Just The Tip, Baby
It's the Gosplan, can you gig it?
Just The Tip, Baby
She brings your food, tosses the oversized plate with enough calories to feed a small landscaping crew in front of you, and reaches into her apron to grab the check, and before you’ve even had a chance to grasp your napkin or silverware she says in that obnoxious voice specific only to the American food service industry where customer service is a disingenuous performance for greenback gratuity: “I’ll be your cashier whenever you’re ready.”
The food might be cold, it might even be worms and crickets for all you know, but there it is, the check on the table before you’ve even tasted the food. The server wants you to vacuum up your plate and be on your way. There will be no room for dessert and she knows it, but it won’t stop her from pretending she doesn’t if you do finally finish and still asking if you’ve left any.
Between the mountain of food and whatever you manage to put away from its hillsides, she will come by no less than four times to ask how things are going, refilling your drinks as often as possible to keep you full, but she just wants to make sure you eat faster so that you can be on your way after you pay her the now customary 25% tip she’s expecting.
When your ass is finally gone that table will be recycled before you even get to your car in the parking lot where you’ll sit and open a belt loop and exhale that deep exhale of exhaustion that comes from eating too much shit too quickly.
New patrons will take your booth and she’ll repeat the perverted “dining out” ritual with another family or couple who will be rushed to the 25% portion of the dance as quickly as possible, all because her boss pays her the federal minimum wage per hour.
Fast food used to be reserved for those slop chains where you pay for your food in advance and receive it on a plastic tray with a paper tray protector hiding smeared mustard or ketchup from a previous patron or in a warm bag to eat in your car at the parking lot at 3am after a night tearing up the town, or back in your tent along skid row.
At some point late last century, the sit-down restaurant experience shifted from patience and pleasure in enjoying one’s meal with the company of friends or family to the servers needing to shuffle through as many hungry Hippos as possible to make rent.
Hey Buddy!
The American food service industry is a boot camp for American teenagers to learn about money, taxes, and economics since none of it is taught in Rockefeller schools. My boot camp came late after a six-year stint as a lifeguard.
At nineteen I dropped out of college and went to play bass guitar in a rock band with my brother, a guitarist and songwriter. Like all bands, at first, we sucked, but after a year we got tighter, and the songs got better. With every show we played things looked more promising.
To pay the bills I went to work as a barista for a flamboyant Italian (American) who owned a café that was the antithesis of fast-food coffee joints that were beginning to pop up here and there before they colonized every street corner of the world, like Starbucks.
We’ll call this flamboyant American with a very Italian name, Enzo.
After playing a show until 2 am at downtown clubs I’d have to be up at 5 am and off to work to open Enzo’s Cappuccino at 6 am. When I got there at quarter to six there were often regulars waiting in their cars. Though I wasn’t supposed to let them inside until opening time I’d let them wait at booths until the first batch of coffee was brewed or whip up their favorite drink before moving on to the opening store list of a dozen or so things that needed to be done based on state restaurant rules and regulations.
Enzo would pop in around seven, and the cue was already out the door. From half past six until my shift ended in the afternoon it was relentless. Some mornings he’d come in more hungover than I was, and go straight to the back room and rip a line of cocaine before coming to help me trim the crowd down. Hung over he wouldn’t say a word for hours. He’d sweat a lot and be silent until at least ten.
If he was in really bad shape his temper would flare and he’d throw jugs of milk or toss tin pots in the sink and yell the price of something I got wrong. The louder he yelled the more I screwed it up and the whole thing would deteriorate until I was embarrassed to be standing there in front of twenty customers. Then I’d explode and curse something at him and instead of getting angry, it might have been what he needed, because he’d laugh and we’d move on as if it never happened.
Enzo paid well for the time, $7 per hour, and with those weekday morning tips, it often went to double that. One morning I walked out with $85 in tips, which back then was enough for groceries, gas, and entertainment for the month, which mostly consisted of PBR tall boys in the can for $1 at the local dive bars. I easily made rent which was a $325/month studio in the popular 23rd area of Northwest Portland, before it became the cesspool it is today.
On the mornings when Enzo wasn’t hung over life was great. I loved working with him. He'd come racing through the door with a smile on his face and say, “Hey Buddy!” and he went right to work on the espresso machine. We’d chat all morning and he’d charm the customers. Whenever we had a break we’d clean up and prepare for the next wave, and he’d tell me stories about the latest woman he was seeing, and how he’d sometimes bring them to the shop and they’d do their thing right behind the register atop the pastry counter. The guy would get creative and reach for the syrup bottles to pour on her and sometimes on himself. And that’s how I’d remember them, not by names but by syrup flavors.
“You went out with Cherry last night?” I’d ask.
