Second Helping - The Politics of Tipping, Naps, & Pumping Gas

Grace: 00:00:00

Hi Katelyn.

Katelyn: 00:00:01

How's it going?

Grace: 00:00:02

You sound like you're right next door.

Katelyn: 00:00:03

if you could only see my setup, I'm in this teeny tiny little traditional home on an island, in the Mediterranean and I have cushions stacked around me so that I don't sound like I'm in a cave, but it's so worth it. Visiting Anna's family. It feels good. Yes.

Grace: 00:00:20

You're at your in laws house, right?

Katelyn: 00:00:22

so we are actually doing quite a bit of traveling this trip we saw them and now we're on Milos, which is the first island actually I ever came to when I visited Greece for the first time. It was awesome.

Grace: 00:00:33

Oh, I've never been to Greece. I'm going to need to go sometime.

Katelyn: 00:00:36

Oh, I have a full Google Maps spreadsheet.

Grace: 00:00:41

I can only dream. back here in the beloved Palmetto state, all the kids are back in school and one of the things that I got from my kids school, was that the way that teachers in schools are handling how discourse will happen within the schools over this political season.

Grace: 00:01:02

And I think that's really interesting that they're a step ahead of it. And a lot of schools are putting up sort of a list of, things that you must adhere to when discussing things in class. I think, putting up guardrails of you're discussing, not because you have to change someone's opinion, but go into it thinking that your opinion might change. Things like that, that I think are really great for the schools to teach of how to have political discourse.

Katelyn: 00:01:30

I think that's incredible. It's such a lost art to be able to have those conversations and it's why we started Second Helping, to have that conversation and disagree sometimes.

Katelyn: 00:01:41

I wonder, do the kids still do the mock voting? That was one of my favorite things when I was young.

Grace: 00:01:48

I'm not sure if they'll do that this year or not. Because the political climate has been so tumultuous. I think schools have tended to steer clear a little bit of anything that is, partisan but I feel like maybe they are starting to come back around and understanding we have to be able to have discourse effectively and we have to be able to communicate. A lot of the schools are doing this at a little bit of a risk because there probably will be some parents that get upset with whatever their kids learn. But I in the big picture, this is a really important thing.

Katelyn: 00:02:28

It's where democracy thrives, right? And political discourse and conversation.

Grace: 00:02:33

Yeah, absolutely. Kids are so much more savvy on the internet than we were.

Grace: 00:02:39

They're able to see a little bit better what's fake and what's not. The boomers, the Gen Xers and the millennials were really like the wild west of, the internet. They just unleashed us without any sort of Guidance or rules or etiquette online.

Grace: 00:02:58

A lot of times people would forward Facebook posts to me that had an article from some newspaper that presented itself as if it were from a legit newspaper, when in fact, if you did just a little bit of digging, you could see that it was not, and I think that the Gen Y and Gen Z, are so much more savvy in spotting even the AI fakes

Grace: 00:03:20

so I think that maybe they are the generations that will be able to have these conversations at school and really, have it be productive.

Katelyn: 00:03:28

I certainly hope so. I spent a lot of time with my godson who's in high school this summer and I hadn't spent, much time with him throughout COVID.

Katelyn: 00:03:38

And most of our conversations, revolved around politics. He knows I'm really interested in it and educate myself a lot. And he and I disagree on so much of what is happening in the United States, and I learned a lot, of how Gen Z views this political landscape.

Katelyn: 00:03:56

And it is, at least his perspective, what he was saying, his friends feel it's pretty abysmal. They haven't felt, that hope. I also did challenge him, though, to continue to question what he's seeing on the TikTok

Katelyn: 00:04:09

I said the TikTok, it makes me sound like I'm a hundred, but, it reminded me that I do come at this from a very millennial perspective and I need to speak more intergenerationally with people around how I'm even forming my own opinions as to what's going on right now.

Grace: 00:04:27

And was he super informed about different legislation or was it something more overarching that you disagreed on?

Katelyn: 00:04:35

It was certainly how politics plays on an international level, which I think I have much more experience given my history. and so he and I bickered quite a bit about how, international politics influences domestic decisions. But I say that and I think he was as informed as a 15 year old can be with the lived experience he has, right?

