Also, while we are at it, I used to be a server when I was a teenager 20 years ago. Minimum expectation for a tip was 10%, 15% was standard and 20% was for particularly good service. Since fucking when has 25% become the minimum expectation or even a high end expectation? That is on top of already increased food costs from inflation. Even the low end of the presets you see on all of the card readers asking for tips is 18% most of the time. What gives?
Oh it's ridiculous. I long to return to 15%, but I won't budge a penny over 20%. I'll hold up the bar with a calculator if you make me, I've done it before.
No, it's 100% an AI image. I did a breakdown of a manual analysis of this image elsewhere in the comments, and there's really no question this is fake.
I dunno, it feels pretty deliberately rage-baity, what with demanding a 25% tip when 20% is considered fine anywhere (in the US). If there's one thing an LLM can do, it's ragebait. The use of stars for visual flare but lack of a restaurant logo of any kind is also pretty unnatural. Also it stumbles pretty clumsily between like 3 different points, when normally they'd just make the other points separate notes.
Which should be a crime, by the way. Both the ridiculously low wage, as well as trying to pass it to the customer. Next thing you know, the cook's salary will
be listed, too.
Oh don't worry, you are! In many states, the first chunk of tips goes to cover the employee contribution. Essentially the waiter makes either tips or hourly, which ever is higher, so until the tips are larger than the base pay, your tips are really just saving the employer money. Does this make sense? No. Is it common in states not called California and New York? Absolutely!
Oh absolutely, even if they don't do outright wage theft, they can often find a reason (or not in right-to-work states) to dismiss any employee that won't claim sufficient tips (whether customers left those tips or not).
I prefer countries that don't tip and just pay their employees a reasonable wage. Also when did the tip jump from 15% customary to 25% to 35% minimum? Anyways they're right, vote with your dollars to not be a customer of establishments abusing the tip system to pay their employees slave wages. Maybe last note, as far as I'm aware if tips don't make up the difference the employer is legally inclined to pay their staff at least minimum wage in most places.
In New Zealand, we declare that tipping culture can go fuck off. We don't have it and don't want it here. I had an american friend come to visit and he thought we were stoopid for not tipping, and he tipped everyone anyway to show mercy to all us oppressed souls over here.
Yeah, lot of people here are falling hard for this AI rage-slop. Besides the customer on the right having no legs (or the world's weirdest chair), there's no visible way this printout is attached to the window, the reflection in the top left cuts off at what presumably is the bar top and then the reflection below it is inexplicably of a perpendicular street, the lack of a ceiling where a ceiling is implied to be and all that similar stuff, the type justification doesn't actually line up. (begrudging credit to r/isthisAI)
It's a good fake but still pretty conclusively fake. And... honestly, it's worrying that people here are falling over themselves to comment as if this is real. Ya'll, we need to try and be a little bit less credulous with boomer memes, especially ones that perpetuate negative BS like this, otherwise we're basically no better than Facebook users.
::: spoiler If you would like yet more proof, this hanging light becomes a window frame.
::: spoiler Zach Weinersmith, as usual, says it far better than I can:
:::
This is an exhausting sentiment. Yes, there is a culture of tipping that desperately needs to be abolished. No, AI ragebait images are not a productive way to foster that discussion. This image is just an excuse to justify pre-existing biases, based on a completely fabricated example. It's no different from the fake "Bluehair Tumblr SJW Feminist destroyed with facts and logic, melts down!!1!" images/videos conservatives assume accurately represents all leftists. Yes, it's a real topic and real people share some of the sentiments expressed in the image. No, presenting the argument in such an exaggerated way does nothing to actually resolve the issue - it's just circle jerking about "how dumb" the opposition is, and stubborn refusal to accept that they were fooled.
"It's over kid, for I have already drawn you as the Soy Wojack" is not a way to bring about social revolution - it's just a way to let AI slop divide us further by making a ridiculously over the top caricature of our opponents into what we think they're really like.
No, not "conclusively", it could still be real. You're assuming the sign was printed directly on the substrate. As a former sign-maker, that might not be how this sign was made. It could be cut vinyl on a plastic face. The cutter might have been too small to cut the entire sign at once, and the sloppy way vinyl is transferred to the face could account for the non-convergence. Also, the drawn lines are not quite aligned to the image.
Not "conclusively".
Finally, there's no reason to invoke generational slurs or elitism in this comment. Remember, no war but the class war.
