Went to a restaurant in LA today and when I got the check I noticed that it was a bit higher than it should be. Then I noticed this 18% service charge. So… We, as customers, need to help pay for their servers instead of the owners paying their servers a living wage. And on top of that they have suggested tip. I called bs on this. I will bet you that the servers do not see a dime of this 18% service charge. [deleted a word so it wasn’t a grammatical horror to read]
So it’s a mandatory tip, and it’s also suggested you voluntarily leave a secondary tip.
Tip culture in America is so aggressive.
It’s getting stupid in Canada too despite our laws being different (as in, you cannot make less than minimum wage if you work in a place that allows tips).
I got my oil changed a few months ago and the machine prompted me for a tip. For what? The mechanic did their job, I paid for said job. Transaction concluded.
I tried Crumbl cookies for the first (and last, holy crap overpriced) time. Got asked for a tip. For what? I got six cookies in a box and then had to leave the store because there’s no seating to eat them there. The person who helped me took my order. That’s it. Another employee put six cookies in a box and put them on a counter and said my number. Not a lot of wiggle room to go “above and beyond.”
What’s next? A tip at the grocery store for the cashier scanning my groceries? A tip at the drive-thru?
Here’s a tip. Don’t work for an employer who doesn’t pay you what you’re worth.
EDIT: Actually, the tip at the drive-thru is already a thing. Starbucks prompts for a tip at the drive-thru. For what? The barista took my order and made my coffee. I drove up to a window, took it, and fucked off.
I booked a hotel online the other day and was asked if I want to leave a tip… A tip for what? I didn’t even interact with a human. Just clicked a few buttons on a website. Am I tipping the web developer?? Lol
As a developer, I never get tips. Even on my open-source stuff, I have a “tip jar” PayPal link on the very bottom of my readme files. Never asked, never required. Know how much I’ve made in tips over the years? Exactly $0.
Have you tried walking into your software’s users’ homes to clear away empty plates and refill their water?
I know it feels gross, but asking is how you get people to do things. This is true for pretty much everything. That’s why mobile apps have a popup asking people to leave a rating, and Apple even has a standardized API for showing that popup since it’s so common.
So you should try something similar for you projects. Come up with an (ideally non-intrusive) ask that feels like a personal request rather than just a link dumped somewhere in a readme.
And if you feel bad about it, just remember that getting people to pay for OSS is a win for the whole ecosystem!
I’ve definitely tipped developers (through the ‘buy me a coffee’ site, or occasionally patreon). But I’m unusual I think…
Starbucks baristas doesn’t even “make” the coffee. They use superautomatic espresso machines. Starbucks coffee sucks ass.
In the US you generally cannot make less than minimum wage, the employer can directly pay you less as long as your full compensation (pay + tips) are at least minimum wage, if not they are supposed to pay more.
I think the explosion of tip questions is due to the card processors figuring out there was an untapped area where they could pressure people to tip and skim off a percentage of that.
Service charge I would presume is primarily paid out to the non-wait staff at the restaurant. The kitchen in particular.
Tips go to the wait staff, and they will pay some of that out to other staff (e.g. front staff) depending on how the restaurant works.These are going to be separate. The service charge is there so they can increase prices by a tightly controlled amount without needing to fuck up the carefully targeted price points ($8 or $7.99 is a lot better than $9.44). Which is shitty, to be clear: it’s a hidden way to increase prices while still advertising the same price. But it’s not something that replaces or complements the tip, it’s just a shitty price-adjustment.
A waiter or waitress is still going to be dependent on the actual tip.
Why don’t the restaurants just pay actual living wage then?
THIS^
pay them , what You want to … And increase the price on your menu … BUT DO NOT STICK 😞 YOUR CUSTOMER WITH A HIDDEN FEE …
Especially when we(customers) HAVE to pay tip 😉 … {{ Like 'TF was the person who came up with the hidden fee even thinking… 😞🤔 ? }}flips table
Someone needs to ban this account.
If I share the little green pieces of paper, I can afford a used Toyota. If I keep them all to myself, I can buy a new Cadillac and drive past my starving workers in style.
Can’t hear them crying over a V8 exhaust right?
