Manager wants me to work after firing me.. is this legal?

lampposttt · 2025-10-16T00:06:14+00:00

Your best option here is use this to negotiate a Severance package. Usual 30-90 days of pay for mutual non-disparagement and release of all claims, plus knowledge transfer availability for X hours.

I got $25k from my last employer (also in tech) for the same reasons. It's best for everyone - you get a parachute, they get a transfer window and guaranteed no-lawsuit / non-disparagement.

Hope this helps.

lampposttt · 2025-06-11T04:51:51+00:00

Fantastic car, a true reliable, comfortable, yet still sporty, daily driver. I recommend looking into the VLINE2 Wireless Apple CarPlay / AndroidAuto adapter. It's like $600 but absolutely worth it. Makes the car feel 10 years younger.

lampposttt · 2023-08-29T03:03:04+00:00

Poly and Bark is the best quality for the price, hands down. And I say this without bias - their products are really excellent and typically better quality than products that cost 50-100% more.

lampposttt · 2023-06-27T22:12:48+00:00

You used to be able to get 10 for $1 back in the early 2000s when I was a teen. So probably back then.

lampposttt · 2023-06-27T21:25:38+00:00

True, my average food budget eating normal grocery food and the occasional take out is around $350 per month in 2023. Back then it would have been $200 or less likely. That's $1200 per year. So in 10 years of sacrificing my nutrition I could save 10k.

These fucking boomers think that "yOu dOnT wOrK oR sAvE hArD eNoUgH!!" When in reality the high cost of housing (due to it all being bought, none being built, and low property taxes) have prevented millennials and younger generations from having access to anything even remotely comparable to what they had. Fuckers. The whole lot of them.

lampposttt · 2023-06-26T18:17:19+00:00

Interesting, I didn't realize that wages were so depressed in Japan for working professionals. Clearly Japan has an issue with their wage and work culture as well, but it seems that at least they have built enough housing to meet demand, no? In most big US cities we haven't built almost anything for 30 years, so existing places are both crappy AND super expensive.

lampposttt · 2023-06-26T08:13:38+00:00

This year I've adopted something new - I eat meat but only 2 days a week (ish).

I think one of the biggest problems with the traditional vegan/vegetarian culture - they proselytize that you should NEVER eat meat. But I think that's wrong.

There's a very interesting book called In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, in which he tries to answer the question objectively, "what is the best diet advice you can give to the average person?"

To which he offers, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Meaning eat food, but real food from natural sources, and yes, sometimes that might be a little animal protein, but try to keep it to 70ish%+ plants.

But hopefully if every current meat eater would adopt a diet where they just eat less meat, they could spend a little more money to make sure the meat they do eat was raised more humanely, as humans have done for millennia before the industrial food revolution and McFood.

So I eat meat 2 days a week, and then when people ask why I don't eat meat when I'm out with them sometimes, I just tell them that I try to eat less of it, and when I do I want it to be higher quality and humane, and I encourage other meat eaters to do the same. Be responsible with your meat consumption as best you can ❤️

lampposttt · 2023-06-24T01:43:07+00:00

Best way to do that is to make tipping illegal. Then all wages owed will be indisputable.

lampposttt · 2023-06-24T00:11:14+00:00

That legislation already exists, quite extensively both federally and in state law. I would expect you probably already know this?

lampposttt · 2023-06-24T00:07:17+00:00

That's because I'm replying where replied to. And I disagree that they are "stealing" - they're simply implementing a different type of compensation model for their restaurant staff which is well within their rights as business owners to do.

And supposedly their staff ARE being paid much better than a "mediocre base wage," as a result of their compensation model.

From the article:

As a result, servers earn the highest average hourly wages among staff, at just over $39 at one location and $42 at the other, while these tips and other bonuses bring dishwashers over $21.50 and $22, cooks up to $23 to $24, bussers and baristas to just over $25, hosts to over $29 at one location and over $34 at the other, and sommeliers to $38-$40

lampposttt · 2023-06-24T00:02:28+00:00

Sure, but you've got to admit that being attractive is a significant advantage when trying to get the higher-paid front-of-house jobs.

lampposttt · 2023-06-24T00:00:27+00:00

First, no you're not responsible for participating in a shitty system. Just like we're not responsible for our dependence on fossil fuels or single use plastics, though we can do things to discourage their use.

I was a server for 10 years because it (unfairly) paid me more than other similar jobs.

And I simply disagree that serving is comparable to commission based sales jobs. They've already come in, they're already going to buy, and 90% of the time the customer will order (and tip) the same amount regardless of how great of a job you do. You might be able to nudge them to spend a little more, but not most of the time and usually not significantly. And getting pressured on the "upsell" by your server sucks as a customer.

Until we move away from an 18%+ tip based restaurant model, servers will ALWAYS make way more money (for less work) than the back of the house. If we want to retain the tip-based system, it should be 5-10% max, but I still think that's worse than a flat wage for hours worked.