"How dare the youth not be overly polite to a generation that has burned down the world and stolen their future. My god, the lack of solidarity. #NotAllBoomers."
Sincerely, if that's what you consider a slur you might want to consider reducing your consumption of the internet. This is a shitpost community, and my use above is a reference to a real and incredibly important problem with older generations and the internet. Facebook is rife with misinformation, and their user demographics skew heavily towards older adults. I'm not about to treat this issue with large padded kidskin gloves just because it could possibly offend some sensibilities.
Dude, look - it's rough to be a decent person and be lumped in with a crowd of vile people just because of some demographic quirk. I'm an american on lemmy, believe me, I get it. But, much as the rhetoric against the US is largely based in very understandable reality, so are the complaints of the youth about the boomer generation.
The only way to avoid that association is to establish yourself as a decent person, and try to change things for the better. Preaching at me about my use of a term in a mildly negative way is not the way to do that. If you want advice, perhaps reference ageism instead of trying to present an incredibly common term as being a slur.
:::
Thermally laminated vinyl signs? I mean I suppose, but I see no indication of lifting or bubbling at the edges like you get from thermally laminating objects that are thick or with uneven thicknesses, and no signs of it on the fine inner details like the interiors of the text. It's also got far finer details than I've seen cut with a drag knife for a small sign, and there's enough variations in the text that I doubt it's been assembled from die-cut lettering sheets (not that I've ever seen a sign shop that used those). If we had a firm idea of the size this would be an easier argument to make, but even without that the cleanliness of the lamination alone makes this suspect. But perhaps they are a supremely talented laminator, one that enjoys leaving large strips around the edges like it was a laminated paper sign hung in a primary school building, and who puts vinyl cutouts on an unevenly cut plastic backing.
No, with all the additional AI-indicating details in the image, I'm sorry, I just don't see this being a credible explanation. This is absolutely, demonstrably an AI generated image.
Yeah - The image gen models have gotten scarily good in the past 6 months, and as shown here it can take a great deal of work to confirm an image is AI.
With how long those lines are, they amplify the error made while drawing them by 5-6 times. So for example, the start of the top pink line is slightly too high, and that's why it passes so far below the true vanishing point
That is a great point! One moment and I'll break it down.
(Okay! a little bit of a comedy of errors trying to get these marked up, but here we go.)
You're absolutely correct that the top line isn't fully aligned - this is because it's impossible for it to be aligned, as the top edge is distorted. You can see in the image below that that distortion is another indication this was generated - there's a fairly pronounced distortion of the top edge, but the row of text just below it has no equivalent warping like you'd get if this were a piece of paper that was slightly bowed. This is why the top line is misaligned - it's impossible to line it up, and when that happens it's better to align from the center out, as radial distortion becomes more severe the further you get from the center. The original poster lined it up with the center to the right corner and continued it along the edge to the left until the edge "bends", rather than aligning the corners and ignoring all of the warping of the edge as I've done in green below. (I also want to point out that the image in the OP has cropped the sign specifically to remove this dead obvious giveaway that the image was AI generated)
And you're again absolutely correct that this amplifies the errors - in fact that's rather the whole point. In the interest of completeness I've extended the green line out to intersect with the lower paper edge line - you can see that even corrected, the intersection does not form a regular pattern with the rest of the lines.
I was just thinking that this sign is too off-putting to be real. No business would do that and if it were a real business why isn't there like a Google Maps thing and everyone review bombing like they typically do in instances like this.
For sure, that's the thing that made me suspect it's fake. But unfortunately, "guys nobody did this it's stupid" is an extremely tough argument to sell on the internet, even if (as in this case) you turn out to be absolutely correct.
With the latest models being much better for text, it's a fairly reliable technique - comparing the vanishing point at which each row or major horizontally justified element converges to see if everything is actually aligned (as they would be if a human created it in something like word) or all subtly askew (as gen AI creates it)
It's unlikely you're using a collimating lens, so distortion is presumed! Not only is the impact of distortion fairly minimal, with radial distortion (by far the most common kind of distortion - usually synonymous with 'lens distortion') it's actually an important aspect; the angles will follow the regular pattern of the distortion and the technique will still work (If your photo has non-radial distortion, DM me; I want to know what on earth you were doing to cause that, it was probably a really entertaining story). As in the above image, the random scattering of the intersections is the indicator that the image was AI generated, not that the lines do not intersect at a single point.
