Hahaha agreed!

I probably wouldn't tip my mechanic out of nowhere, but if I was presented with a tipping screen at checkout, I probably would lol.

Yeah I've come to notice that the people on this sub are quite different than what I imagine as typical providence residents. It feels like everyone here just hates everything and has a complaint about a lot of stuff. Like why are we getting downvoted for defending people's tips.

I totally agree! Which again is why raising a $15 wage to $27 (which is still barely livable) would definitely affect prices in a different way for food service.

I wasn't replying to that comment. I was replying to this one. If you have the same energy to say "separate the art from the artist" about him, then you can say it about the hated bagel lady.

Mechanic shop no. Takeout yes imo.

Damn...good to know people in providence hate tipped workers. I didn't realize I was being downvoted until I saw the notification for your comment.

I mean if it’s JUST retail and there’s no food involved whatsoever, then yeah I wouldn’t tip. Those positions aren’t tipped positions. Legally idek who the “tips” would technically go to? Probably straight back to the business as profit? Idk.

I’m not talking about huge establishments. I know on a grand scale, on average, it wouldn’t affect prices that much. I’m saying at individual small businesses.

The business I worked for barely made a profit and many years actually operated at a loss.

Restaurant wages is just a lot different than regular wages. Raising minimum wage from the $3.89 minimum that is set for restaurants up to $22 would cause that huge spike in prices at restaurants. Of course a ton of restaurants that are actually paying their tipped employees $3.89 can probably afford to absorb some of that cost and be less greedy before raising prices, it’s still a big jump.

So I’m not necessarily talking minimum wage vs livable wage. Minimum wage should definitely be raised to livable wages.

I’m just saying raising $15/hr (base pay where I’ve worked) to oftentimes $27/hr (on average with tips) is next to impossible at a small restaurant business without raising prices a lot more than 4%. A small restaurant like that could maybe absorb the cost it would take to raise wages from $15 to say $16 or $17 without raising prices. But a $12 wage increase would require prices to go up those 20% being lost by tips.

Of course they wouldn’t HAVE to raise wages all the way up to $27/hr in this alternate reality, but then the workers get the short end of the stick without tips.

This is often why a lot of tipped workers are actually against getting rid tipping. Cus in the end they would make less.

Edit: also in my mind I was actually thinking closer to $2.50 but just rounded up for simplicity’s sake. So apologies there!

There's plenty of places that would love to do that, but it's actually less beneficial to the workers because of our culture. Customers are more willing to pay $10 on a meal and tip up to $3 sometimes than they are willing to pay $13 for the same meal.

You lose clientele, you can't afford as many workers, and now people don't have jobs.

Unless something changes from all the way at the top either legislatively or culturally, tips allow workers to get a fair and livable wage.

A restaurant I've worked for splits their tips evenly and treats it more like a team effort in order to be able to raise EVERYONE'S wages. With tips everyone makes $10 more and hour than their hourly wage. If you got rid of the tips, raised prices, and then raised wages, business wouldn't be able to afford paying the same amount. Instead of $10 more an hour, you'd get maybe $5. Which is still good, but definitely a pretty steep drop in hourly gains.

Customers are more willing to pay a sticker price of X amount and then pay other taxes and fees on top of that than they are willing to pay a higher sticker price.

Americans have been conditioned by our culture to view prices that way. I mean look at everyday purchases, nothing has tax factored in already at retail.

It would take a long time and a huge cultural shift for Americans to be able to see the same plate of food or product they used to get for "$10" suddenly being $13 or even $15.

I don't think tips should exist at all, but the fact of the matter is that this is how American society developed and there'd have to be a lot of heavy lifting and huge sweeping changes that go beyond the individual level to make it change.

If there's an option to tip, I tip. The ONLY time I may not is if it's a retail item I'm purchasing at a restaurant and I'm not purchasing anything else.

I used to feel the same way until recent years. It doesn't matter if the place isn't giving you full service, that tip is still what makes the workers' wages livable and sometimes even kinda good.

It shouldn't be that way, but we'd need a huge culture change for a shift away from it. A lot of times it's actually easier for employees to make more money by having tips than by raising prices and wages.

A restaurant I've worked for uses tips as a vehicle to make everyone's wages higher. It's more of a team effort for everyone to benefit instead of it being so transactional.

Service workers have to put up with so much shit and so many horrible people. They deserve the extra dollar on your $7 coffee drink. Even if all they did was ring it up and give it to you. That tip usually goes to everyone.

It goes back to the person making your coffee, to the person cleaning up the counter where you spilled some coffee on the way out, etc etc.

Haha I will! And yes exactly. Not our circus not our monkeys. Like sure maybe sometimes she's "looking" for it, but as we've already said, people on here fixate on everything she does. Like she could just post a funny shitty review that any other business would also post and suddenly it's an obsessive post about how awful she is.

People have bad days and good days. I also don't take kindly to speaking unkindly to employees and I have been to both establishments enough that I have witnessed her getting a little agitated with an employee. But I've never heard her say anything despicable. Is her tone not the nicest? Sure. Those conversations shouldn't take place in front of customers because it makes everyone involved uncomfortable.