Katelyn: 00:04:58

Sure. having never traveled out of the country. But that being said, there was no way that I knew, still, as much as he knows, because the internet just wasn't the same when I was his age as it is for him. So to your point, I think it's all the more important that they can see, What is real? what is truthful? And who's trying to influence, With positive intent.

Grace: 00:05:22

Or inform, right? Inform on an opinion versus fact. And I think they're pretty good at deciphering that. But also when I ask my girls about, if you see someone in the comments making a statement that's, inflammatory, what do you do?

Grace: 00:05:39

And my older daughter said, sometimes I'll go and see who the person is. And if it's someone that has six followers, it means it's someone that does that for a living. My other daughter was like, I just scroll past it. I don't even pay attention to it. Like I don't even look at it. So I think that's, pretty healthy take.

Grace: 00:05:58

one interesting thing that's going on in our state, even though the national races have taken over the news is that we actually have a huge Election year statewide,

Grace: 00:06:11

all of our state Senate, all of our state house members are up for reelection. School boards have a lot of elections, constituent school boards, so many offices that I don't even know what they do.

Grace: 00:06:24

The Watershed Director of Beaver Dam Creek. Yeah. there's one called bath, water and sewer. Why would they add bath in there? I'm so curious about what that is. We need to do a podcast episode on what all these things are. I'm so curious.

Katelyn: 00:06:43

I completely agree. It actually, did you ever watch the crown?

Grace: 00:06:47

Yes, of course. I love the crown.

Katelyn: 00:06:49

Do you remember the episode where the Queen asked every single person what they do on the estate because they were like, you have to like pinch pennies and the names of some of the people and the things that they did.

Grace: 00:07:01

Maybe that's what our episode should be called when we do this called like the crown and we try to figure out what everyone does.

Grace: 00:07:09

So all of our state house and state senate races are up. State house is elected every two years and state senate is elected every four years. This will be the first time the state senate races happen with the new districts after the 2020 census. That will be interesting to see how that affects the outcomes of the races. and out of the 46 state Senate races, there are 16 that have no opponent.

Grace: 00:07:39

16. So 16 of the 46 have already been decided.

Katelyn: 00:07:44

This is the moment where I feel like you look at voter turnout efforts and you say to yourself, how are we supposed to convince voters to go and actually vote when they don't really have something to vote for in this election?

Katelyn: 00:07:58

I know that there are other things down ballot that are important as well. As we just talked about the bath water and sewer. But that's incredibly frustrating for a voter to go and say, Oh, there's no choice. that doesn't make any sense.

Grace: 00:08:10

and 60 of the 124 state house races have no opponents.

Katelyn: 00:08:16

I feel like that should be illegal. I just don't understand how that's okay. How we've accepted that.

Grace: 00:08:21

I think that voters in this state feel like it's just going to be what it's going to be. A lot of people feel, there's just no hope. I hope that, By shining a light on this, it makes a lot of people, realize that you have to run for office.

Grace: 00:08:39

And part of that is there are fundamental pieces in our state that make it difficult for people to run for office. Like we don't have a full time legislature, the fact that, you only make 10, 000 plus a year, and you have to be in Columbia from January to May that eliminates so many people from being able to run in those races.

Grace: 00:09:01

It's no wonder that we don't have people running and districts have been so gerrymandered that, people are like, why would I waste my time running in a district that's already decided? So those are two huge pieces of fundamental South Carolina. set up that affects what our elections look like and make us less democratic.

Katelyn: 00:09:24

Couldn't agree more.

Grace: 00:09:25

So I wanted to talk to you today. about one certain policy issue and It's federal because both of the presidential candidates are talking about it, but it also would really affect a lot of people in South Carolina because, we are a tourist destination.

Grace: 00:09:41

We have a lot of people that work in food and beverage. And the policy that I'm talking about is whether or not tips should be exempt from taxes.

Katelyn: 00:09:50

I have so many opinions on this.

Katelyn: 00:09:53

For 10 years , I was a waitress and a bartender.

Katelyn: 00:09:55

And let me tell you, cash was king at that age. I sustained, my living expenses during college. I paid for my first car waitressing. And it was the culture of food and Bev or hospitality that really, influenced my life.

Katelyn: 00:10:13

And I firmly believe in tipping and so much so that it was the thing that my wife and I then girlfriend, argued about. It was our first argument.

