Service in the Philippines (Split thread)

You really can not make up some of the explanations that you hear in the Philippines... lol

Does anyone here train their employees that "happy customers" come back, spend more money... keep the business going, and keep the place open so the owners keeps the employees employed. Most of the time I do not see that the employees see a a connection between their attitude/motivation toward customers and keeping the business economically healthy so they have a job. Too many times I find the employees really do not want to work. I am aware that the jobs may not pay much, but anything is better than nothing still in my book.

 

For 200-300 peso a day and a couple peso tip....who cares what the customer thinks, that's the owners issue....lol. I assume that they get paid the same whether the customer is happy or not, so the delta (motivator) is the tip part, which seems optional (small) in the Philippines based on things I've read here. Not saying right or wrong, just saying.

You would think you are right, but if that was the case you would find a lot more Americans picking food in California then you do these days. Another California example are the people you find begging at the street corner, seems like it would be easier to find a low paying job, but yet they continue to pan handle on the side of the road. I think commonsense isn't so common and varies depending on who, what and where.

 

Many (not all) you see standing on the street corner prefer their self employment over getting a 'real job'. They set their own hours, pay no taxes, and often bring home much more money than they would flipping burgers. Even when their sign says "will work for food" they only want money, the sign is to make you feel guilty. More than once I have approached people with signs like that, offers to join me to eat as I was heading to a eat anyway, or to do some yard work, were always turned down by the statement "no just give me money". Some people honestly need help but there are many many scam artists out there also.

 

I try to give food, not money even here in Dumaguete. I am use to the people buying the wrong things with the money, like... well anyway. Of coarse if you are interested in giving money with out work in return please PM me, my TV is working today but I will come to gate for money... lol.

 

I used to think most of those who were homeless were due to bad luck and not enough jobs. Then I ended up homeless for a year back in 2002. What I saw firsthand opened my eyes to the reality. While a fair amount have chemical dependency issues and a handful have mental disorders most are their due to straight out laziness. They find it easier to do nothing and have someone else feed them than working and feeding themselves. When I was homeless I started off going door to door at business's looking for work w/o any luck (well who wants to hire on someone without a phone number or permanent address). I started to go to the local day labor place which I walked to but you could take a direct bus to from street that all of the homeless shelters and soup kitchens were on or a block away from. I noticed though that only 2 others from the homeless shelter I stayed at ever went and only 1 of them was daily as I was going. I started to get day jobs semi regularly after I was showing up daily looking for work at 6am when they opened every day and I never left until 11am if I didn't get work and did that for a couple weeks. Eventually I got hired on full-time as a regular employee and went from their. But I saw no one else cared to do that almost and many of them were males and females in the working age range from 20-45 and able bodied.

When I was homeless I also had a week long cash job that was easy as it could be. The company hired 20 guys (5 vans 4 per van) to put flyers on doors and paid $50 cash a day. Two guys would walk one block putting flyers on doors while the other 2 waited until the next block and it was a small couple block area before they drove to the next area usually a 10-20 minute drive. Easy as one could hope for and easy cash. Yet day after day most of the guys never showed back up and ended up being replaced again and again because they took their $50 and ran.

I learned that most who are homeless its become their lifestyle because they don't want to deal with taking care of themselves, having things to manage, having responsibilities, and having expectations put on them. They wanted a carefree life to do whatever they wanted as long as they had someone else to feed them and some clothing handout places that is all that mattered to them.

I no longer give money to homeless or even a sandwich which I tried once offering a fresh "6 Subway sandwich and got cursed at by a homeless beggar because he wanted money, not food.

 

Hopefully my splitting up of your comments works.

