Comments

1
I really need to stop tipping.
2
@1 that's your take away? That $30 dollars an hour (with tips) is just too much? What the fuck?

Now people make to much? Which is it?

Essentially, and I may be reading more into that snark than intended, but it sounds like you want a livable wage for people... as long as it doesn't effect you in any way. While that's typical here , that's not it how it works.

Christ Almighty. Small businesses are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

If they meet the threshold of $15 dollars hour, and some will be forced to go to tip sharing, then people like you stop tipping. So we're back to shitty wages.

And $15 per hour alone, as much as it's an improvement, is a shitty fucking wage to build any future on in an expensive city like Seattle (in country with out single payer healthcare). It's only a start. And it has to be done right to be fair.

Anyway. I have read shitty snarky comments like yours on this site repeatedly (and you'll have to forgive me if that's not how you intended it - but that's what you get with one line drive-by's - nobody can read your mind).

People are complaining about the price of things in Seattle one second, complaining how MUCH people make...

...and the next second glibly crying that these greedy small businesses just need to increase their prices to meet the demand of the $15 per hour wage increase.

One second you guys are decrying the unfairness of slave wage capitalism...

...the next second praising market force wisdom in determining what business is worthy of surviving an imposed hourly wage increase.

It's insane.

3
What is Stowell paying her staff now? If it’s the minimum, even with tips, I have a hard time believing the servers would be worse off at $15, and they’re still earning tips.

But the tips are beside the point. I’m not in that business, and I don’t get tip sharing; with the kitchen staff, sure, but not with other servers and definitely not with owners. Tips are extra, and if a server doesn’t have to depend on tips because they’re making a good wage, those tips will be based on their shitty or not attitude, and that's as it should be.
4
These counter revolutionaries must be smoked out and eliminated!
5
while i'm an advocate of raising the minimum wage to $15/hr. and cutting corporate profits to 2 or 3% above their total intake. and making it illegal for the highest paid person in any company to make more than 12 times what the lowest wage worker in said company makes. --

this statement is weird, needs vetted or explained and will hurt the minimum wage push if it gets out there::

"Raising the minimum wage would be a significant step towards pay equality in Seattle. It would translate to women earning enough annual income to buy 16 more months of rent, or 8 more months worth of mortgage and utilities, or 2.3 more years worth of food."

so, if we raise the minimum wage in one year i will earn enough money to pay my rent 28 times? (i realise that is excluding all other outlays) if that's true, it will get turned into an argument against a $15/hr rise and into an argument for baby steps, which are bad and will ultimately hurt low-wage earners as they increment along at just above poverty level for x-number of years.

broad statements like this might seem good at the forefront, but we need real spreadsheety numbers to make the argument clearer and carry it forward.

also, tipping needs to be eliminated _everywhere_

there's no tipping where i live and our lowest wages are higher than yours (washington state) and it all goes pretty well.
6
Prices will have to go up for restaurant meals...and people will pay those prices.

Seattle is a wealthy place.
7
Huh? Total compensation has been floated by the poor millionaires for months. It's pretty lousy.

Tips? Counted against the employee's wages. Healthcare? Counted against the employee's wages. Sick days? Counted against the employee's wages. Any other benefits? Counted against the employee's wages. All these things that used to be provided by an employer as an incentive to work for them (or even mandated by law) would now essentially be provided by the employee. The poor millionaires who are suggesting "total compensation" are intending to shift the cost and the burden of employee benefits from the employer onto the employee, and they're using the minimum wage debate as a cover to do it.