“No buddy, she’s Hazelnut.”
Some mornings I’d open shop and see syrup bottles on the counter and I’d have to put on the cleaning gloves and go to work making sure no customers got herpes with their hazelnut latte.
On other mornings we’d be out of whipped cream canisters, which was the job of the closer the night before to make two. And I’d know that Enzo had brought one of his ladies by after midnight for dessert.
He’d come in that morning knowing that I knew that he knew that I knew, and he’d simply hold a smile for ten seconds and ask, “What buddy?”
Things have changed a lot in the food service industry since I did my time at that boot camp slash brothel. Tips don’t pay for rent. Wages suck beyond belief. Any states that are jacking up their minimum wage are passing that on to the consumer with higher menu prices, which means even fewer tips for workers who will sooner than later be replaced by robots, at least at the fast food joints.
In April California’s minimum wage jumps to $20 per hour for FAST FOOD WORKERS, which will be passed on to consumers. A Big Mac will soon be $13. A cheeseburger will be $8. In the 1990s, if you needed a quick hangover cure lunch you could get two cheeseburgers for .99 cents. The loony tunes frontrunner to fill Diane Feinstein’s coffin in the Senate wants to make things even worse for Californians.
With inflation still elevated, and since it’s compounding, real wages are declining. People have maxed out their consumer credit limits and two-thirds of households have no savings at all. Delinquencies are going on ninety days or longer and will soon turn into defaults, which will ruin credit scores, further limiting the viable consumers in a debt-based consumer economy.
Beneath the top twenty percent of earners, Americans aren’t even prepared for a $500 emergency. The number of TikTok car confessionals about inflation, cost of living, and government spending that cross my X feed are out of control, and some of them are people making six figures with no kids. Many people are just getting their first lesson in middle age on the evils of central banking, deficit spending, and money printing.
I am Uncle Sam's Inflation
But Ukraine needs $60 Billion to finish off the last remaining men there and Israel’s $205 Billion in foreign reserves aren’t enough to keep slaughtering children in Gaza, so Americans are going to have to foot those bills, again.
This should help with inflation (wink wink).
The latest jobs report came out yesterday.
You wouldn’t know that times are tough for the average American worker by reading the USSA Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It’s all Soviet now.
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It’s The Gosplan!
The State Planning Committee, better known by its Russian acronym Gosplan, was a central element of the Soviet Union's planned economy.
Today the United Socialist States of America has The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Commerce, the United States Treasury, and the Federal Reserve to handle all economic central planning matters.
In an election year, and increasingly in non-election years, these agencies work for the executive branch and party apparatchiks to “manage” statistics to make the economy appear stronger than it is through phony jobs figures, suppressed inflation reports, and other statistical magic tricks like recategorizing metrics so that those that are positive are selected and those that are negative are ignored.
In January of 2023, the BLS reported half a million new jobs were “created” while in reality there were 2.5 million job losses. The bureau simply calculated part-time seasonal employment from the holidays as permanent job “creation” without noting those jobs would be gone by the end of the month they were reported.
According to Bloomberg, "The Labor Department also reclassified about 10% of employment into different industries in accordance with an update to the North American Industry Classification System.”
GDP includes government job creation and government spending as part of “economic growth” which means for every positive basis point in GDP growth the government is taking on greater debt to prevent a recession, which was once considered two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The government is spending its way to “economic success” with the Federal jobs sector now the largest employer in the world.
Millions of these jobs are not adding any economic production or real value to the economy. Paper pushers and bean counters who take a Federal salary and are guaranteed a pension after so many years of service are a net loss on the system. When the government is the largest “jobs producer” and not the private sector, how is this not Soviet?
The Gosplan was responsible for comprehensive national economic planning and management, aiming to coordinate the Soviet Union’s economic development through the creation and implementation of five-year plans.
The Gosplan created an environment where the manipulation of statistics and the overstating of achievements became systemic. The political and economic incentives prioritized the fulfillment of the plan's quotas over accurate reporting and economic reality.
Central to the Soviet economic model was the achievement of specific, often ambitious production targets. These targets were critical for officials and managers at all levels to demonstrate loyalty and competence. Failing to meet these quotas could result in penalties, loss of privileges, or even more severe consequences. As a result, there was a strong incentive to report that targets had been met or exceeded, regardless of the actual production levels.
Economic growth figures and productivity metrics were often exaggerated to present a picture of continual progress and superiority of the socialist system. This was not only for domestic propaganda consumption but also for international prestige.
All of this led to widespread economic distortions, and inefficiencies, and ultimately contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall.
Can You Gig It?
Apart from thousands of new government jobs painting over the millions of private sector job losses happening, and the deletion of new unemployment beneficiaries, the BLS has taken to adding gig jobs as part of “job creation” statistics.
