B365V2.7 - I am turning into one of those "get off my lawn people"

      There was a time, albeit brief, in my storied employment history where I waited tables.  I had the job just a few months before being laid off because business was slow and I was one of the last hired, therefore I was one of the first to see their hours get cut and ultimately, eliminated.  The place I worked at, Valley Dairy, is one of those localized chain type diner/eatery places.  Nothing too fancy that's for sure.

     One of the worst parts about that job was waiting on older folks.  Not because they were bad people, in fact many of them were quite pleasant, but because they did not understand the economics of what it was I was doing.  I have railed on this topic in the blog before but for this entry's sake it bears repeating.  While servers in high end restaurants can no doubt make decent money, that really isn't the rule for lots of waiters and waitresses out there.  The government assumes that customers will tip, therefore they apply a different minimum wage to servers so when I was waiting tables my hourly rate was $2.05/hr.  Not only that, because it was assumed I would be making money hand over fist in the tip department, I was also expected to pay taxes on 7% of everything I sold.  In other words for every dollars' worth of food that a customer ate I was paying the government 7 cents, regardless if I got a tip or not.   Going back to older folks, they had no understanding of this (actually most people don't) and because the economic clock was set to such a fashion where they thought a dollar was a big tip, and maybe in 1940 it was, there were instances where I was almost paying them to eat.  Making $2.05 an hour and getting taxed on 7% usually meant the paycheck after two weeks would be $0, the only money that was made was on tips. 

      We now fast forward to the year 2015, and I am not sure I understand economics anymore.  Maybe I am now the guy who only drops a buck on the table, maybe the world has passed me by.  I mentioned the other day that I had wanted to go see Motion City Soundtrack, a band I really enjoy, this coming Saturday when they would be playing a club type venue here in Pittsburgh.  By the time I got paid at work and was ready to buy tickets though the show had sold out.  Because it was a club venue all of the tickets were general admission at $25 each.  I didn't consider the price too steep, I wanted to see the band after all and who knows when they will come through Pittsburgh again.  So I started thinking, yo now, maybe I can find a ticket broker online that has tickets to the show and if they aren't too outrageous, then maybe I pay a little more than the original asking price but I would still get to go.

      So I went on Stubhub and Seatgeek and Vividseats and what I saw pretty much appalled me.  The cheapest seats I saw online, before figuring in their processing fees were $97, or nearly 4x the original ticket price.  And it got worse, some were as high as $200. Mind you they were all general admission tickets.  And that is where I turned into the old guy telling the whippersnappers to get off my lawn.  Perhaps I have no understanding of the value of a dollar today, but the idea of paying over $100 for a fucking club show is ridiculous, there are national acts that play large venues that I wouldn't pay that kind of money for.  Mind you, even if I did I would have had to pay another $30 on top of that just to get into the over 21 section if I wanted a drink. 

     I guess instead of going to the show Saturday night, I will make my way off to have one of my weekend breakfasts.  And I will be sure to tip my waitress.