It's nothing more than bullshit.
8
total compensation like any exemptions makes an effective simple law subject to innumerable loopholes and litgable points. who's doing to determine the value of the compensation benefits-- the employer. Give someone a burger at work? they can say it's worth 18 dollars, just like it says on the menu. give them a bronze level health care plan, when they want silver? too bad for the workers. they get it no matter what. give them uniforms to wear? nice, employer charges you $200 for those clothes -- see it's to your benefit you don't have to wear your own.

now, who is going to oversee that employers value the benefits fairly? what army of accountants, lawyers and judges is going to make them do it right? the worker will be screwed. you can't pay for food or rent with noncash "benefits." how paternalistic. sweep up in a salon, they give you a free haircut, voila! they take $45 out of your paycheck. this is crazy. the minimum wage has NEVER had this loophole and putting it in is like blowing a howitzer at the minimum wage law.

the employer should pay cash, and if the worker wants obamacare they can pay for it themselves. how about this: if the employer wants some service from the employer, let the employer make the choice to buy it or not. it's not the middle ages anymore and employers don't own the workers!
9
I'm sorry, but I can't work up a lot of sympathy for the Ethan Stowell empire. I think it's a great step that they are (maybe) willing to open up their P&L's, but if they really have nothing to hide, why did Angela (who is much less known than Ethan) make the statement?

Somebody in their empire is making far less than they should, and the argument that low wages create more jobs is the one that has been continuously debunked. If they think they can make more money by opening another restaurant, they will.
10
One would think that all these caring business owners who believe they can't afford to pay a living wage haven't considered some form of profit sharing to make sure their employees are as fairly compensated as possible.
11
NINE restaurants? That's a small business?:
13
If wages reach $15/hour I my standard tip will no longer be 15% - 20%. If a server is outstanding, then yes a larger tip on a larger bill will be warranted. At that point, for me, the tip becomes what it was intended to be - a gratuity to acknowledge outstanding service/expertise, etc, not a means to address wage disparity.

In the meantime, I wish there was a bit more discussion about the people who REALLY deserve a higher minimum wage, those who don't get tipped, e.g., child care workers.

Now what I also don't get about all this debate is why there isn't more outrage when the idea of exempting non-profits is raised? Of all the workers who should be guaranteed a higher wage it's people who work at non-profits, people doing the work that means so much to a civil society but that doesn't get rewarded. People who work at non-profits don't get tips, they don't get bonuses, they don't get scoial security accounts and retirement accounts built up - they barely get paid and the pay they do get mostly doesn't cover the cost of their college loans, let alone the costs of having a family. And yet there is serious discussion that they should be exempt! WTF?
14
@12 So you want more teenagers living at home employed, and more grown adults with families unemployed. Great plan.

And you are of course right. Those who can't become skilled workers should be fully supported 100% by your tax dollars. Free housing, free food, free education, free health care. Those who "won't" but have the ability to do so can be given free college for four years, plus free food, housing, etc. I like your plan.
15
It's unfortunate the the example you chose was Stowell. He confirms what everyone thinks about the whining restaurant people. He is rich. His restaurants are expensive and frankly overpriced. He could pay people more and raise his prices and if there were short term losses involved he could easily absorb them. In fact, the best argument for $15Now is the hope that it would stop him opening another restaurant.

I think one of the big disconnects in this whole discussion is whether being a waitperson is a profession or just a job that is designed as a stepping stone to something better. In many countries it is a profession. It is fairly well paid and the people who do the job do it with pride and panache.

I think we have to recognize that a large number of things we think of as just "jobs" are people's professions and maybe the reason we don't think of them that way and they don't perform that way (often) is because we denigrate them through poor pay.

I have no sympathy for Stowell's of this world - they should do better. But they are the exception to the average small business owner. I am, like most of us, for $15/hr but I recognize the need to phase it in (quickly) and to look at a very simple calculation of total compensation so that we end up in the right place with as few casualties as possible.

Ultimately, I'd like to see these jobs considered as professions and the people who perform them be treated with respect, have pride in their jobs and be paid a living wage.
16
Really looking forward to the Stranger Editorial Board pushing another Slog writer to author a piece on how maybe 11.50 is enough of an increase and then we'll just see how that goes.

All this tempering of past opinions and backpedaling is making me wonder which businesses are threatening to pull ad money.

...and then there's the Goldy departure. Hmm.
17
Also, nice long length of rope you gave to hang the piece with. Restaurant Empress speaks reason about how her empire may just not grow 100% like they'd like to next year.

