Summer is Here

~ Laura

Hi, y’all. We’re slowly shifting to the summer schedule, which turns out to be more frenetic than the regular schedule. I overscheduled activities for Ian, and Jonah has a work schedule that is throwing a major wrench into our two-car household. We are not ready to expand our car fleet to accommodate Jonah’s 5-dollar per hour bus boy schedule.

And $5 per hour? That’s what Jonah makes. Restaurants are allowed to pay servers less than minimum wage because they supposedly get tips. Jonah’s gets handouts from the bartenders and waitresses, so he’ll come home with $15 per night in tips. His first check for 35 hours of work was for $100. Meh.

Alright, I need to get my brain together here and get back to blogging/work. I’m going to go light this morning and just share some links.

This Iraqi refugee is doing amazing work with miniatures.

Upper middle class Americans are 21st Century Victorians.

New England style prefab houses are totally cute.

American workplaces are slowly realizing the potential of people on the autism spectrum and are making accommodations.

Professors on the chopping block. I’m going to come back to this one.

 

Published by Laura

11 thoughts on “Summer is Here”

  1. I really want one of those houses. They seem expensive for the square footage, but still cheaper than the new McMansions they’re putting up in the white-flight landing zones.

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  2. Ah first jobs. I worked for the public library in high school and they were also allowed as a public non profit to pay us less than minimum wage.

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  3. The article on college professors conflates several issues. Certainly, advocacy of violence in the abstract (i.e., with no clear and present danger of violent action) and expressions of racial hostility and animus are Constitutionally protected. Also clearly, threats of violence (or actual violence, at least at Middlebury) are wrong. But the question of whether colleges should place any limits on their employees is more difficult, at least for me. Private colleges certainly have the legal right to do so; the situation for public universities is more ambiguous.

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  4. My summer started at about 10 pm tonight, when I finished grading my June class’s final exam and posted final grades. Couldn’t come at a better time, as I lost my work keys/ID for about 14 hours before I found them exactly where they were supposed to be. I have been so sleep deprived by this 8 am class that I was starting to develop some kind of dementia.

    I wish tomorrow was looking like a relaxing day, but I have a full day of taking E to the allergist, attending E’s summer band’s concert, and making sure both kids go to their friend’s father’s wake. The friend’s father died from choking on his own vomit in his own bed after a night out drinking. 41 years old. Such a waste. 😦

    My students swear that a tip-based restaurant economy is best no matter how many articles about the benefits of a decent wage/no tipping I give them. 😀 I’m still not convinced, though. One thing I did learn from them is that cash tips are better.

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    1. They are pro tip as workers? Several of our locally owned restaurants are going to a service charge model. The business argument was that they couldn’t hire for the non-waitstaff positions in the top model (cooks, etc.).

      The last four restaurants we went to at home were all no-tip.

      We also are moving towards a 15 dollar minimum wage.

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    2. My friends who worked as servers all believed that the hourly wages would be less than what they could get with tips. If you worked where alcohol was served you could do very well. I have no idea if they were correct or not.

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  5. The restaurant owners who have institute the new system are “good guys”, in the sense that they provide food for the homeless, job training for disadvantaged workers, and support charitable institutions in the city. But, they are business owners in a competitive enterprise. I’ll have to talk to the service people at the restaurants — I do worry that redistributing the service fee let’s the house keep more. It’s also possible that taxes and the redistribution to non-wait staff is a driver in the preferences of servers, too.

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  6. Note that our $15/hour minimum applies to servers too, regardless of whether the restaurant charges a service fee or there is tipping. I wonder if the service charge restaurants are using the charge to pay for the minimum wage. But, if they were, you’d imagine that they’d have difficulty competing against restaurants that have tipping.

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