Grace: 00:10:25

That is not a bad tipper. Is she?

Katelyn: 00:10:27

Here's the thing. She doesn't tip because she always asks me to do it because of this fight we had 13 years ago or however many years ago.

Katelyn: 00:10:34

She came to visit me and I took her to this sushi restaurant that I always went to. I sat at the bar all the time and I would go by myself, same bartender over and over again and he always took great care of me and so I tipped him well and I also at the time was working in the service industry and I tipped very well back then even though I didn't have the cash because I knew what that meant when she saw the tip I left.

Katelyn: 00:10:58

We walked all the way home. I didn't say a word, Grace, she's South African. And she's Greek. So it's not a cultural thing. People here in Greece make livable wages.

Katelyn: 00:11:07

A tip is a tip. It is an additional thank you for services rendered, not your wages. And so I think that's the crux of the conversation that we're having in the United States is one, why are tips considered your full time wages? Which means they're dependent on whether or not someone Like to you, whether the economy is good, whether or not your restaurant is popular.

Grace: 00:11:33

If you take a position that is a tipped position, like a server or a bartender, your minimum wage, hourly wage, your hourly wage is way lower than if you weren't tipped.

Katelyn: 00:11:46

I was making 2 an hour

Grace: 00:11:48

213 was minimum wage for tips. And I don't know if that's still the case, but if the minimum wage federally and in South Carolina is still only 7. 25 an hour, I would imagine the federal and state minimum wage on service positions is probably the same.

Katelyn: 00:12:06

Correct. Now here's where I feel exceptions to the rule.

Katelyn: 00:12:10

I Do not tip at a coffee shop. I do not tip to get my oil changed.

Grace: 00:12:17

We're going to get our first piece of hate mail.

Katelyn: 00:12:19

But here's the thing. I know that they make minimum wage or maybe not a livable wage, but minimum wage.

Katelyn: 00:12:26

And if I'm going to Starbucks and the CEO is using a private jet to fly back and forth to work and gets a 13 million sign on bonus and makes as much as he makes, I don't think it's my responsibility to pay a living wage to your staff when I'm already paying six or 7 for my coffee. I don't think it's responsible business. Now, what I will say is. The employee and the consumer are the ones who are suffering because of this. It's not their fault that they're not getting the money that they should be getting. And as a consumer, it's not my fault that the business isn't practicing, good wage distribution. And so it's a struggle. Tipping is emotional, right? The reason you tip is because you feel either proud to demonstrate to your date that you're tipping well, or you feel obligated because someone turns the iPad around and says they're going to ask you a few questions and you're like, God, they're looking at me like I have to tip right now.

Katelyn: 00:13:32

They're going to see the total on the screen. of course I have to tip. So your 7 coffee just became a 10 coffee and so we have to take this emotion out of it. And place the responsibility where the responsibility lies. I do not believe that this policy that both Trump and Kamala have said that they agree with is a sound policy in the slightest. And that policy is that they are taking tipped wages and advocating that they be non taxable. Because all that does is give businesses the opportunity to put the onus on the customer even more.

Grace: 00:14:11

think there's something that as a server, you'll know this as soon as I say this, that has been missing from this entire conversation though, there are two pieces to this, and one is what you were just talking about, which is that tipping. in places that you never used to tip has now exploded. So that's one piece of this. And that sort of came out of COVID we were all feeling so grateful to anyone that was in any service job anywhere that they were actually doing their job and going to work every day because so many people were afraid get sick.

Grace: 00:14:45

But the other side of this, back when I was serving and bartending, many more people paid with cash there wasn't like Apple pay and all of these things.

Grace: 00:14:58

And so usually the only people that really used a credit card were people that were on them. Business trips. And so at the end of the night, when as a server, as a bartender, when you sign out for your work shift, it tells you what your total sales were, and then it's up to you to put in what your tips were for that night.

Grace: 00:15:17

And I will say that most people that I worked with would only put in what taxes showed up on their credit card receipts. They never put in what cash tips they received, and the majority of your tips were in cash anyway. So you were only paying taxes on a small percentage of your total tips every night as a server or as a bartender.