That’s a good question, and the easy answer is ‘they should.’ As the commenter above you mentioned, they use it as a tactic to advertise the same (competitive to other local restaurants) price people are used to. A more transparent way of doing business would be raising the price of the menu items to compensate staff fairly. The restaurant owners/management fear that if they do this it would drive away customers who believe the food is overpriced and look to their competitors. It’s easy to say, ‘just pay the staff a fair wage,’ but not quite as easy in practice. Most restaurants are small businesses just barely scraping by. The OP is right to be annoyed, but as always, context and a basic understanding of a situation’s underlying principles make the easy answer difficult to implement.
Put a banner outside saying “no gratuity necessary, the price you see is the price you pay!” and watch what happens.
I worked in restaurants for years and this is the correct answer. I also die a little inside at how many posts say to pay servers a living wage but then balk at the idea of paying extra for the meal. Where else would the money come from??! As you said, if they raise menu prices, their competition will undercut and do this. It would also affect takeout prices where tips are usually lower. People hate tipping and want a magic solution where waiters make more but also nobody’s charged more.
Because they’re allowed not to do so. The answer is shitty yet simple.
Someone not tipping won’t change that either; all that will do is stiff a worker. This needs to be fixed by changing labor laws.
That’s entirely bullshit. A restaurant can absolutely pay a living wage and not do tips. Plenty of restaurants do it.
The simple fact is that servers don’t want that. They make more in tips.
I hear this repeated so often and it ignores one glaringly obvious fact, servers aren’t the ones making any decisions…literally anywhere. They are the absolute bottom rung of decision-making. It is most definitely the restaurants that are just fine paying as little as possible. Servers do love mandatory gratuity however. Working a party of 10 when only one person tips on their own meal can mess up your whole night.
Point to your credit here: it’s illegal in this state to pay less than minimum wage whether the employee is tipped or not. ALL workers make at least $15.74/hr here, except for 14 and 15 year olds who can be paid 80% of minimum wage.
… I didn’t say they can’t do so. I said they’re allowed not to. Since it’s allowed, that’s what they do.
Because then they’d have to raise prices.
Especially nowadays with so many people looking up menu prices online before going somewhere, it’s a way to present your prices as lower than they actually are.
It sounds like a hidden fee to me… Which is like lying to someone … anyways at least that’s what it looks like to me if not Fraud
Because liberal mystification with fancy-sounding concepts made to make you feel dumb so you don’t realize it’s just creative surplus labor value expropriation
They would still have to add that living wage cost to the food prices. Hidden or not hidden only makes a difference in how surprised you are, not the cost.
Because that’s not how it works in America. You know this. Don’t ask a question; it’s stupid. Declare your intention that it should be changed, and propose a way to do it.
If you actually care more than posting online, you can start a restaurant.
How come other countries can do it? Why not ours?
I posted because I want to drive discussions which lemmy sorely needs
I feel like there’s been plenty of discussion. Everyone knows it’s a problem.
It continues to happen because there’s no pressure to change it. Just discussions that fall into the abyss of the internet at this point, repeating things everyone already knows.
Different cultures, minimum wage laws, and tax laws; bottom line.
Is that really what Lemmy needs? Discussion on a topic that’s been hashed out a million times before? It would be more productive to talk about the weather than to keep circling the drain on this shit ad nauseam.
Biden was in the news saying he wants to get rid of hidden fees. I was surprised that restaraunts weren’t on the list of industries being targeted. This kind of fee should be illegal. It should be required to be a part of the up-front price.
Hell, I feel the same about sales tax. It should be baked in to the price you see on the shelf or menu.
Found their website. They use a lot of flowery words, but I think you sum it up pretty well.
Lol. this makes me want to stand in front of their restraunt with a protest sign saying " this restraunt likes to charge hidden fees "
Or they can get a less shitty employer. I see a hidden “service” fee, that’s the tip, take it to up with the owner, I’m not responsible for this. Restaurant staff really need to start directing their anger and efforts at their employer instead of customers.
Ya… That doesn’t seem realistic to me. Very few people will “direct their anger” toward someone with power over them. There’s always risk in a addressing issues with your employer because they can make your life worse. They can fire you, reduce your income or working hours, become inflexible with scheduling and demands, remove benefits, etc. No, it doesn’t always go this way and there are plenty of fine employers. But even if you have a reasonable employer and are free to raise concerns, there’s still risk and confrontation.
