save2600

Interesting article and agree with some of the concepts. 

Around here, I've witnessed (and managed) industries though where you take away the incentive (tips, commissions, bonuses) and you end up fostering a lazy, incompetent and content workforce. When they took commissions away (or severely dropped them), but paid higher salaries at places like Sears, you had uneducated sales people that could hardly be bothered to help customers or know much about the product. See Best Buy for another example of this. Or Home Depot (starts people out at $11-$12hr). Or Menards. Or Walmart. Or just about any big box store. 

Seems new auto dealers have taken a similar approach. Upped the base pay, but cut commissions. Walk into a new car dealer today... chances are extremely high they know jack about what they're trying to sell. Even the most basic features came as a surprise to the last salesman I bought a car from and ended up knowing more about the car than he did. Again, guy obviously didn't feel compelled to get out there and know his product.

There's gotta be a happy medium out there, but not sure most businesses have found that sweet spot yet. $7hr plus .10%-.25% commission clearly didn't and doesn't work for certain departments at Sears. 

Keep raising the prices for mediocre food and service at some of these restaurants and maybe the trend of staying at home and making your own meal will be a *thing* again. Which it clearly should, for more reasons than cost alone.  

Sure, rewarding excellent service is great. What I don't like is punishing workers for circumstances beyond their control. I've worked in restaurants during slow times. No customers means no money and time wasted that could have been earning a wage doing something better. Sears is another great example. You can't put the failure of an old-fashioned, frumpy store on the retail employees. That wasn't their doing or their fault. 

Re car dealerships, heh. I'm not sure what they have to offer nowadays when everyone has access to all the info they need to make a smart purchase. The place I bought my last car seemed to lean heavily on customer feedback about the experience.