Grace: 00:15:43

Now, as we've gotten all these modern ways to pay and they're all, recorded you have to pay taxes on everything that you make in tips because it's all documented. If you're a server, you're actually making less now because you're not walking home with a big pile of cash in your pocket. But the second piece is what you were talking about, which is, holy mother of God, everyone wants a tip. you literally cannot go anywhere without them asking for a tip. And yes, businesses are subsidizing paying their staff with tipping and it's very frustrating. There was this I think Danny Meyer, his restaurant several years ago, tried to change all of his restaurants to no tipping.

Grace: 00:16:27

I'm just going to pay everybody a living wage because also in restaurant world, the back of the house doesn't get tipped. They might get tipped out, but like the dishwasher doesn't usually get tipped out. The kitchen staff doesn't usually get tipped out. The runners get tipped out, but not the people like that are actually cooking and preparing the food and washing the dishes.

Grace: 00:16:48

And so Danny Meyer thinking going to, a just pay everybody a living wage situation seemed good, but it didn't work.

Katelyn: 00:16:56

Which is so surprising because I went to the Man U Liverpool game this summer and, my friends and I who went out to a restaurant in Columbia that does not tip. allow tipping. They include everything in the price. And I gotta tell you, the emotional release I had at the end of the meal that I didn't have to step on, I was like, this is amazing. Now granted, I clutched my pearls a little bit at a 19 glass of wine that I know the bottle costs 19, but I was like, I'm here for an experience.

Katelyn: 00:17:26

This is what it costs, okay, I can reconcile that in my mind. But I felt great that I didn't have to tip.

Grace: 00:17:34

guess the thing is if you're going to lunch at a sit down place where you're going to have a soup and salad, and you're used to paying 15 total for your entire lunch.

Grace: 00:17:46

And then you add a three or 4 tip on top of that 20, 25%, that's 18. But if you were now paying a living wage to everyone in the restaurant and the restaurant has to pass those on through the prices of food, now your lunch is 40 instead of 18.

Katelyn: 00:18:04

I have two thoughts on that. The first is, I'm talking to you from a country and a continent that does it every day, so it's possible. They find tipping in the United States just totally bizarre. We should really talk about the fact that tipping comes from, a culture, even though tipping wasn't originated in the American South, it's certainly, tied to the power dynamic between former slaveholders and freed, enslaved people.

Katelyn: 00:18:31

So we have to reconcile that in our heads as Americans, particularly in South Carolina, that this is where this culture comes from. But the other thing

Katelyn: 00:18:40

there's a lot to be said about potential implicit bias around waiters not giving good service to groups that historically don't give good tips or, waiters who are of certain demographics, whether that's the fact that you're not a young, pretty, smiley white girl and you don't get as, many tips as someone who looks very different. So there's a lot of nuance and it gives the customer a lot of control, maybe without even the customer knowing it, for instance, my mom, I remember she used to say, I prefer male servers.

Katelyn: 00:19:12

And I was like, why? I'm a server, mom. your daughter is literally a waitress and a bartender. yeah, I know, but I prefer male servers.

Grace: 00:19:19

I've got one word for you, Katelyn, hooters, an entire restaurant built around hot young servers.

Grace: 00:19:29

And also, the more cocktails you have, the better you tip. It's an incentive to get everyone drunk.

Katelyn: 00:19:35

So one more story is I also feel big feels about pooling tips.

Grace: 00:19:40

Yes.

Katelyn: 00:19:40

And the reason why is because I was such an overachiever shocker as a waitress and one night a French family came in and, I spoke French to them the entire night and because they were a group of six.

Katelyn: 00:19:53

They had an automatic 20%. added and they rounded up another 60 because of the service I provided, which by the way, let's be clear, French people don't tip like that. They very much come from a non tipping culture. My other opinion is when you pool tips in a restaurant that means that my going above and beyond is the same as a potential colleague who is not going above and beyond.

Grace: 00:20:21

That's right.

Katelyn: 00:20:22

Around this taxation stuff, an interesting conversation is about when restaurants pool tips and they're not taxed, but you earned more than the other person did.