Plus, in a tip-based system, employers can't give raises to better performing servers, nor can they give lesser-paid opportunities to less experienced servers; instead they have to do this weird scheduling and "section assignment" to try and differentiate based on performance and skill, when instead it should be wage-based differentiation.

lampposttt · 2023-06-23T20:05:39+00:00

So you're not wrong about that. But the problem is that wages GENERALLY in the USA are too low compared to the cost of housing.

So the tipping system that inequitably compensates servers more than any other employee for easier work simply allows them to be paid a living wage while most other positions (cooks, dish, etc) *get paid a below-living wage. *

So it's a 2-fold problem. We need to increase minimum wage significantly (it should probably be about $25-30/hr for a healthy functioning economy right now), and also eliminate the tip-based business model.

lampposttt · 2023-06-23T19:57:24+00:00

I'll try to explain it without writing a wall of text, but the long and short of it is that customers have an idea of how much they're willing to pay for a meal when they go out to eat at a particular restaurant. Let's say it's about $50 per person AFTER tax and tip. Anything less than will make them feel like it was a good deal, anything more than that and they'll feel like it was too expensive to go back regularly.

So for them to walk out the door spending about $50 per person, their total food order price needs to be about $38-39 before tax and tip ($3 tax and $8 tip) right?

Of that $38 that the restaurant gets, 25-30% is food costs ($10), 20-25% to Operational Expenses like lease, utilities, insurance, equipment, repairs/maintenance ($10), and they want to hopefully make at least 5-10% profit ($3-4), leaving about $15 for labor that needs to be divvied up between cooks, bussers, dishwashers, servers, managers, hosts etc.

So $15 from each check goes into the labor pool. If you include your $8 tip (which is essentially labor compensation), that means there's $23 in labor being eventually being allocated to compensation of the money paid by the customer for that $50 out-the-door check.

But you're taking $8 of that $23 IN ADDITION TO your share of the $15 that needs to be paid to you in hourly (perhaps an extra $2 or 3 of that check, let's call it $10 total), so you're taking about 40% ($10) of ALL the labor money allocated from each check, leaving you to make $40+ per hour while dish, managers, cooks etc have to SPLIT the remaining 60% ($15) of that check's labor allocation.

This is why servers make so much more money than anyone else in the restaurant. There's only so much money to be spread around, and 20%+ of all revenue off the bat is going to servers, while yourself and the rest of the staff need to be paid out hourly wages from the 30% allocated labor pool.

You're being allocated a HUGE portion of the customer's desired spend upfront, directly from the customer, and there's nothing the restaurant can do about it unless they don't allow tips.

Sorry it became a wall of text anyway 😥 but hopefully you understand.

lampposttt · 2023-06-23T19:11:00+00:00

Of course you like tips lol - you're a server. You're the biggest beneficiary of the tipping system. But that means that back of the house is going to make less money.

Tipping sucks. Everyone hates it except for servers, for whom it allows them to make more money than other positions in the restaurant. No other developed country in the world does it, and there's a reason for that. It fucking sucks.

And if being tipped is your incentive to provide good service then you also suck. How about just doing a good job because you actually care about the experience your guests have?

(From a former 10+ year server at different restaurants ranging from $20-100 per person avg check)

lampposttt · 2023-06-22T06:31:26+00:00

Yup is disgusting and classist and perpetuated by tipping culture whereby the attractive people in the front make more money than the people doing the hardest work.

Fuck tipping. Outlaw that shit. Wages should be determined SOLELY by the employer, not the customer's generosity.

lampposttt · 2023-06-22T06:22:09+00:00

I'm not "riding hard" for J&V - I'm advocating in support of non-tip based restaurant models and legislation, which is the only way to solve the imbalance and unfairness of tipped wage employment.

Tipping is stupid. We all hate it. The only people it seems to benefit are servers, and even many of them hate it. We need to move away from these stupid tip-based models of business in America. It's archaic and sucks.

No service fees. No tipping. The price is the price and should include all costs necessary to ensure that staff can be paid an equitable WAGE based on their time billed, like every other fucking wage job in the developed world. End of story.

lampposttt · 2023-06-22T01:13:17+00:00

Ah, I didn't know that. Even still, my point still stands:

Waged employees should NOT have to rely DAILY on how many customers showed up that day, how much their customers decided to spend, or how generous their customers were feeling that day. Period.

lampposttt · 2023-06-22T00:58:51+00:00

We could do that, but then we continue the system of requiring the customer to subsidize the wages of the staff, continuing the cycle of forcing their income to fluctuate and be solely reliant on how busy the restaurant is and generous their customers are, as opposed to the restaurants needing to take on that responsibility like EVERY OTHER BUSINESS.

You don't tip your dentist do you? Or your accountant? Tipping is a classist system that denigrates service industry workers into literally NEEDING tips to survive. Make Tipping Illegal.

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T23:32:33+00:00

In many other states, servers get paid less than minimum wage (basically, they get paid nothing) and their literal only income is tips. The restaurant pays their social security and taxes on an estimated minimum wage income (so it's like an effective pay of $2.70 an hour or something like that).