I'm not quite sure what you mean, I'm sorry! As far as I'm aware, extra-radial and non-radial are both generic terms for all the optical aberrations, prisms, distortions and what-have-yous that aren't radial distortion. Though, I'm not terribly familiar with light field optics (beyond what can be gleaned from osmosis while working with optics nerds) so that may well be a term that's relevant there and I just don't know it. Do say more tho, it sounds potentially quite interesting!
Adding the hourly wage into the math +2 Choosing $165 instead of $150 or $100 +1, underlined can't and not underlining can't +1 star emojis around thank you +2 choosein 25% intead of %15 or %18 +1 a period of every line even with conversational tone +1 There's a lot to go on there even if you don't follow the lines.
Right well I'm mystified! You don't seem to be a chatbot from your post history, but I think I might just not be high enough to fully appreciate the deep, ancient wisdom in your words.
We're all meat chat-bots, we're just really slow at training.
The text: seems like AI to me, even forgetting the alignment issues
Adding the person's hourly wage into the sunk cost is questionable at best, 3:1 odds AI
Choosing $165 instead of an even number for a sample. Maybe the average check is $165, but i seriously doubt it, choosing $100 or $200 would be far more likely, even 150 i might have let it slide, 2:1 odds AI
They both did, and did not, underline "can't" in a single 2-line statement. While it would have been marginally ok gramatically, the whole vibe they were going for was not 'hinged' 2:1 odds AI
Adding star emojis around thank you is a telltale AI move. 3:1 odds AI, I'd have given it more but maybe they were emulating a receipt
Choosing 25% is an unlikely target for a 'lesson' on how to tip. 15,18,20 would all be more likely, ode to ragebait, 2:1 odds AI
The tone of the whole thing was very conversational and a bit unhinged. There was a period after every line; it was like they were making a list, but it wasn't. In that frame, I would have expected no punctuation, or a comma in a few spots, feels way off. 2:1 odds AI
It read AI to me without lining it up.
in addition
The perspective problem is also deeper than the lineup. It is laminated, but it feels like it's poster-sized, which would be unusual. The camera is focusing quite close if it's a letter, (reflection looks like it's 3 ft away, which would be 1.5' x 2 , yet the reflections and the shot through the window are quite clear. The reflections show a cell phone picture, but the f-stop would have had to be narrow AF (like F11) to take that shot with distance and close-up details clear.
Ahh, thank you! Yeah, I agree that there's plenty of indications that the text is AI. But people in general like to be certain before they believe something that contradicts their worldview, and this is an opportunity to showcase a fairly quick and fairly easy way to check for AI generated text. You've raised an excellent point about the f stop / focus too - I'm not quite such a good photographer as to be able to confidently identify issues like that, but it's for sure something I'll be paying attention to in the future. Thabk you!
Fake yes but they are plenty of people who actually do believe this. As in people who are in support of mandatory tipping. Specially during covid it was not hard to find doordash or Uber eats drivers putting up videos complaining about not getting a tip or not getting a big enough tip. He had some of them filming themselves harassing people.
I mean, sure but Texas, Utah, North Carolina, Wyoming, and South Carolina accept the federal minimum wage for tipped employees of $2.13. I would argue that's the point, fake image or not. The implication being, if YOU don't tip then their wage for their work is valued at $2.13 an hour.
That's not how the tipped minimum wage works - it's even more arcane and convoluted than that! If you don't tip, then their wage is the local minimum, it's only reduced to where $2.13 plus their tips exceed the local minimum (so if you tip $2, and the local minimum wage is $15, they would make $13 at minimum wage (all the places with a $15 minimum I know of have banned this bullshit)) and as you pointed out, in 45/50 states that's been to some small or large extent rejected. If that sounds like it would make accounting really hard, you win uh... well we're out of candy so your prize is depression. Congrats!
It's a ridiculous system that should be abolished - but nearly all the criticism in these comments is treating it as though the exaggerated entitled behavior in the image is real - when nobody has actually behaved that way. If you think it's simply a meme that's fine, but it's presented as being an image from a real event, and that's what people need to be aware of.
And beside all that - why are we comfortable accepting AI content when it reinforces our positions, but reject it otherwise?
Yeah, go ahead and tell your boss to actually adjust your hours because a table stiffed and watch your hours magically get cut. The math is easy, take your $2.13 and don't complain or you'll get the back tables by the kitchen and then only get scheduled for 20 hours next week.