Grace: 00:20:31

The reason I bring up tipping is because there's this, paradox of democracy is that so many of the worst policies also tend to poll very well, particularly among swing voters. It's so fascinating to me that Both of our presidential, candidates are running with this bad policy . and think I understand why Kamala is doing it. I think, she's not going to let Trump win on something that probably would never actually pass anyway, but it's a good talking point. It makes people feel good. But carving out another segment of untaxed revenue is not really good policy. So I started thinking about some of the other things that's being talked about right now, like tipping was the one that came out first, but then there's also this whole discussion around in vitro fertilization, that Trump has been going back and forth on. They don't want to ever talk about the actual things legislators have to talk about. and I feel like, Trump is a great showman. That can go out and make people laugh and get people riled up or make people mad to keep people talking about him. He's a great candidate when it comes to what a candidate needs to do. but not all candidates who are great candidates make good legislators. I think that's true in every aspect of politics.

Katelyn: 00:22:10

I think the interesting thing about this Trump back and forth around abortion, the six week abortion ban in Florida and IVF, to me, it says Trump is not the one in charge anymore. It's the people behind him, his campaign managers and those who have written Project 2025.

Katelyn: 00:22:30

Trump came out and potentially said something he actually believes, which is he thinks that the six week abortion ban is too stringent, but immediately was told by his campaign, absolutely not go back out there and say, yeah, this is how you're voting. Cause he is actually voting on this in the state of Florida.

Katelyn: 00:22:47

I found the most interesting part of this IVF conversation was, oh, Trump doesn't seem like he's in control of his messaging anymore. It's very much the campaign.

Grace: 00:22:58

When you really go back and look at the conventions, in the Republican convention, it was this picture of families that are being crushed by inflation and scared of crime and at risk from, Ukraine and Russia's war and foreign adversaries. and Democrats look at it like, no, those are overstated. And if they aren't, we're fixing them. And I think that's the kind of stuff That is really personality related. Try to find the news stories that match how you feel and you want to listen to people that you feel like understand you.

Grace: 00:23:37

And we've talked a lot in past episodes about, the psychology behind what attracts people to be conservative and what makes them liberal. Over the weekend, I was in Goose Creek, it's a town just north of Charleston. it's a really thriving community. But I was talking to a guy that was in town from Georgia He sits on a chamber of commerce board or something that's in one of the smaller towns outside of Atlanta. He runs a company and he was telling me how difficult it has been to find, people to work for his business.

Grace: 00:24:12

He said something to me about how he was in a chamber of commerce meeting and he had of a conversation with this guy. And this guy said, the fertility numbers are so down. People are not having children like they used to we don't have enough babies being born to fill all the jobs that are needed to be filled.

Grace: 00:24:30

And he said, We're going to have to depend on immigration. And then instead of ending it there and leaving it at that, he said, I'm a conservative. but we're really going to have to, talk about immigration. And I just got such a chuckle out of that because there was no reason whatsoever for him to qualify that in political terms. But we have become so polarized that he had to, attach his party affiliation to it.

Grace: 00:25:03

And I could have said, I'm progressive or I lean left, and I believe that too. but where he did go after saying he was conservative is he followed up with, But the border's a mess. And then he went into talking points. and it just was so frustrating to hear that, he knew the answer and yet he had to go back to those talking points.

Katelyn: 00:25:30

Do you think that we do that too?

Grace: 00:25:32

Of course.

Katelyn: 00:25:33

Yeah. I find myself, again, being away, you are able to realize how deep you are into something and as I said on the last podcast, I was dancing in my kitchen, watching the DNC and yet the break from 24 hour reading the New York Times or Le Monde or whatever. It's really helped me, again, just reset. Okay, these are the talking points. Let me actually look at what Kamala is saying. when she's not prepped at the DNC and everybody else isn't prepped at the DNC.

Grace: 00:26:05

I feel like the whole premise of starting this podcast and wanting to learn were to talk about situations like what I just had and what I just talked about to take away from that, how do I learn from this experience? And I'm not, I don't mean to shame this guy in any way and I'm glad you pointed out that we all do that.

Grace: 00:26:29

I guess my underlying point is like, why can't we just talk without these political parties attached to it? As a country, we should figure out how to fix immigration and just leave it at that. He and I are never going to be able to be the one sitting in the room. Working through the details of how immigration gets fixed. Our responsibility of how immigration gets fixed is finding politicians that put out the boring, legislation that no one actually wants to sit down and talk through.