A couple of things. I think we are looking at this from two different points of view, mine is more a characterization of human nature and yours is more about how things should work. Unfortunately, the world doesn't always work the way it should since humans are far from perfect.
It sounds like you are saying you generally you get what you pay for and for that we can agree. Have you been to any high end restaurants? Was the service the same? I think the expectation in the West is that you can make a decent tip if you do a good job. In the Philippines, that doesn't drive behavior as much since tipping is not so formalized or generous. As for a livable wage, I think we can agree that even people on the low end of scale in the USA have far more buying power than the same people in the Philippines. Take a look at the link below and see what you can get for 200-300 peso in the Philippines. Do you really consider that livable? Now let's also add the plethora of children many of these families have, which is another discussion in itself.

Cost of Living in Philippines

People with 4 year degrees (nurses, computer, etc) end up in call centers, on average earning 18,000 pesos a month. Minimum wage in the Philippines is about 450 peso/day ($10 per day). A minimum wage worker in California is $10 per hour. If we assume 2000 hours in a year. The US minimum wage worker makes $20000 per year, the Philippine minimum wage worker makes $2500 per year. Now look at the cost a living link above and do a hypothetical shopping trip. The US worker is significantly better off. The only thing cheap in the Philippines is the labor and that's because of a serve oversupply. I'm not condoning the behavior that upsets you, just saying it's not surprising to me.

This whole "get a better job" is easy to say but not so always so easy to do, especially in an economy with a severe oversupply of workers for the relatively few decent jobs that exist. Education is beyond many, either because they can't afford college or aren't smart enough to get a scholarship. Opportunity is the key word here. Do your really think a child born in the Philippines has the same opportunity as someone born in the USA? There are always exceptions and exceptional people and they will succeed. Are the Filipino's to blame for the situation? Are they unlucky? Interesting topics for another day. Statistically the odds of you getting a good job, when 10 people are competing for it is vastly better then when there are 10000 people competing for it.

Interesting story about wages. When I lived in Kentucky there was a company call ServVend across the river in Indiana. They found that by paying a better wage they they actually reduced costs because quality went up (because people cared more and stuck around becoming more proficient) and turn over went down.

Let's look at this another way. Why do they owe you good service? Why shouldn't you pay for good service. This happens all the time. You can get you average cabinet maker or you can get a master cabinet maker and pay more money. Shouldn't all cabinet makers do an equally good job? It's all about economics. Maybe it's not their behavior that is unusual, but your expectation of their behavior.

Here's an experiment for you. Open a restaurant and pay twice the going rate. I'll be you will get a much better selection of applicants who will serve the customers better because they value their job.

As for farm labor, you must admit that 40% illegal is a significant number in any occupation in the USA. I would also venture to guess that if these farms were closer to a large city that there would not be that much of a change in the demographic. Now open the border and see what happens to that number.

Speaking of behavior. Look at the ratings and comments for the LA Philippine Consulate.

 

Try and sell any products set at a price to afford those double wages in a restaurant. Take a burger at 60p and bump its price to 80-85p to cover doubling the labor costs. How many do you think will want to purchase at the new price just so that worker can make a nice wage? People will stop buying and they don't care about the worker making 450p let alone double minimum wage which is around 315p in the Dumaguete region. Sure, you can get better quality workers who will value their job more and as a result work harder but can they work so hard as to create customers to cover the costs of the labor increase?

I'll also argue that higher wages don't mean your workers will work harder and care more. Plenty of sh*t workers in all fields be it minimum wage or $35 an hour jobs. They do what they have to to keep their jobs and that's it. If an employer paying $20 an hour cracks the whip and fires bad workers the others will make sure they stay ahead of the whip and do enough to keep their job. But for a minimum wage job the same thing applies and they will try and stay ahead of the whip and do enough to keep their jobs. Its an issue with the mentality of workers and some really care but plenty don't care at all no matter how little or how much you pay them. To them its just a paycheck and its all it will ever be.

 

Sounds like Wry83 should be mad at the business owners and not the employees. The seller and the consumer can then come to a meeting of the minds on the worth of a good server and the cost of a good burger.

Pretty negative view you have of people in general. Those people certainly exist, but I believe they are in the minority. Do you think the lack of opportunity and the way they are treated by their employers might contribute to that attitude?