I love it when the big supermarkets stock locally made groceries. This was spotted yesterday in Coles in Noosa. It gives small businesses a chance to boost revenue.
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What rubbish, how about pushing the company making ludicrous profits pay their workers better. America never ceases to amaze.
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When there is a Royal event, trust Ashens to review the tat that gets pumped out.
Also, longtime Ashens watchers may remember him receiving a box of āfucking inflatable fucking crownsāā¦that wouldāve come in handy today. 
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The same goes for the exorbitant tipping in restaurants. I have been in a restaurant where a waitress has told us that a 20% tip is expected. I donāt know if that was because she knew we were Australians and she knows that Aussies donāt always tip or we tip based on level of service.
If the staff are expecting every customer to mandatory tip at least 10 or 20 per cent, then why donāt the restaurants just put their prices up to that and pay their staff better? Or do the staff want it that way because itās income they get tax free?
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20% is now the standard in the US, up from about 15% a decade ago. Usually itās the opposite, theyāll hear your accent and give you shit service because Australians have a reputation of not tipping / tipping low. I recall having a real tough time getting bar service particularly in NYC when I visited years ago because of my accent, but my friend visiting with me from Canada had no issues.
Because wait-staff in the US generally prefer this, the hourly wage that a restaurant would need to pay would need to be pretty damn high to attract staff away from the usual base + tips model.
I lived in the US for five years. The minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour.
The federal government asks employers for the cost of food a tipped employee serves each day and assumes they are tipped at 15%. If you donāt leave a tip, the worker is still taxed
Incredible but true.
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No wonder you often hear about staff chasing customers down the street when they havenāt left the expected tip.
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Exactly. If you serve $100 worth of food, you are taxed on $15. There is no tax free threshold in America, from the first buck you want it starts at 10%!
Such pressure to earn those tips, although most are just paid out of habit (in my opinion)
I was kind of reluctant to tip when I was in Hawaii earlier this year, because prices are already so damn high before taxes, tips and the exchange rate factored in.
A $10 beer here for instance (also USD $10 sticker price), would have cost me about $16 AUD with taxes, tips and exchange rate factored in.
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I get it.
In Australia we might tip for good service and itās difficult to get use to tipping for someoneās basic wage.
In Australia casual workers earn time and a half or double time on a Sunday -$37 - $50 an hour*. In the US itās $2.13 an hour for tipped workers. Such a massive difference
*I do note that many workers on Australia have traded off higher weekend wages for better weekday wages.
And Hawaii is not a low cost tropical holiday. I was shocked by prices as well!!!
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And oh, just for the record, I did tip anyway because I know thatās how it works over thereā¦
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Good on you. I did too.
But I do get why most Australians donāt tip. Our workers are paid well and Hawaii already seems expensive.
Iām doing a two week tour with Trafalgar in Europe in July. They have asked me to pay a $300 tip for the tour guide before the tour. I found that to be weird. Why would I tip before I can judge the competency of the service?
Anyways - I am off topic by a long shot. Back to supermarkets and retail
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Iāve done a few tours with Trafalgar and Insight and paying the tip in advance wasnāt always a thing. Iāve done seven tours in total and it only seemed to start from about 2015/16. Iāve never paid it up front.
For the record, Iāve actually paid a tip for almost all the tours Iāve done. There was only one tour when I didnāt because I felt the tour guide wasnāt up to the standard.
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Although Hawaii was always more expensive than the mainland, the days of the US been low CoL compared to Australia are long, long gone - particularly the west coast and the north east. Never thought itād happen tbh, and people from Australia tend to get a shock from it because theyāre still of the mindset from 10 years ago that everything is cheap compared to Australia.
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Possibly also because they hear/see that Apple products (for instance) and gas/petrol are still cheap over there compared to here, so they assume everything else is cheaper too.
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Harbourside is no more. This photo was taken yesterday.
https://twitter.com/missrobinson/status/1659067883186692098
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Sad to see.
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Many memories when we went to Sydney in the 90s as a kid, we took the monorail down that way. Still got the old photos. Time to move on I guess.
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Yes it was sad to see the ghost town that it had becomeā¦ I was there earlier this year and more than half the shops were vacant and boarded up.
Hopefully the replacement one will be worth the wait.