so because the bar exam is in the swanky part of boston, I had to get a hotel room in the swanky part of boston, because if I did I got a discount
and holy jesus it’s the twilight zone of rich people
this is the room service menu. guess how much a bowl of cereal costs. like, not fancy cereal, I mean a bowl of unadulterated cheerios.
…
whatever you guessed, you were wrong, it’s ten fucking dollars
oh but maybe you want something even less interesting. oatmeal’s like, what, 50 cents a bag?
JUST KIDDING IT’S ALSO TEN BUCKS
do you want something with protein? how about eggs? okay, that can be a little expensive, there’s egg shortage and labor’s involved and look, whatever number you’re guessing in your head, it’s NOT HIGH ENOUGH
oh but it’s fancy because it has ~woodland mushrooms~
do you want to know how much a glass of milk costs? GUESS HOW MUCH A GLASS OF FUCKING MILK COSTS. I’LL WAIT.
FUCKING SEVEN DOLLARS. do you know how much that is? right now, a gallon of milk is like three dollars at walmart. I could buy TWO GALLONS OF MILK AND A GLASS TO DRINK IT WITH for the price of this shit.
I finally understand this gif. this is how rich people actually think. holy fuck.
Hi as someone who worked in room service for the hotel of a dingy casino, I can tell you some info that might be fun to know.
These prices are high not because you’re in the rich section of Boston, but because you are looking into a service that the company holds a tiny monopoly over, namely food delivery to the room. Since there is little to no competition for that particular service, the hotel can charge basically whatever they want, and the people who want room service (and can afford it) will have to deal. This is part a fundamental law of supply and demand, and the basics of economics in America.
Take for example, the place where I work. It’s a casino/hotel resort, and a cheap one in a fairly small town at that. In this casino, there is a single cafe. It has on its menu a short stack of pancakes for $2.49. Now, our hotel does have a room service menu which also allows you to order a short stack of pancakes. These pancakes are the same size and recipe–cooked by the same staff in the same kitchen–as our cafe’s pancakes. For these pancakes, we charge $9.00 plus an auto-gratuity fee of 18%. AND DESPITE THE ALMOST 10 DOLLAR PRICE DIFFERENCE, PEOPLE STILL BUY THEM.
So here is a basic lesson in economics and how capitalism was supposed to work, but didnt. Fundamentally, every time money exchanges hands, you pay for a service. (In the aforementioned case the services were dining out at the cafe vs dining in your room.) Consider what that service is, and if the price seems exorbitant, ask yourself: is there any way I can get this same service where I am from a different company? (In the case of dining out, there are several other restaurants in town that provide the same food at about the same price, but for dining in, the only option is to buy through the casino/hotel.) You’ll find the answer, almost every time, is no. That’s because this particular company has managed to find a way to monopolize this service, and monopolies fundamentally destroy any and every type of economy.
Capitalism doesnt work because it was supposed to cause healthy competition amongst suppliers, which would keep the price to quality ratio fair (ie: the cafes). Instead, it promotes self interest, which promotes micro-monopolies–like room service–which upset the balance of everything.
Counterpoint:@askthedevicer room service is kinda a false micromonopoly cause anything delivery food you can get delivered to a house you can get it delivered to a hotel room. Most people are just too stupid to realize this or they are too impatient to wait the extra time compared to room service. Capitalism does work like its suppose to, it just has flaws like any other system of anything.
@buddy-1 I originally decided not to talk about delivery food vs room service food because I was typing it out on my phone, it was four in the morning, and the original post was a rant on Tumblr about how stupid fucking high room service prices are (which is a perfectly reasonable rant), but heck you brought it up so I might as well.
I don’t know about you, but every place I know that delivers is either: pizza, Chinese food, or, like, Jimmy Johns (which I will lump into the bigger picture of fast food). All of which generally have faults of their own. Pizza is a bulk food, which is great if you’re feeding a family of six on a budget, but on your own? What you have is a room that smells like pizza for the duration of the time you’re staying there because there’s no way to eat a pizza in one sitting, and hotels (quite purposefully) never give you a big enough fridge to store it in. Chinese and fast food places can serve single servings, but can get repetitive of several nights, aren’t very healthy, as you said take longer, and generally have a minimum price tag and a delivery fee anyway.
In addition, rarely are delivery restaurants known for early morning shifts, which is to say that often, breakfast is free game for room service. Hereby, the twenty three dollar omelet the OP was talking about. Also, room service menus tend to focus on foods being “healthy and lifestyle” like OP’s food, which specifically pointed out that it had “lifestyle omelets” and healthier drink options like v8 or soy milk, or more sit-down restaurant entrees, such as steaks or seafood. Foods that really aren’t delivered.
And don’t even mention things like beer and alcohol. Holy hell, i stayed at a hotel in Vegas (IN VEGAS THE CITY OF EVERYTHING) where they are charging $55 dollars for a bottle of champagne that their own damn gift-shop was selling for $24 and I know for a fact that I could buy at a grocer for even less.
And before anyone happens to mention that “oh well, clearly no business person has been smart enough to open a breakfast delivery joint” consider how much businesses actively discourage that behavior. Consider on the topic of alcohol: my casino doesn’t technically prohibit you from bringing your own, cheaper wine into our fine establishment, but hey, if you try to open that on the casino floor, we are charging you $12, for a foreign wine-opening fee! Why, you might ask? Well, because you bringing your own alcohol is losing us money (legit, that is the actually honest-to-god reason the owners put in the memo when they made this rule), which might make sense from a business stand point except if our patrons are on the casino floor any alcohol they buy from us is COMPED. FREE. ONLY THERE SO THEY GAMBLE MORE. so actually, they save us money by bringing their own alcohol. The company just put the deterrent in place to “encourage” people to buy within our company.
Also consider: theme parks and airports don’t allow food or drink through their security checkpoints, and then charge anywhere from 4-12 dollars for a typical bottle of Aquafina. While you could argue that room service isn’t a monopoly through sheer force of a monopoly’s most strict definition, this really is, and it’s not on a luxury but rather a necessity.
I don’t see capitalism as we know it being sustainable. It would work much better if we had more regulations in place to prevent monopolistic intentions. Monopolies, so far as I know, being Capitalism’s one major weakness. Capitalism’s “flaw,” as you put it, is that it encourages the thing that destroys it.
The-Lounge 