Retired men and women are taking on food delivery jobs because inflation is so bad and they can’t keep up on a fixed pension. People who work full-time are taking on weekend and evening part-time gig jobs to make ends meet, and these jobs are being counted toward “official” figures. Nearly one-third of American workers over 40 are taking on extra work in the “gig economy.”
Every month of positive jobs figures is exaggerated using part-time and gig economy jobs, while in the months following the job creation data is always revised downward. The downward revisions never get reported or make headlines.
“Every single month this year has seen its payroll numbers revised down. It’s difficult to stress how unusual this is as it’s so statistically unlikely. There is clearly something wrong with the estimations being done by President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor,” said EJ Antoni, an economist at the Heritage Foundation in that same piece for Bloomberg. Even the revisions downward later get “re-revised” again, and sometimes further downward than the initial revision.
Worse than the fudging of statistics and hiding the economic realities from the American people is that most new jobs added since the demented one took office went to foreign-born workers and illegals. While American citizens saw major losses.
Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics noted last month, “The agency initially cheered at the 3,140,000 new positions created in 2023, but later revised the figure down to 443,000. But wait, the BLS made another miscalculation in March to the tune of 306,000 jobs. This means that one-third of all new positions added in 2023 were a LIE.”
It’s the Gosplan, baby! Can you gig it?
Tip Me Baby One More Time!
The crazy truth about the economic oddities of the past few years is how few Americans have been preparing for hardship or trouble, and want to continue to live a disproportionate lifestyle to their means, even if it requires paying for it later in excessive interest. Instant gratification culture has conditioned consumers to see no further than the next paycheck or credit card payment due date.
Holiday spending continued to increase by 3.1% last year, revealing that Americans just don’t get it. When they should be tightening their waste belts, they are going into further debt to keep loosening them. With student loan payments coming due for credit reporting agencies in May, monthly car loans stretching toward 25% of net monthly income, and depleted savings zapped by high inflation, the American consooomer is in for a rude awakening, and the first people to feel this awakening will be in the service sector.
For those of you living outside the United States, it’s now common to see obnoxious guilt-inducing screens everywhere you go, including the supermarket self-checkout line, because everybody wants your tip or your charity.
After doing the job that used to be done by a grocery store employee—ringing up your groceries and then bagging them, the first screen to pop up is often to donate to charity.
At coffee shops, cafes, juice bars, and anywhere you pop in for something food or drink-related, even if they were once considered “fast food” they want your tip, and they watch to see how much of your tip you give while preparing their spit your order.
Just the tip, baby.
The middle class is getting hammered thanks to deficit spending, and endless money printing by the Federal Reserve, a siphoning of wealth upwards.
In a consumer economy where debt is a new religion, inflation is out of control, and living beyond one’s means is a birthright, when the inevitable next great recession comes it will be the tips that stop first.
I’m sorry sweetie, your service was great but we just paid $149 for wings, fries, Jalapeño poppers, and soda. We need your tip to fill the gas tank for the ride home and to refill our Ozempic prescriptions. It’s just a tip, baby.
And they’re already slowing down which means the recession has likely been ongoing but hidden with USSA gosplan parlour tricks.
Will the Department of Soviet Statistics show it in their next report?
It’s an election year Jack! You can rig it!
Shout out to new flock members for their kind words and support
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
Fixed Income Pensioner Discount (honor system)
Student Discount (valid .edu email)
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In 1996 I shared a house with two other guys in a mid sized city in Minnesota, looking out at the only lake in town, the rent for the entire house @ $400. I worked part time while I went to school and did just fine. If that house is still for rent I guarantee it is well more than $3000.
Ironically, no matter how bad the economy gets, I still half expect dems, combined with cheating (only dems really cheat because so many people are on the dole, welfare, grants and contracts), will come out well after the next election simply because they will promise ever more bribes, which is basically their only platform other than bad orange man is the amalgam of every evil man in the history of the world.
I remember when my Grandparents would tell me when buying something, "this used to cost a nickel". I didn't understand it until my later years. Now, when I go to the grocery store (I don't dine out, that's insane with the prices and the fake food they feed people who don't know why they are sick all the time) and see a can of Campbells Chicken Noodle soup which is loaded with salt (not the good kind) and gawd knows what (the label is a nightmare) "on sale" for $2.49 I say to myself, "I remember when this would sometimes be on sale for .30 cents in the 1980's"! Or how about top ramen (equally just as bad for you, but if you are going to college and are a young pup can definitely keep you from starving to death) which used to often be on sale for 10 for a dollar! And the sad thing is... the young people (just like we were) will be conditioned to think these prices are "normal"....