S09.E20: The Big Bear Precipitation

[theatremouse]

4 hours ago, OtterMommy said:

And Penny probably couldn't make big bucks in tips at the Cheesecake factory.  My guess is that dinner for 4 there would be $60-80, which would make a 20% tip (which is higher than many would tip) would only be $12-$16.  She may be able to pull in a couple hundred dollars an night--possibly $1000 if it were a really good night, but her wage would be so low and her taxes on her tips so high that she would only keep a couple hundred  of that.

I guess I can say that I can believe Sheldon and Leonard's salaries supporting their lifestyle, but there is no way that waitress Penny's would ever come close to her life on the show.

Your numbers are more appropriate for dinner for 2 there. Maybe 3. 4 is pushing it, and way low if the diners had drinks. Even accounting for the "Penny wasn't a very good waitress" offset, I expect she made damn solid tips. Cheesecake Factory is much pricier than say, Applebee's, to use a horrible comparator. I imagine her cash flow could be somewhat unpredictable, but they did have her working somewhere midscale enough that her lifestyle was believable-ish.

[OtterMommy]

1 hour ago, theatremouse said:

Your numbers are more appropriate for dinner for 2 there. Maybe 3. 4 is pushing it, and way low if the diners had drinks. Even accounting for the "Penny wasn't a very good waitress" offset, I expect she made damn solid tips. Cheesecake Factory is much pricier than say, Applebee's, to use a horrible comparator. I imagine her cash flow could be somewhat unpredictable, but they did have her working somewhere midscale enough that her lifestyle was believable-ish.

Fair enough..it's been ages since I ate at the Cheesecake Factory.  However, I do know from friends who waited tables that the tip haul usually isn't as big as one would think.  Depending on the restaurant, either the tips are pooled and then split among every one (wait staff, bussers, hosts, etc) or the wage is so low that the tips are needed just to bring things up to a living wage.

I'm not too terribly worried about how Penny pays her rent.  Honestly, this show actually does handle that better than most.  Remember Friends, with a coffee house waitress and a sometimes employed sous chef (or self-employed caterer) and their spacious NYC apartment?  Plus, this show has addressed Penny's cashflow problems in a fairly realistic way.

[Driad]

Y'all reminded me of some other sitcom that had a reunion episode.  Two attendees had not seen each other since high school.  "A" mentioned that he had a government job.  "B" bragged loudly and at length that he was a waiter at a fancy restaurant, made a fortune in tips, and declared only a fraction of it for income taxes.  Turned out "A" was an auditor for the IRS.  (That's the income tax agency in the US.)  Guessing that Penny did not get that much in tips, although some guys might have given her big tips …

[lallalla]

On 4/10/2016 at 8:13 PM, needschocolate said:

All these posts about heartbeats not being heard makes me realize how lucky I have been.  My sympathies to all of you, no one should have to deal with that sort of pain.  

 

As for the money talk - If a cook and a waitress could live in a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan, across the hall from a rarely working actor and his businessman (what did Chandler Bing do?) roommate in their two bedroom apartment, not far away from an archaeologist living by himself (with child support payments and a pet monkey), and there wasn''t constant talk of how they would pay their rent that month, then I suppose we can go the opposite direction and have Caltech scientists complain about how little they make.  TV finances rarely make sense.  

I have always wondered how TV houses, no matter their socioeconomic standing, manage to have fully furnished houses, even accounting for donations, yard sale or Good Will items, etc.  Really? You're broke as f-, but have a house full of stuff. So unrealistic. I have a personal experience which may cloud that, but I felt and thought that prior to being left with literally nothing, two children to raise, and my accounts (though little in there) cleared out, while trying to leave a situation people thought I'd never get out alive from.  We can rationalize, maybe shady loans from crazy furniture places, but for me, we all sit on the flooor most of the time any way so I stick with beds, a love seat I found on Craigslist for free, and a donated dilapidated table from a neighbor.  So many more important things when you're hiding from a hellbeast and trying to make ends meet than what your house is filled with.

The plausibility of these shows is so ridiculously suspect and I feel leads to hard-working people feeling less than. Even people with a great grip on reality, I feel it just helps nag at them "why can't I obtain this on what I earn/do?"

I don't mean to absolve personal responsibility, common sense/real world experiences, just that even when we realize it's only entertainment, we end up with a gross sense of reality and it has a devastating ripple effect.

I don't think I've worded exactly what I feel/think here, but I hope I've come close. I don't mean to pass blame for the debts we take on, I know we can assess fantasy from reality, but the lines can seem so blurred as you keep consuming more and more media, to the point of destroying you emotionally and/or financially, because we forget what a rational norm is.

[Crs97]

Quote

Y'all reminded me of some other sitcom that had a reunion episode.  Two attendees had not seen each other since high school.  "A" mentioned that he had a government job.  "B" bragged loudly and at length that he was a waiter at a fancy restaurant, made a fortune in tips, and declared only a fraction of it for income taxes.  Turned out "A" was an auditor for the IRS.  (That's the income tax agency in the US.)  Guessing that Penny did not get that much in tips, although some guys might have given her big tips …

That was a great scene from Taxi! 

 

 

On Friends, at least they kept hand waving that the girls were illegally subletting a rent controlled apartment from Monica's grandmother.  I appreciated the effort at least.