Mmmhm. So when you file your taxes, this is checked for. It's fairly easy to confirm compliance from the taxes info your boss files + the tips you're 100% extremely dutifully reporting, especially if you do something like automatic withholding (as I understand it a colossal pain for a tipped position unless you're in one of the many states that has passed rules to make the process less absurd). This is why it's important to report things like tips, because it's the #1 way bosses like that are caught.
Of course the economic reality discourages people from actually doing that, and thus we carve out yet more niche to stack exploitation in.
This offsets costs for the business and makes the customer compensate for lower wages. The whole point here is to make you pay for it not corporates and corporations. That's why taxes should be higher like 99%. Except they own politicians.
In all seriousness I doubt that any business would post this and invite the backlash. People do stupid stuff all the time though, but I still doubt on this one.
Maybe you should just start paying your wait staff a proper wage, where proper means a liveable income. That way your waiters can turn around and eat at your diner too, increasing your profit.
There are no waiters. The food is slop. The only wages paid are to shareholders and the one lone tech at the data center, carefully replacing endless worn out drives. Each one costs more than he makes in a month. The raid controller accepts the handshake, and the drive begins to fill - somewhere, a user pays $0.03 and generates an image of Jimi Hendrix with enormous, guitar-shaped breasts. Another one generates the above image. The tech goes on break, scrolling memes on his phone as he cracks open a Cafe Chai Soylent™. He upvotes this - tipping is ridiculous. Those owners are clearly out of touch.
have tipped 30% before, when a server basically saved a friend's bday by accommodating a large, loud group of just-off-deployment-soldiers at a busy place.
This just feels like the same thing as the idea of advertising the product in the shop without the tax added on, and then going to the till and the price being different.
What's the point in the other price when that isn't the number i'm going to be paying.
Just make the food cost the second price in the first place and pay your workers. Scumbags.
Is something like this acceptable in the U.S. in any way? What kind of absurd attitude toward customers is that? What kind of restaurant owner would even think of something like that?
My reaction to a sign like that would be to never ever "dine" there ... not in a million years...
Nevertheless, the statement still holds true: In the U.S., it’s common for service staff to rely on tips to make ends meet. This isn’t just exploitative—since dining out in the U.S. is already very expensive—but it also turns the whole idea behind tipping on its head: Instead of rewarding particularly competent service staff for their performance, they are penalized if their service isn’t outstanding—and even when the service is outstanding, but the customer doesn’t have enough money to acknowledge it with a tip.
This practice reflects the ideology of this country, which results in countless people in the richest country in the world living as if in a Third World country—without mandated health insurance, with virtually no labor protections, and with completely absurd excesses like private prisons.
Therefore: Yes, it is most likely AI, but the post nonetheless draws attention to a social injustice that many U.S. citizens probably do not even recognize as such, since they are so accustomed to it.
The image itself is rage-bait; the excessively entitled behavior in the above example is fabricated, as are the many similar versions of this meme. While there absolutely does need to be reform around tipped wages, starting that conversation on a lie is not a productive way to have that conversation. People are treating this as an actual example of behavior in the country and their response is then proportional to the percieved actions of these fictitious restaurant owners and the very misleading hallucinated figures in the image, and again, it's all in response to a fake image.
If you want good news about this, 44/50 states have passed some level of extra restriction on tipped minimum wage positions - ranging from a simple increase of the minimum wage or state auditing to prevent tip theft, to an outright banning of the practice of adjusted wages for tipped employees. There is absolutely still work to be done, but this is not an issue that is ignored nor is it one that even conservatives see as unimportant - the Trumplings championed how specific language exempting tips from federal taxes was included in their Big Beautiful Bill, as a way to sell it to their base.
And, aside from all that, do you not see the irony in relying on an AI generated image to spread the idea that exploitation of workers is bad? It is not a particularly great way to demonstrate our conviction to the cause if we show up to the rally driving the orphan crushing machine.
Well, it’s certainly true that it should be pointed out that this is not a real image, but rather an exaggeration that also contains information that is unfounded—or even worse: false.
To me, however, it seems more like a caricature, a political satire, if you will: Here, too, exaggeration is used to express criticism and elicit an emotional response.
Nevertheless, you’re right, of course: It must be obvious that this is satire. Since this image isn’t a drawing that makes that fact clear, it’s right and important that you point it out—thank you very much for that!
And yes, you’re right on this point as well: Using image generation to criticize exploitation is indeed hypocritical.
Yeah, sure, but blaming customers for the boundless greed of this store’s owners in such an arrogant way is truly insane.