Good. It's about time someone said we've got just about enough boom bust with the restaurants around here anyhow. If the SMALL BUSINESS OWNER thinks wage increase is a good idea then they would do it on their own instead of injecting their poison into the process with honeyed words of temperance and reason.
18
@16

I'm kind of hoping Goldy poured rat piss into the water cooler or something, because all the staffers seem to be dicks about this. Granted, I'm disappointed at his departure and haven't really looked at Slog much today, but as far as I can tell, not a single one of them posted any acknowledgment--no thank yous for what you did during your time here, no good lucks, nothing.
19
Sigh, Slog Bible Study was my favorite post each week. Thank you Goldy. Hope I am wrong about the Stranger turning into the beige mainstream press. Zzzzzz
20
I dare one of the "Small business are greedy assholes" assholes to meet with Ms Stowell. Better yet, Anna/Dominic/someone at the Stranger, please follow up with her and investigate if small business are lying or really will be hit hard.
21
Sure, we could consider total compensation. However, only for full time (40+ hr) employees with employer paid health care. That would be a discussion worth having.

Not interested in subsidizing dining establishments who do not take total care of their people.
22
Plus why not take tips into consideration. If you have a high end restaurant where most guests are tipping 15-20% a bill, then it's not unexpected to be making an extra 10-20 bucks an hour. Surely 25-30 bucks an hour is good enough (30 bucks an hour full time is ~ 50k).

If tipped min wage is raised to 15 bucks and food prices go up, I will probably reduce my tip from 20% to 15% to make up the difference, and I bet many people here will too.
23
Total comp is bullshit for precisely the reasons stated by the unregistered #8. There will be no meaningful oversight on how employers value things "given" to the employees.

No loopholes, no exceptions.

Gotta keep saying it: employers, prepare now for $15. This is your phase-in period.
24
A reasonable conversation about Minimum Wage? Well, that is possible, for sure..but difficult.
As a business owner myself, I find it difficult sometimes to see some of the crazy comments, so divorced from reality – many of which form other’s opinion. For instance:

#6 - “Prices will have to go up for restaurant meals...and people will pay those prices. Seattle is a wealthy place.”

That’s not exactly true. Yes, Seattle is “a wealthy place”, but that does not mean that there will be some kind of trickle-down effect that will equally cover all businesses that will see a 20+% rise in costs, and not every business can raise prices to cover those costs. Yes, some restaurants will be able to balance out their cost cutting with a rise in prices while simultaneously having to eat some of the losses, but others – many – simply will not. Yet, people will say such a thing as #6 suggested, that everyone is rich enough to pay the additional costs associated with a 25-60% rise in payroll costs. This is a very, very difficult & nuanced issue, one where it’s difficult survive a reasonable discussion when comments such as that one is someone’s thoughtless and not at all educated response.

#7 – “Total compensation has been floated by the poor millionaires for months.”
Not just “poor millionaires”, but the working business owners that are (I’m guessing) 90% of all of the businesses that will be affected by this rise in MW. “It's nothing more than bullshit.”, she continues, but it’s not “nothing more than bullshit.”, it’s real issue and real ideas to help the businesses that ALREADY have workers that earn far more than $15/hr. If the argument is “living wage”, and the person makes $30/hr. already, then how can anyone be against a discussion of total compensation? I don’t get that. It’s hypocritical.

#9? Really? What’s wrong with Angela speaking for her family’s restaurants? Such a comment is just illogical, to say the least. “If they think they can make more money by opening another restaurant, they will.” That’s the point, if they don’t think that they can make money, then they…won’t. And, if they are not able to compete at a level that they’d have to charge for their food because of this ill-created rise in MW, then they WON’T open more restaurants, meaning that they WON’T be employing more people. But, they know this because they know their business, and it’s so difficult to explain the nuances of our business’ costs, but it’s NOT difficult to just opine without having the information necessary to make a good opinion. That’s rather aggravating.

#13 – “In the meantime, I wish there was a bit more discussion about the people who REALLY deserve a higher minimum wage, those who don't get tipped, e.g., child care workers.”