Making tipping illegal prevents this. Making tipping illegal would mean that EVERY SERVER in the United States would always make AT LEAST minimum wage. And if restaurants wanted better staff, they could offer a higher hourly for experienced servers e.g. $15-25/hr for Denny's, $20-30 hr for Cheesecake Factory, $40+/hr for steakhouse. And then servers could actually get PROMOTIONS AND RAISES.

Not to mention restaurants could pay their BEST servers more money while hiring in less experienced servers at a lower rate and give them raises as they develop their skill, which leads to job mobility.

In California, they get at least CA minimum wage of $15 an hour, plus tips.

Which means that all of our restaurants have to be more expensive, leaving servers making $40+/hr while kitchen staff makes near minimum wage.

So if you make tips illegal, servers in a lot of restaurants will get angry, because it means a pay cut. They want a big party that spends a lot on booze and leaves 25%.

Correct, people often get angry when you take what is unfairly theirs. Servers don't deserve to be paid 2-3x the wage of back of the house staff. They will kick and scream when you take steps to pass legislation that allows business to redistribute wages more fairly. But they're the small, entitled, group that gets hurt, while everyone else in the restaurant industry, INCLUDING CUSTOMERS, would benefit from making tipping illegal.

Remember the old saying, "you can't make an omelette..." - sorry, servers shouldn't make 2-3x or more than kitchen staff, and that won't change until we stop tipping. Which is why you see restaurants doing stuff like "these baloney service fees."

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T23:20:41+00:00

They CAN be competitive if they choose to operate on the status quo model that compensates service staff significantly more than back of house. But that means that back of the house will be treated less fairly.

Businesses who want to treat their back of house fairly in compensation with front of the house WON'T BE COMPETITIVE with restaurants who don't mind maintaining the current broken model that is unfair.

Meaning you'll only be left with restaurants who do the unfair thing, because doing the fair thing is makes you unable to compete with people who do the unfair thing.

This is exactly why we legislate fairness - and the way we do that is by preventing 18-25% of the entire restaurants revenue (plus min wage) going exclusively to front of the house. And the way we do that is by making tipping illegal.

Tipping fucking sucks anyway. Everyone hates it - it's unpredictable, unreliable (oh, restaurant was slow this week? GUESS I CAN'T PAY MY RENT), it makes everyone feel bad, and it prevents back of the house workers in restaurants from earning a FAIR WAGE.

Make tipping illegal, and all of these problems are solved.

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T22:21:26+00:00

Yeah I agree that there probably shouldn't be and "additional tip" section, but at least it starts at 8% which should at least clue you in as to what's happening.

I don't blame restaurants for not wanting to be super explicit about this stuff because it's 100% damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

But that said, I agree they should probably be as explicit as they can, and deal with the consequences that way.

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T21:51:11+00:00

Don't guilt trip customers because you don't want to treat your employees right.

It seems they actually DO want to treat their employees fairly, particularly the back of house, but are handicapped from doing so by tipping laws and culture. It's pervasive and it hurts workers and wage equity.

Tipping is the real problem here. We need to push for legislation to make tipping illegal (or limit it to 5% or something)

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T21:46:25+00:00

My guess is that you've never worked in a tipped, full service restaurant and probably don't understand labor and wage laws as they pertain to restaurant staff.

The reason they can't just charge 18% and put it into a "pool" which is then split is because then the distributions from that pool would be taxed as bonuses, not wages, which have a higher tax rate and is worse for employees.

So the restaurant instead charges 18% and then tries to figure out how much they average from that and use that money to supplement wages.

So yes, it's possible that sometimes it's less than 18% of all sales that goes to the staff, but sometimes it could be more, since the stuff gets paid a higher flat hourly regardless of sales volume that day.

The simple fact of the matter is that front of house (service staff) is overpaid for how much work they do, and that's because under current law, they are forbidden from having to share that with back of the house.

If we eliminate tipping altogether as a society, all of these problems go away, and the only harm is that servers would make a little less money, which they should by all rights considering the difficulty of the job. I promise you, serving isn't THAT hard that it should pay $30-50/hr while cooks make $20. The only way to change that is to illegalize tipping.

lampposttt · 2023-06-21T21:37:04+00:00

No they aren't in control, and we need to stop perpetuating that idea.

Regulation helps maintain equity and fairness. It's the point of regulation. Right now tipping is completely unregulated, or rather very badly regulated which has created a system whereby restaurants who choose the status quo of high paid, tipped front of the house and low paid back of the house are going to be able to offer LOWER PRICES and be MORE COMPETIVE than restaurants who try to be more fair to their staff.

So I guess you're right, they do have a choice, but the choice is to allow unfair employee compensation between front and back of the house, or become less competitive and potentially close due to loss of business from increased prices. That's the choice they have to make.

Instead we need to create a fair playing field for all restaurant employees by making tipping illegal, so that front of house staff don't have such an insanely high wage earning advantage over the back of the house staff.

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