And what about alternate employers? Restaurant staff can go find a better employer, right? Except, job searches are very difficult and it’s near impossible to identify a good employer from a bad one while interviewing. Very real chance that you make a change and end up with more problems.
Don’t get me wrong. These hidden fees are 100% bs. It’s just not the employee’s responsibility to fix things. They usually have zero power in these situations. “Be good to the customer or I won’t get a tip. Be good to the employer or I won’t be scheduled to work.”
It’s not my responsibility to tip on top of a hidden 18% fee as the customer, either. That’s the point I was making. Waitstaff love to direct their anger at customers, as if it’s the customers fault. The employee does have the power to organize, campaign, and vote for politicians who could enact policy to make their situation better. Instead, they just bitch about customers somehow being terrible people because their employer doesn’t pay them a living wage.
Reminds me of how dealerships can sell cars above the MSRP … SMH
(( They do it in US but not in Europe; or so I heard ))
The S in MSRP is “suggested”, so I don’t see any technical problem with it. I think we need a separate term if it’s meant to be a locked price point across sellers.
Owner wants to get his cut, server wants to put gas in their car. We’re a country of 350 attempted unique make it rich stories and it’s a goddamn mess.
We need UBI and jobs programs aka Trek after WW3…but I fear we may have to fight the war to get it
How is this any different than just raising the price of everything by 18%? But you see service charge and a percentage and its an outrage.
If you raise the price of everything by 18% the prices on the menu will be 18% higher, possibly discouraging people from eating there. If you add it at the end people will still choose to eat there at least once. It is practically the same as raising prices, just a lot more dishonest.
Also illegal. It’s called bait and switch. Advertise one price, provide the service, then change the price. What if you went to get $50 in gas, and after you put the nozzle back the price suddenly changed to $59. Unless there’s a very visible sign saying it would happen before you started pumping, it’s illegal.
I’m sure that they have a sign by the front stating that they do this. Probably on the menu as well. I doubt that most people are doing the math themselves and are more likely to see a $10 menu item and think it’s $10 + tax and fees. Basically the extra fees are an afterthought.
Because raising the price of everything lets you know ahead of time that you are paying more. I’m fine with a price hike if it means servers get better pay, but hiding it like this is scummy and borderline fraudulent.
It isn’t hidden. They tell you upfront there is an 18% charge, however they rely on people ignoring that or psychologically not caring and only looking at the item price.
I wonder how many people would see the warning and assume it just means an 18% auto gratuity? Because that’s very common and the amount is exactly what many auto gratuities have (or at least had when I last was in the US, which was several years ago). Because if I saw something saying there was an 18% service fee, that’s what I’d assume. I would not think there’d be a tip on top of that.
I saw elsewhere that workers are suing this restaurant over this specifically. If they are doing a service charge like this it should not be revenue generating to the restaurant.
They are trying to tell you to not ask for a livable wage.
It does make sense to increase all menu prices in order to pay higher wages, but it’s a sleazy dishonest practice to hide that increase from the customers until it’s too late.
Listen to this scam.
I stopped at a Starbucks kiosk to get my kid a juice box the other day. When I paid for it by card the card machine prompted for a tip, 25%, 20%, and 15%. Here’s the kicker, 25% was selected by default! You actually have to use button on the machine to move through the selections to get to NONE. To top it off the lady behind the counter casually said, “Oh you’re using a card? Just press the green accept button when the menu comes up.” which would have selected the 25 option.Super shady!
It’s not a tip. They’ve literally just increased the prices without showing and lying about it on the menu.
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All the arguments about tipping here are missing the point. The restaurant owner just came up with a bullshit way of raising the prices without showing larger numbers on the menu. That should honestly be illegal.
A lottt of restaurants in socal do this, unfortunately. I’ve never seen it this high, though.
Reading the article, I’m not feeling too encouraged that this will actually impact small restaurants. From the article it sounds like the FTC is just going after large corporations.
You can,
-
want the owner to take a smaller cut
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be willing to pay more to raise the wages of the employees
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want to control via tips how much people make
What is BS is hidden costs.
