We just finished a delicious meal at our favorite local restaurant. Your check has been paid. You’re signing the tip, and then I noticed something very strange. There is a small surcharge that says “employee health”.
And that’s… in some places, it pays for employee medical bills. Like us and many others, you are probably really confused.Like Ashley Nicole, @ashnichole_xoco-founder parallel apparel is the founder of unsolicited advice podcast.she took a video She explained the situation and asked people if this kind of charge was normal. Please see
bored panda I reached out to Ashley via email. I will update her article as soon as I get a reply.
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Ashley Nicole went viral on TikTok after a bizarre experience at a restaurant
Image credit: ashnichole_xo
The woman noticed something strange on the bill.
“The strangest thing happened to me. It’s cold and rainy in LA, so I decided to go out to dinner with my best friend. We go to one of our favorite restaurants. It’s Osteria Labuka. ..it’s an Italian restaurant here in LA and we’ve been there many times.We enjoy our meals.It’s like picking up a check, paying a check, signing a tip or something so you notice something .”
Image credit: ashnichole_xo
Image credit: Louis Hensel (not actual photo)
She was confused about what the ’employee health’ fee meant
“Here’s the receipt. If you look at the bottom here, there’s a $4.75 charge for employee health. Do you see a 5% charge for employee health? What does “What is employee health?” mean? ‘ We went through a few options and I was like, ‘What do you know?
Image credit: ashnichole_xo
She asked one of the employees about it on her way home.
“So, as we were about to walk out, I approached the hostess and said, ‘Hey, just a quick question, I’m just curious. I saw it billing and I just had to ask, what is it? And my response was, “What’s your health care?” And she says, ‘Yes, our medical care.’ “
Image credit: ashnichole_xo
The woman wondered if this was normal and asked others to share their experiences.
“Never heard of such a thing. And I had to find out – was it normal and was I living under a rock? Is it normal or has it ever happened?” This is weird because I’ve never experienced it and it feels weird, but maybe this is normal elsewhere.
Image credit: Andrea Piaquadio (not actual photo)
You can see Ashley’s full viral TikTok here
@ashnichole_xo Is this normal? ? # green screen #receipt #Employee health #restaurant ♬ Original Sound – Ashley Nicole
It feels very strange to expect customers to pay for employee medical bills
Healthcare and tipping culture are among the most sensitive topics in the United States. Combining the two gives you incredibly nuanced results. Ashley’s videos have earned her one million views, more than 94,000 likes and more than 15.4,000 comments on TikTok. Because we shared our thoughts about the “employee health” gratuity charge on the receipt.
If you take a step back and look at things objectively, it feels downright weird (and a bit dystopian) to expect a customer to pay for someone’s employee’s medical bills. You should.
The situation also highlights the problem of tipping culture across the United States. A shift towards fairer employment contracts, stable wages and health care also seems to be the norm. That is when the goal is to motivate employees and provide access to basic benefits. In short, why should the customer be responsible for the employer?
In response to BuzzFeed’s interview, ashley said She said she thought it was a mistake when she first saw the charge on the receipt. “This was the first time I had seen anything like this. When I asked the hostess to clarify the bill, she was confused as to why I was paying for the server’s health care,” she said. “The overwhelming response was that most people had never seen anything like it.”
America’s healthcare system is wasteful
The problem is that even if all employers pay their employees’ medical bills, they still need to reform their system. As it stands, healthcare in the United States is incredibly inefficient and a lot of money is wasted on administrative costs.
according to According to Investopedia, approximately 8% of healthcare costs in the US are spent on administrative costs. Meanwhile, hospitals practice so-called protective medicine, ordering many costly tests to prevent potential lawsuits. Therefore, a CT scan costs less than $100 in Canada and five times more in Australia, while the average cost in the United States is $896.
The exact same MRI scan that costs $450 in the UK will cost three times as much in the US. Simply put, medical procedures are very expensive in a free country, especially when compared to other prosperous developed countries.
Service providers charge what they think they can handle (a.k.a. the “market price”) without hitting the banal. A possible solution to this is increased government oversight and setting a specific price for the procedure.
Tipping culture is also very problematic
It’s not just healthcare that needs an ideal overhaul. Tipping culture as a whole raises many questions.For example, the New York Times saw In “all but eight states,” employers can choose to pay tipped employees the minimum wage ($2.13 an hour). This is allowed as long as they can make up the difference with the tips they earn and ‘reach’ minimum wage. About 5.5 million workers are paid according to this “tip credit” system.
This is problematic because it leaves a lot of room for exploitation at the worker’s expense. A Cleveland bartender told the NYT that he had never seen anyone compensated for falling below the minimum. Getting the money you are owed is very difficult. However, some states have plans to ban sub-minimum wages and focus on decent minimum wages. How far this will spread remains to be seen.
There were various opinions about “health insurance”.Here are some thoughts of them
