Over the last summer, I worked at a buffet style restaurant called Café Del Mar. This restaurant is located in the Plaza Resort & Spa, which is a hotel in Daytona Beach, "the worlds most famous beach."" I supplied labor as a server making more than the normal $2.13; I was pulling $5.25 per hour plus tips. The all you can eat buffet cost $20.95 per person, and the demand for this buffet was high, because it was always full with a wait. .
There were a few major duties that my co-workers and I did on a day-to-day basis. When arriving to work we would have to set up the buffet and put out all the food where it belongs. The buffet was open from five o'clock P.M. until ten o'clock P.M., being packed the whole five hours it was open. My duties as a server where to take drink orders, ring in the bill, make sure the guest had clean plates to eat off, and make it the best dinner the guests ever had. After the buffet was closed it was time to clean up the dinning room and make sure everything was ready for the morning crew.
When I was first hired I wasn't sure what the pay was going to be, when I found out it was $5.25 per hour plus tips it sounded really good. After working there for a week I realized the pay was a lot more than I expected it to be, I was making, just in tips, between $90.00 and $140.00 per night plus my $5.25 per hour. Making this kind of money made me happier about being at work and caused me to work harder for my employer. There wasn't a huge surplus of applicants dieing to be hired, but there wasn't a problem with keeping all the positions filled at all times.
From my perspective this particular market for labor works great, I was making good money mostly in tips while my employer was still only paying me $5.25 per hour. Thus, keeping me happy and making good money makes me want to excel in the work place over the other employees. Not only did the Café Del Mar reach its appropriate supply and demand balance paying its servers more, it also made them better servers and caused the customers or consumers to want to come back again and again.