Yup, many of these businesses are unable to raise prices at all…many are tied into contracts which preclude them from charging more… Even those that are not, have you SEEN the prices for childcare? If that goes up by 25-60%, that won’t bode well for many of the healthcare businesses that rely upon a static wage structure. Should those workers be paid more? That’d be great, but if the cost of doing so would mean that the business can not operate with those costs, then what’s worse?
The problem here is that many don’t believe small business owners when they day, ‘If this goes through, I may have to close.’ Many of you think that this is a scare tactic or a lie. Well, it’s not, but then again…the nuance of that is tough far more difficult to portray than just saying, “It's nothing more than bullshit.” and have other people ignorant to the realities & nuances nod in agreement.

#15 just does not make sense. That’s the kind of comments that does NOT make for “a good conversation”, so I’ll just move past that one.

#17 – “If the SMALL BUSINESS OWNER thinks wage increase is a good idea then they would do it on their own instead of injecting their poison into the process with honeyed words of temperance and reason.”
Same as the others. The problem is that even if one wants to pay their staffs more – and I do, many of us do – it’s not always plausible. What should we do, just raise our prices? You DO understand why that’s difficult to do and remain in business, right? There IS such a thing as competition…you recognize that, right? We can’t just raise our rates to some % that we choose in a spreadsheet and then pretend that there’ll be no competition issues. Yes, many of the dishes at nice restaurants around town such as the Stowell restaurants are very expensive, but they DO pay their people well, and their ingredients are better than most others with whom they compete, so their prices reflect those realities. So, the answer is not just to “do it on their own instead”, but again – that’s the refrain and chorus from people who don’t understand business.

Folks, here’s the real info:

If we have to pay our baseline staff even just 25% more, that means that any staff that are close to $12.50 will have to get a raise also. So, since for many businesses, payroll is fully 50% of all of their expenses, they will see that 25% rise in the cost of employment cost them tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. So, that cost will have to be covered by a rise in cost of their product. Add to that the fact that the purveyors will have to raise costs, that means that the 2nd largest cost will go up…perhaps 10%. So, now that cost will have to be covered also. Add to that the 17% or more in taxes that we pay on each dollar that we pay our employees…that’s also a cost that will have to be covered, and just raising our prices is not always a possible solution. For many, it’s simply NOT possible. What about them? ‘Too bad’, is the response from many of you, but those are real jobs with a cascading ripple effect when many people lose their jobs, as they surely will.

So, now we’re looking at rising costs no less that 25% across the board just to hopefully cover the change in operating costs related to wages, to say nothing of other costs that will be affected – so now that $10 burger? It’s now no less than $12.50…and that’s without any hope of any profit.

Please keep in mind that most businesses of this type IF THEY ARE REALLY WELL RUN, they’ll make only 8% net profit per year of their total gross income. 8%. It’s not like there’s a lot of room to eat the cost increase, and since many of these types of small businesses barely are able to eek out a profit, should we then just let Darwin’s law of Evolution take its toll and those businesses that can’t evolve should fail? Well, I employ 20 people, it’ll be 38 soon – so you want to tell my employees that you are creating the environment through ignorance about how businesses work, which in the end may cause them to lose their jobs…I doubt that your casual attitudes on the real effect of even $12.50/hr. will have much positive result.

Learn before you opine, and that way we can have ‘a good conversation’. Otherwise, it’s just ignorant responses to a serious problem.
25
I'd like to add that being paid $20-$30 seems like a lot, but that's because the number of hours on the clock is kept to an absolute minimum. No FTEs. Most servers have to work at least 2 jobs to get to a normal job's hours. Meanwhile, food still has to be handled correctly, stored, cleaned a lot of which happens off the clock. Wage theft is a big deal, but it's worth it for the tips. If you don't do your job within the time alloted, you will lose future shifts or fired. So, "Are you guys still open?" translates to "Yes, but that'd be at least an extra hour for you that will likely get me in trouble with my hours, but also get me in trouble if I turn away a potential customer." It's a hard position to be in.
26
Ethan Stowell, born with a silver ballet slipper in his mouth, finds a niche and parlays it into an empire. Cry me a fucking river if you can't expand, expand, expand at the same rate you're used to, building your brand by paying crap wages. What a terrible example of a "small business" being impacted by having to pay a livable wage.
27
@24: Thanks for admitting that "total compensation" is an attempt to reduce employees' wages and to move traditional benefits off the shoulder of the employers and onto the backs of the employees. Why not bring back the company store while you're at it?
28
Also, Stowell's mention of their 9 restaurants employing "about 200 people" makes Dave Meinert's claim last week that "closing a place like Lost Lake will mean 115 jobs lost" all the more ludicrous.
29
Nobody tips manufacturing workers.