But I've definitely noticed her kindly ask her employees to step to the back now whenever she wants to give feedback and speak more timidly and try to be conscious of her attitude. I always sat right at the first seat at the bar at Little Sister.

I've become pretty chummy with all the employees there now and they all seem to like her a lot more than past employees have. So maybe she's being more conscientious of how she's coming off and what her intention actually is?

Either way I'm not here to psychoanalyze a restaurant owner. It's just frustrating that people on this sub can't see their clear bias in how they react to her. It's not that she does nothing wrong, it's that the way they treat her and react to her is incongruent with how they would act if the same exact actions were taken by a white dude.

It's like the whole Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp situation. The way people behaved towards Amber Heard while maybe "deserved" was still completely different to how they behaved towards similar accusations about Johnny or other men throughout the years. It's like it goes overboard but you can't get through to people and show them their bias cus they can argue that whatever is being done by the woman (or minority) is still BAD. So they "deserve" it.

Same concept as to how latinos and especially black people get heftier prison sentences. Sure they committed the crime, but the treatment against them is still way worse than it would be if it were a white man.

I mean imagine Trump behaving exactly like Milena. He'd look like the most well behaved orthodox Amish timid boy you've ever seen compared to his usual antics.

Lol sorry my adderall juuuuust kicked in.

If I had a dollar for every time people also accused ME of being Milena…lol. Just cus people aren’t foaming at the mouth over her, doesn’t mean they’re her haha.

I said something similar above and got downvoted to hell. It’s crazy how obsessed this sub is with her. Sometimes I wonder if one of the mods or just an extremely frequent user on here has some personal beef against her.

The passion that I see in these posts about her often feel too passionate to just be “local gossip”.

I mean how many other small business owners in pvd have had ACTUAL scandals? Like I know of two that’re backed by the same mlm, I know another who beat up their spouse, I know another who berates their employees and calls them actual awful shit (not just asks them to do their job correctly in a less than nice tone). The list can go on and on. But for some reason this sub is fixated on the “overly emotional” latina.

That’s literally not how it works haha

Is a court case not hard enough evidence? People working at Little Sister seem to be having a great time too, but what do I know?

Interesting we can do this for a white man and not a puerto rican woman…like come on. How is no one self-aware about this.

I feel like it’s all about perspective. Like if she was a personal friend, maybe we’d tell her “hey that wasn’t cool” or disagree with her, but we wouldn’t drag her and obsess over how HORRIBLE she is.

Also not to pull THAT card, but as a latino myself, while her reactions are big, it’s not anything that’s really shocking to me. Not tryina excuse any of the behavior, it’s just interesting to see people get so fixated on her when a ton of other business owners are doing actual fucked up shit.

I mean I just saw a story on ig today complaining about how she was born into wealth and handed everything when like, if you do two seconds of research you’d see she grew up pretty modestly in Puerto Rico and got into MIT, say what you will about her, but she’s definitely worked hard.

Not trying to be a fanboy or anything, but it’s just frustrating seeing how much energy is put into one of the few latina small business owners in Providence and I regularly see people saying to “separate the artist from the art” about a ton of asshole white male business owners.

Again, people can feel however they want about her. It’s just frustrating as a fellow Caribbean latino seeing how much others are cut slack after repeatedly being like truly awful. I’m not gonna air out anyone’s dirty laundry, but if you look into a bunch of Providence’s most loved small businesses, way more fucked up shit is happening than an owner who “has emotional regulation issues”.

I always end up typing waaaay more than I mean to in these threads lol. I just really love Little Sister as a Cuban-American living in Rhode Island. It may not be Cuban food, but it’s as close as you can get here and she has personally always treated me with extreme kindness and gratitude.

Of course any bagel from NY is gonna be next level!

I know, I’m just saying that this sub is so fixated on her that it’s weird how much attention they give her.

Yeah any time I’ve gotten more than one bagel to take home from there, I’ve frozen them! Great tip.

I mean out of the bagel place on broadway and providence bagel, I’d definitely say Rebelle is my fave bagel.

It kind of just feels like a circlejerk of the same 5 people that are just too obsessed with not liking her.

Like if I didn't like someone and found them annoying the way this sub finds her...I wouldn't be posting about her every single time she does literally anything.

This post alone just shows that people are bitter that she's successful. If anything just dont post about her in the hopes that people forget about her. People on this sub are giving her the attention they don't want her to have which is so contradictory to me lol.

Either way, I hate that I cant go on my city's sub without seeing some negative gossipy stuff about a local restaurant owner.

Where are the threads complaining about owners of other businesses that have done WAYYYY worse shit?

I already feel like I'm giving too much energy to this haha.

They’ve always been nice and soft when I’ve had them. They do get hard fast though like if you dont eat them within 2-3 days.

I know I’m just saying it’s a little obsessive how much people are bothered by her. Like this post could have just said Pizza Marvin’s chef was nominated and snubbed her. But OP made it a point to mention her cus this sub is obsessed with hating her lol. It’s just so silly.

Shouldn't the post title say something more like "Local Chefs from Little Sister & Pizza Marvin named 2023 James Beard Award Semifinalists"?

Why are people so obsessed with the owner of Rebelle on this sub?

Yeah say what you will, but the food is good at Little Sister and the bagels are the best bagels in town at Rebelle.