Grace: 00:27:02

To actually fix it. But the reason that we are having a hard time getting there is because actually fixing those problems is boring and telling constituents about those problems is boring. So we have to come up with all of these talking points that make us feel passionate about one party or the other

Katelyn: 00:27:24

great candidates typically don't make great legislators. there are obviously exceptions to the rules, but, because, they're larger than life and they're charming and they're not necessarily involved in the attention to detail that it takes to understand how tipping policy, a taxation tipping policy affects everyone. It doesn't matter whether it's a liberal or conservative economist. There is not one economist out there that thinks that this tipping. Policy is a good idea.

Grace: 00:27:52

So I have another question. I saw an article that workers have begun building the platforms that will hold the presidential inauguration in January on the West front of the Capitol.

Grace: 00:28:06

I worked in the music business for a long time and we would go into a city, build a stage that morning, tear it down at night, pack it up in the truck, move on to the next city and rebuild it the next day. I watched the super bowl every year. They build an entire stage and set in 10 minutes while we're at commercial break. So tell me Katelyn, what takes four months to build?

Katelyn: 00:28:31

Your guess is as good as mine, quite frankly. The first thing that comes to my mind is preventing bombs, but maybe secret service has to go through it a hundred times before it's approved. I mean, that's the only thing that I could think of is security but I went to Obama's first inauguration. I got a ticket. It was the most insane thing, to see security wise, because they had, what, a million people on the grounds, and we all had different sections that we were supposed to be in.

Katelyn: 00:29:02

The Secret Service was everywhere, we were roped off into our different sections. You had to go through, metal detectors and we were waiting in line at 4 a. m. on January 20th in D. C. It was freezing. That is the only thing that I could think of is it's security,

Grace: 00:29:18

it just seems like a really long time to build something out like that, but maybe I'll have to go this year. Maybe you and I should go and record from there.

Katelyn: 00:29:27

I think that would be so much fun.

Grace: 00:29:28

Okay. Katelyn, what you got? What's your whole nother thing?

Katelyn: 00:29:32

Afternoon naps.

Grace: 00:29:34

Oh, okay. First of all, you're in Greece. Yes. You've been like drinking and Yes. Eating at 9:00 PM and now you're rubbing it in with afternoon naps. , Katelyn. Oh my.

Katelyn: 00:29:50

I do have some audacity today because I am very relaxed and real have been on vacation, but I just think the afternoon nap, there's so many benefits to it. I think businesses would get more like out of workers. I think, we would have better health outcomes if we took little naps every day.

Katelyn: 00:30:09

We've been looking for a reason to get people back in physical offices. What if we built nap rooms?

Grace: 00:30:15

All the colleges have them. They have relaxation pods.

Grace: 00:30:19

I can't remember what college we were at, , and you walk into the library and they have these big bubble things. It looks like a big like photo booth.

Grace: 00:30:29

It's a big, giant bubble, and they're laying in these, their white noise and you can change what the lighting looks like inside. It's really cool.

Katelyn: 00:30:37

I think afternoon naps are the way of the future in America.

Grace: 00:30:42

Okay. Mine is a little different than yours, but also this is going to be a luxury. why did they stop with the guys and ladies that pump gas? Why do we have self serve?

Katelyn: 00:30:54

I agree.

Grace: 00:30:55

Isn't Maine, don't they have gas pumpers there still?

Katelyn: 00:30:58

Unfortunately not, but they do in New Jersey.

Katelyn: 00:31:00

Always stop and have someone pump my gas in Jersey. It's just such a luxury.

Grace: 00:31:07

It is right. And I think part of what politicians should start thinking about what would also make people happier in general are little day to day things like that, that, for example, it provides a lot of jobs. Talk about tipping. I would tip the gas pumper.

Grace: 00:31:24

Absolutely. And everybody has to get gas for their car. Even if we go to electric vehicles, how about somebody that just comes up and plugs your car in, like that's something that it's a small thing. It's a little detail, but it would make everybody across the board in all financial categories, just a little bit happier.

Katelyn: 00:31:45

Living in South Africa. People still pump gas everywhere for you. And when I came back to the States, I was like, God, I'm so spoiled. Like, why do I have to pump my own gas? I totally agree with this.

Grace: 00:31:58

Okay. So whichever politicians are listening, I think if you're running for state house or state Senate, you need to, make that one of your priorities.

Grace: 00:32:08

Started here on Frogmore Stew. You can thank us later. All right, Katelyn, have a great rest of your trip. And that's all the stew for today. Talk to you next week.