Stop talking about restaurants like they're the only businesses in Seattle.

If I have to pay $15/hr., two guys get fired. I lose $2-4 bucks an hour on these guys to train them. I can't afford to lose $8-10/hr.
30
@24:
What's wrong with Angela is that if Ethan spoke, people would say "Ah, I know who that is", and probably think to themselves (as I did and as @11 did) "That's not what I think of as a 'small' business."

And let's see, opening a new restaurant would mean around 20 new jobs (given 200 people at the current 9 restaurants). So the implied choice being given by the Stowells is:

1) We can employ 220 people at crap wages
2) We can employ 200 people at a living wage

Let's assume for the sake of argument that this really is the choice. This is certainly a discussion we could have - it's not a no-brainer either way, but I would opt for the latter. And this is precisely a decision that should be up to us as a society, not left to individual business owners - what is the minimum standard of living for the fellow workers in our society?

And that's not even getting to the fact that many of us believe that the choice presented by the Stowells is a false choice.
31
Support for a $15 minimum wage is up to 68% now. What was it before all these restauranteurs started coming out of the woodwork to plead they can't afford it? Barely 50%? Less?

That tells me the perpetual-victim-small-business crowd is losing. You guys think you're the victims, but nobody's buying it. People living in poverty are the victims. If you think a $7.25 minimum wage makes for a better business climate, then you're free to move to any one of a couple dozen states where you only have to pay $7.25. In spite of your victim mentality, the reality is that you have the luxury of moving your capital anywhere and doing business where you like. The people at the bottom of our economy have far fewer choices than you.

*La la la la la...* I know you're not listening. Keep it up Meinert, Keck, the rest of you. It's helping our side. Your arguments are making it easier for us to win. Mostly it's the fucking rent, the fucking poverty that is making the case for $15/hr. But your bleating is helping us win too.
32
If people are making $15 an hour minimum I'll likely never tip again. Like they do in Europe...
33
Do any of you know what the real expenses are for businesses as part of their income?

So many of you who don't know half the story think that small business-people are lying. Are manipulating. Are trying to get away with something.

But, have you taken a moment to ask about the numbers? When I tell you that my prices will have to go up no less than 20% across the board just to stay in business, why have not ONE of you asked what the real costs are? Why have not ONE of you not thought to ask The Stranger to come out with some more information before you make all of these silly claims/assignations about small businesses?

I'm putting together a 2-week P/L for the press to take a look at so that they can have some numbers and I'm asking other businesses to do so also so that if you remain in ignorance, it's then intentional.

Please just ask questions. Just spend a moment to wonder what the reality is before you just up and make a decision without ANY information to support your opinion.
34
What exactly do folks consider "small business"? 200 employees, while much less than say boeing, sounds freakin' huge to me.

Also, do any of these restaurant folks recognize that when thousands of Seattle residents get a very substantial pay raise that perhaps rather than raising prices or cutting hours to balance their budgets they can instead increase sales??? I know if I got a big raise my family would eat out much more often...
35
@28 Lost Lake is open 24/7. 100 employees for three shifts a day seven days a week for a restaurant that size would not be unheard of at all.
36
@35: that's 21 shifts a week. If each employee works 4 shifts a week, that means they have 20 people on staff at a time.
37
Why should anyone expect employers to take care of them? What happened to the idea of everyone taking care of themselves?
38
@ 37 it never went away but it's less an idea than a catch phrase that doesn't really apply to humans
39
@38 so are you saying animals, with less gray matter, know how to take care of themselves better than humans? Hmmm. I think I get it now..

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