[face palm] that is an amazingly important point I hadn’t thought of / not heard discussed before, about the service fee vs actual increase hourly wages. I mean it’s totally obvious now that you said it.

And I really do agree with owners taking the risk if they want the reward. I will only say that there IS a place for balance, and reward for performance. I think the current tip system is tilted WAY WAY WAY too much to the server’s risk and needs to go away. I also think restaurant margins are actually too thin to go 100% wage based and put all that risk on the owners. I fear the bankruptcy churn in restaurants would be too much.

And yet it seems to work out in Europe so I’m probably wrong.

Yeah it’s painful seeing how low it is. I lived there back in '99 which meant I also got to drive/ride over the damn itself. Good times.

Well there are plenty of reasons to throw shade at Vegas, but one thing they are doing well is water management.

https://www.watereducation.org/western-water/climate-change-turns-heat-las-vegas-water-managers-try-wring-new-savings-stretch

https://www.fox5vegas.com/2023/06/13/new-law-limits-household-water-usage/

haha!!

Unrelated/related: it was Stargate that sort of cemented my atheism. I hadn’t thought much about my own “-ism” until I was watching the show (I was also at an age to start thinking about those things). Up until then I was just an apathetic non-religious, didn’t really think about “god” at all either way. Stargate triggered my apathy into coherent and connected thoughts along the same themes as Stargate’s, “there are no gods; if there are they suck anyway; fight the power!”