#sinkpiece

Look, how good is paywave? It’s such an effective way of paying for your groceries, any retail goods you may purchase, or any thing else around those lines. You don’t have to worry about going to an ATM, there is no stress of having too much money in your wallet and the fear of “oh no, everybody around me MUST know that I’m carrying about $500” (which is such an irrational fear but we all know what that feels like). Having a card and the ability to just transmit money and pay somebody with a piece of plastic is fucking amazing. With the ease of that system, the idea that Australia will become a cashless society is being talked about more and more, and it’s seemingly approaching very rapidly. As a front of house worker in hospitality, I really hope that does not happen. Through most hours of the day, we don’t need cash, for the reasons that I mentioned above. But if you want to go out for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a night on the town, cash is king. If you’re going out to dine, paying on card is fine, it’s pretty reasonable to expect to pay the bill on a card. ‘A’ card, one singular. Splitting bills on two cards? Different story. It’s not really that big of a deal, this but inconvenience could be easily avoided with a few options. Firstly, hit an ATM before you get to the restaurant, have a reasonable amount of cash on you and paying the bill will take no time at all, an ease on you and the staff serving you (and if you have great staff, you can leave a lovely little tip!). If you don’t go to an ATM, whether you’re not around an ATM of your bank of choice, or you’re human and you just forgot, with the power of modern technology, you can transfer your portion of the bill to one person and they can pay the bill one one card! How good’s that. Only real problem with that if you’re all with different banks, there is most likely a delay for the money to arrive in the payers account. In that case, make sure the most cashed up member of your party uses their card, who luckily has the luxury to shout the bill and await for your money to enter their account. As far as going to bars, a cashless society will bring longer wait times, and create irritated bar staff the country over. Imagine this. You’re about 4 or 5 people back in the queue, you just want a beer, glass of wine or a gin and tonic, whatever, something simple. But there are 3 people in front of you wanting an elaborate cocktail or, god forbid, there is a generous gentleman performing the “could I get one beer and uhh… what do you want mate? Yep! Could I get two beers and uhh… what about you mate?” and so on so forth. Imagine that guy, then going “sorry mate, paywave isn’t working for me, gonna have to insert that” then following up with “that’s not possible mate, there should be heaps of money in that account” then spends the next two minutes opening his banking app on his phone, finding out he doesn’t have that much money in his account, then transferring money from one account to another, then paying. Ellaborate? Most definitely. Common? You’d be shocked. Add to this, with the terrible internet speeds in Australia compared to the rest of the world, it’s going to take even longer, until the NBN in this country is improved (carn Malcolm). This is a nuisance to not only the front of house staff that have to deal with this, but the people waiting in line, waiting for a free barman or woman to serve them. We’re sorry, we’d love to serve you, but we have to deal with this bullshit first. But the little cherry on top of this hypothetical scenario that is close and closer to occurring, is the idea of tipping in this country. In Australia, us hospitality workers are lucky enough where most of us are payed well enough to not rely on tips to pay our bills and our rent, most of us get payed over $20 an hour. But a tip? It’s an affirmation of the effort we put in to provide quality customer service and that tip is going towards a cheeky drink or two after we finish service, a drink that we have earned and so deserve. Paying on card, there is basically no way to tip front of house staff. There will have to be a system set up where tips go into an account, along side the name of the staff member who earned it, and then that will go into their paycheque. It’s an overly complicated system that will need to set up (someone invent an app) just so we can appreciate our hard working hospitality staff that’s not just a big thank you and a hearty handshake. It might be a little selfish to ask for extra cash for our hard work, but it’s our version of a Christmas bonus, and without us, you 9 to 5er’s wouldn’t be able to enjoy your night out. It’s interesting to think about the possibility of a cashless society, and with the rapid technological advancement age that we are so enjoying, it seems a likely scenario, but there are a few negatives, mainly that affects the front of house workers in the hospitality industry. At the end of the day, I guess there are worse things to complain about, it is a little selfish of me to expect tips for hard work, and maybe there will be a system made to combat this, but I still hope that people are still able to come to the bar with crisp pineapples and pocket full of shrapnel.