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The thing is, by paying for food we should be paying the employees - that’s how salaries work. But in an effort to out-compete each other in the razor-thin margin business that is most restaurants, they don’t want their menu prices to go up, because that discourages customer spending. So many restaurants use underhanded tactics to screw customers instead. Hidden menu prices, sneaky service fees, and begging for point-of-sale tips at places where they’re not getting paid shitty server salaries (like fast food).
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I disagree. Those prices are pretty typical for most (proper) german restaurants and i would even say some of it is on the more affordable side. Also, while tipping culture isn’t what it is in the US, giving less than 10% will make the waiter almost certainly hate you.
That’s no excuse for that outrageous “service fee”, of course.
Best to cook at home
I’ll be the one to stoop to a name and shame. From the receipt, that’s Jon & Vinny’s Brentwood. Thanks—will now be sure to avoid going there.
i went to the one in Fairfax. i should have known something was up. when my wife (who wanted to go, she doesn’t speak english so she was just looking at the pictures) showed me this place, i saw that their rating wasn’t as good as i thought it would be. but since i was driving i didn’t check. now i know why.
Jon and Vinny’s is such great food too, it’s a shame that they pull this shit. Last time I went, I just rounded up to the nearest $ and paid with cash. I’m not tipping on top of an 18% auto gratuity. I would say they should just raise their prices, but that place is already very expensive…
All wages are paid by customers. Where do you think the money to pay them comes from? Heaven?
The underhanded and sneaky part is that the menu prices are a lie. If they want to pay a decent wage to their employees, good on them, but they should just raise all menu prices by 18% instead of surprising you later.
You nailed it. It’s artificially deflated prices, and dishonest…
Would be the last time I visited them.
Upvoted, but just want to say that the payment usually goes customer -> owner -> employee. Don’t let the owners trick anyone into thinking that someone other than themerlves are responsible for paying employees.
Why though? Why does that asshole get to decide how much the cook makes, and his much the server makes? Why do I get no say in it? After all, they’re making and serving food for me, not the owner. I should be allowed to negotiate with the cook and the server and write up a contract we all agree to. The owner gets a cut, too, for providing the space, and paying for the ingredients, but the cook and server pay him out of the money they make. Don’t forget the dishwasher. He rents the dishes to the cook.
I realized this sounds very silly and weird, but that’s exactly how contracting works. You directly pay who you interact with for the work they are offering, and if their work requires good or services from other people, they pay them.
Why not run a restaurant like a hair salon where a cook rents a time slot and a part of the kitchen. And the server is like hiring a private courier.
Again, its silly. I’m just saying… The whole customer -> owner -> employee relationship you seem to hold sacred is totally arbitrary. It’s a system some men with capital invented thousands of years ago. Why is it necessarily good?
Nobody’s saying it’s good, I’m saying it’s usual. Partly because it’s simpler in this situation, but you’re right to point out alternative models. Heck, where I’m from tipping is an alternative model.
If the service charge is always there then just raise prices by 18% and stop misleading people ffs…
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Imagine you only have 10 dollars on you and buy a 9.99 item off the menu because of it, only to discover at the register there’s a 20% service fee. Not very a very pleasant customer experience, is it?
Thank God where I live this is completely illegal. The prices on the menus are always the final price.
Thank God where I live this is completely illegal. The prices on the menus are always the final price.
^ This is the answer folks…this type of bullshit legalese in restaurants should not be legal.
You own that restaurant. Don’t you?
Caught me.
Any auto-grat on a bill is an instant big fat 0 on the tip line for me. Fuck double dipping on customers subsidizing shitty wages. It shouldn’t even need to happen once. If the restaurant can’t pay a reasonable wage it shouldn’t be in business.
I would be completely okay with a restaurant charging a bit more for meals if they also had a “do not tip” policy. Wait staff should be expected to do their jobs, the restaurant should be expected to pay their employees. As a customer I should be expected to pay the restaurant, full stop.
I wouldn’t go back, but your anger is towards management not the worker. I’d still tip in this situation.
This isn’t an auto grat tho? This is them saying “You pay more so our employees get better pay, you pay exactly this much more for this effect”. Instead of them just cranking up prices like normal.
