It has nothing to do with whether or not the job is hard. I've worked retail, food service, and landscaping jobs through high school and university. I know those jobs aren't easy.
The difference is that those jobs require workers to be present throughout the day in order to get work done. As a software developer I could probably cut my hours per day and produce the same amount of output. As a waiter my productivity (and earnings) was dependent on customers showing up to the restaurant. If I only worked 6 hours instead of 8, or 4 days instead of 5, then I served fewer customers and earned fewer tips.
Do they? Retail is definitely subject to fairly predictable rush periods. All the while I was working at an electronics retailer, where my job was as much to educate or guide as sell, I wondered why we didn't have "sales hours" that were fully-staffed, and in between, some sort of remote assistance, where we would be on-call to help people out through video calls. When half your job is simply pointing people to items, why actually be there? And for the people who want to know about products, like the gentleman who wants to buy a full home theater set-up, shouldn't we be fresh and ready for them, not dragging after 8 hours of telling people where power cords are?
And, of course, we're paid the same or more, as we're making the company the same amount of money, if not more.
There is certainly room for innovation that makes sense for productivity AND for worker morale. But the people making the decisions are risk-averse and don't have to deal with the downsides of their heel-dragging.
There's an easy solution when workers are required to be present... don't make all the employees work at the same time. Need more hours of productivity? Hire more people.
Also, as a waiter, your wages should not be paid by the customers. Tips are bullshit, and the rest of the world knows this. You should be paid a fair hourly wage.
>There's an easy solution when workers are required to be present... don't make all the employees work at the same time. Need more hours of productivity? Hire more people.
And now you've increased overhead and labor costs for these companies significantly while reducing the pay of the average worker (are cashiers going salary now?) I don't see how that works for anyone.
The difference is that those jobs require workers to be present throughout the day in order to get work done. As a software developer I could probably cut my hours per day and produce the same amount of output. As a waiter my productivity (and earnings) was dependent on customers showing up to the restaurant. If I only worked 6 hours instead of 8, or 4 days instead of 5, then I served fewer customers and earned fewer tips.