he expected me to see by myself). Too good I didn't overreact...
Urgh. That's such a basic leadership thing (scold in private) that it just infruiates me that someone wouldn't get that.
Hopefully your boss figured that out or was moved out of a leadership position.
It's roughly the equivalent of a developer that writes shit code with concurrency issues, basic code smells, etc...that would be drummed out in short order. For some reason, we don't hold leaders to the same standard.
It's because positions of power attract people who desire power, not people who have leadership skills, and there aren't good metrics for what makes someone a good leader that you can use to filter out the bad ones.
See: Politics throughout the entirety of human history.
It is. As a leader myself, it's honestly embarrassing for my profession. I really don't get why it happens. Personally, that kind of basic shit is dealt with swiftly in my company. Leadership isn't rocket science.
>Urgh. That's such a basic leadership thing (scold in private) that it just infruiates me that someone wouldn't get that.
Reminded :) Russian military officer training - when you tear a new one to your subordinate, you have to do it in front of his peers, and that is the most important part of the process. The course was taught by a colonel with PhD in psychology.
The company I work for, until this month, primarily employed contractors for all development work. When asked why a commonly used utility nearly always segfaulted at exit, response was: it's normal, just ignore it. Part of the reason they are no longer employed by us.
Good for you. And hopefully leaders are held accountable for similar basic skill and quality assumptions. Chewing out your direct reports in public is just amatuer league.
I imagine that in companies imposing the requirement that managers periodically purge the "bottom" x% of their workforce, "to be sacked" accurately describes the real purpose of many of the new roles hired for.
I worked at a startup where we had a floor of empty offices. We sometimes would paid people to walk around the office floor and sit in offices when major customers wanted to come and visit. When the customer was in the boss' office discussing the deal, one of the "employees" would always stick his head in the office and say "Hey, I needed to ask you a question. Should I come back?" and the boss would be like "yeah, why don't you come back in an hour after I am done with John here."
From the title I expected a procedure to test if management & HR will act on unacceptable behavior. The story makes more sense, but could still be a good idea, seeing as how many underperformers and bad apples there are in some companies.
The point is to discourage the customer from complaining because of the harsh treatment the customer will receive. Therefore yes, if it comes to that, it has failed.
Some people complain just so they can watch the boss chew out some employee. That's satisfaction for being badly treated/buying something that was faulty.
It's also satisfaction because you failed to get laid, you are going through a divorce, your own job is a shit experience or your life otherwise sucks in some fashion and you are the kind of asshole who enjoys taking your crap out on other people.
It is a bit embarrassing when they keep shopping and see the guy that was fired working in the store, or see them the next day or the next week. They might just catch on.
That's why in the real world you fake fire the next guy going to lunch, so his reward for being yelled at a bit and fired was an extra long lunch hour.
Also when I worked retail back when high school kids held the minimum wage jobs, annual retail turnover often exceeded 100%, so if lady waffles is having multiple problems in a couple months, your store has a problem far beyond angry waffles.
The American version at the store I worked at both as a labor drone and eventually as a night shift manager while in school, was to send coworkers to the office to be yelled at. The store was urban and near the bar district so at night, customers were generally drunk and guilty until proven innocent. Drunk people usually don't want to draw attention to themselves, mostly, so we had few complaints.
Its a mid to high skilled workplace thing to assume employees are yelled at. For manual labor work, the cost of replacement, either of the job or the employee, is very low, and most firing offenses had legal involvement (stealing cash or product from the store, for example) so discipline never went much beyond asking someone "WTF?".