Y’all are bitching and moaning about a restaurant being honest instead of just fucking charging more.
This isn’t an auto-grat. The receipt explicitly says “This is not a tip or gratuity” and has a recommended tip line. This restaurant is either double-dipping to pay their employees less or scamming their customers.
If it’s not an auto-grat why not just raise the prices on the menu 18 percent instead of surprising customers at checkout. Setting prices to cover your business and staff is an important part of running any business. The way they’re doing it is intentianally deceptive. Even down to saying that this is so that they can pay staff instead of just advertising the actual prices in the menu.
Corporations invented Jaywalking to pass the problem of death by vehicle from the manufacturer to the victim. Corporations invented the concept of Litterbug to shift blame from the makers of trash to the disposers of trash. Corporations invented the concept of the personal carbon footprint to shift the blame from the makers of carbon to the users of carbon.
This is just the same thing. Corporations are good at this.
Trash has been around far longer than corporations, and people have taken responsibility for their trash long before corporations existed.
Name and shame. Fuck this place.
Also “kids shells” for $22? Please tell me this is not macaroni and cheese.
It’s almost certainly a Mac & Cheese variant. Stuff like this is why I heavily research restaurant prices before going out.
Gem lettuce for $22? Wtf is the US smoking?
Since it is L.A. the markup is because of the volume of people willing/able to pay $22 for a kids Mac and cheese. At that point the tip is just mocking the workers of the restaurant.
the most concerning part for me is the “LA woman” charge… is that just a restaurant?
I thought the point of paying servers a living wage was to make tipping unnecessary.
This line of thinking is just making serving a less attractive job for millions of people to save yourself a small amount of money.
This line of thinking is what let’s wage thieves sleep at night.
Tell me you don’t understand wage theft without telling me you don’t understand wage theft.
If they have started charging this service fee customers will be less inclined to tip on top. So if the money from the service fee is not entirely being used to increase staff wages, then the restaurant management is effectively stealing their tips. That is wage theft in spirit if not legal definition.
This conclusions requires two separate assumptions from you that are not evidence-based
What a joke. Just raise your prices and put it on the menu. I would refuse to pay that. That was not listed anywhere before you ordered.
Those prices are already wack, holy cow
That was not listed anywhere before you ordered.
I don’t know why this logic hadn’t occurred to me until you said it. Strikingly obvious argument for raising prices on the menu.
What is this nonsense? I mean, since the customers are the only source of income for a restaurant, of course the customers pay for the wages.
But why hide that behind obscure markups (that’s all a service charge/tip is)? Why not just price the food 18% higher and drop the service charge?
That way, the restaurant earns the same money, but the customers actually know what they are going to pay and the restaurant visit doesn’t end on a down note when paying.
People look at the menu, decide the prices are reasonable and eat. They then get hit with an 18% service charge and (in the US) a 20% tip on top.
The restaurant could increase their prices by 18%, but then people would decide to eat elsewhere. Of course they’ll do that anyway after being hit with all the charges, but the owner thinks it’s worth it to get the custom once.
Wild that somebody would decide $22.25 is reasonable for chicken wings. Maybe for 100 of them …
They seem to be massively overcharging, which makes the whole thing a lot wilder. At those prices they could afford to pay their staff well and abolish both tips and service charge…
Suspect the owner is just a knob.
It’s in LA, everything is expensive and well is very relative. Minimum wage is almost $17.
Why would you tip when the restaurant just pre-charged an 18% tip? They say it isn’t a tip but it goes to the employees so, unless the service staff was beyond exemplary, just don’t tip. It’s less than I would have anyway.
I wouldn’t tip on that either.
You’re stating the obvious. The owners are making a political statement.
I mean, that’s basically the way it works. Here it’s just ‘transparent’.
Want to pay workers more - food gets more expensive. It’s the same thing with America not adding sales tax to the sticker price. When I get something for 2 bucks in Europe, it’s 2 bucks including the vat. In America, it’s 2 bucks before vat.
But yeah, it’s probably not properly implemented and just a scheme to get more money out of people.
Except it’s contingent on people making purchases. If there is a slow day, you work the same amount of hours but earn less because your pay isn’t tied to how many hours you worked, but how many sales were made. By doing it this way, it takes the risk of running business off the owners shoulders and puts it on the workers instead.
What i meant is that, in a theoretical mathematically sound world, to support higher wages, you need higher prices. The service charge shouldn’t be put as a ‘bonus salary’ - basically the ‘service charge’ in most countries is included in the price of the food, and is paid out as the hourly wage to staff.
Wait a minute, are you suggesting restaurants are just normal businesses that can be run like any other? Because that’s heresy. Restaurants are Special, because Reasons.
I bet legally, the establishment owners aren’t required to give “service charges” to their staff the same way they are required to give 100% of the tips…
This is some shady shit, IMO.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer (so I don’t know WTF I am talking about), so if someone here that knows the law could comment on “service charges” vs. “tips” in this context, I would love to know.
Looks like a couple of their employees are suing over exactly that.
Jesus. They try to be altruistic and say that tip culture isn’t fair (and it’s not), but you know the altruistic thing would be to… Not have tipping then! I’m in Seattle and there are tons of restaurants like this that have a fee, but then tipping is genuinely not allowed, they don’t accept them. Everyone gets a fair wage.
That 18% is definitely not going to the staff.
And for the owners, here’s an idea, why not just make the menu items 18% more expensive and remove the fee altogether?? And if that means your food is too expensive… Literally yes. Why does your food cost that much?
Tyvm for finding this article!!
" The announcement and change in billing language comes after a Los Angeles Times article published on June 21 about the class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Joint Venture Restaurant Group Inc., which owns Jon & Vinny’s. The workers claim that the company denied them tips and therefore shortchanged them on their take-home pay because of confusion resulting from the 18% service fee.
California’s gratuity law requires that tips be remitted in full to non-managerial service staff. "
SMH … What a bunch of assholes; screwed their customers and then their staff…
Hope they get fucked / hope justice is served
The word that should be there is “gratuity.” I’m quite sure you’re right, and I know there are horrible owners for sure, but I would have to think it would be impossible for a restaurant nice enough to charge $22.50 for a mini plate of pasta to retain good servers if they did that. Restaurant owners who operate fancy high-priced places would have more sense than to alienate their salespeople.
It’s LA, so I assume there are plenty of douchy “haute cuisine” wannabe places that charge $50 for a handful of steamed rice served in a styrofoam coffee cup under the name “Riz Derelicte” or some stupid shit like that.
what a unique and lovely culture… and so, specific…
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer
DAMNIT MAN, i already filed the lawsuit and put your name on top as a reference
Makes me think 🤔 if I went to a grocery store and they charged me a membership like Costco without actually disclosing it… Sounds like fraud if they don’t disclose this service charge / fee at the very beginning… They should have it plastered big all over the place because looks like most of us wouldn’t expect something like this…
“Restraunt” food is expensive as it is IMHO, even fast food isn’t a great deal unless you buy with a coupon or some 2 burgers deal 🤝… Otherwise it’s not worth it… Not to me anyways … :/
If only I could simply use a coupon to get a decent price from a fast food place. Nah, instead they all demand that you install a datamining app to maybe get you prices that would’ve been the regular price just a few years ago.
Ye… I hear Ya
I’m not in america, in our country when we buy a meal the tax is included, as is the cost of paying staff a living wage and tips are really only given (volunteerily, without prompt) in certain scenarios where service might genuinely be extraordinary.
It’s always been fascinating to me that it could be done any other way and to be honest it sounds incredibly complicated and quite shitty the way america does it, it seems to me like it’s an old fashioned relic from the swashbuckling 1800’s, pay your maiden well and she’ll make sure your mead is always topped up… But in 2023 it seems absurd, prepared food and drink is just a product like anything else, do you tip at Walmart when you buy a TV?
Knowing some of the absurd stories I’ve heard from americans (tipping car salesmen, pharmacies…) then tipping walmart wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Walmart has a policy where you are not allowed to accept tips. If you are caught you are let fired. People try to tip all the time for the grocery delivery stuff and if they manage to get money into your hand or the delivery basket you have to inform a member of the management staff. Granted this might not be true at every location but it is part of the corporate training you have to do if you work there longer than 4 months.
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