Well, maybe it’s just another effect of the MAGA regime: The monsters are dropping all their restraint because the worst of them always get away with it.
$2.13 an hour??? And the president has the gall to call other places "shit hole countries". I always had an idea it was bad in the US, but this is basically slavery with extra steps. JFC
Yeah, jobs that are traditionally tipped here have that as a base rate of pay, with the expectation that tips will make up for the rest. It's a terrible system.
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Pay your employees livable wages???
I wish people would name and shame the company that does this type of bullshit.
Losing Business 101
"Waiters salary: 2.13"
"Don't be cheap"
Motherfucker, you are gonna be let past the velvet rope to the executive guillotine when the revolution comes.
I think the best thing to do is eat somewhere else so this crap place closes down and the poor wait staff has a chance of finding better work.
Boooo. The best thing is to keep going there and not tipping.
My AU fantasy:
Should have stopped at :" we don't pay our staff"
The sign is asking for someone to graffiti it, indeed.
My bill is 165 dollars and you can't afford to pay your staff more than server minimum wage? Listen here, fuck nuts...
Also, while we are at it, I used to be a server when I was a teenager 20 years ago. Minimum expectation for a tip was 10%, 15% was standard and 20% was for particularly good service. Since fucking when has 25% become the minimum expectation or even a high end expectation? That is on top of already increased food costs from inflation. Even the low end of the presets you see on all of the card readers asking for tips is 18% most of the time. What gives?
Oh it's ridiculous. I long to return to 15%, but I won't budge a penny over 20%. I'll hold up the bar with a calculator if you make me, I've done it before.
seems like only the first two lines are true
Probably madw wirh chatgpt
I thought it looked a little off but couldn't put my finger on why. Saw your comment and ran the image through ZeroGPT.
It's fake
It is a white board with text. There is nothing to check if it is AI.
Your AI is lying to you.
No, it's 100% an AI image. I did a breakdown of a manual analysis of this image elsewhere in the comments, and there's really no question this is fake.
I dunno, it feels pretty deliberately rage-baity, what with demanding a 25% tip when 20% is considered fine anywhere (in the US). If there's one thing an LLM can do, it's ragebait. The use of stars for visual flare but lack of a restaurant logo of any kind is also pretty unnatural. Also it stumbles pretty clumsily between like 3 different points, when normally they'd just make the other points separate notes.
Yeah though the 25% feels slightly believable because of how some POS systems have their minimum displayed percentage over 20%
There is a lot to check, if you know what to look for. https://gijn.org/resource/guide-detecting-ai-generated-content/
Nah it has tells
Looks hand-painted, most likely from a yacht. /s
If your people work so 'damn hard', why aren't you paying them a living wage?
FTFY
feels like everything else should just be sprayed over with graffiti paint or sth
Well-played.
Why should the customer also be paying the $3.40?
Which should be a crime, by the way. Both the ridiculously low wage, as well as trying to pass it to the customer. Next thing you know, the cook's salary will be listed, too.
Oh don't worry, you are! In many states, the first chunk of tips goes to cover the employee contribution. Essentially the waiter makes either tips or hourly, which ever is higher, so until the tips are larger than the base pay, your tips are really just saving the employer money. Does this make sense? No. Is it common in states not called California and New York? Absolutely!
That's not quite how that works. The 2.13 is guaranteed. Employers are also required to bring that up to 7.25, if there aren't enough tips.
But, yeah, the first 5.10 in tips each hour really just goes to reducing the employers burden, not increasing the servers take-home.
Required to, but usually don't. Wage theft is the most common form of theft and that's before taking into account most of it goes unreported.
Oh absolutely, even if they don't do outright wage theft, they can often find a reason (or not in right-to-work states) to dismiss any employee that won't claim sufficient tips (whether customers left those tips or not).
if you can't afford to pay your staff properly, you can't afford to run a business here.
Came to say, looks like a certain business needs to rework their business model or go bust.
"If you can't afford to pay your fucking employees even the minimum wage, you don't deserve to run a business."
I prefer countries that don't tip and just pay their employees a reasonable wage. Also when did the tip jump from 15% customary to 25% to 35% minimum? Anyways they're right, vote with your dollars to not be a customer of establishments abusing the tip system to pay their employees slave wages. Maybe last note, as far as I'm aware if tips don't make up the difference the employer is legally inclined to pay their staff at least minimum wage in most places.
In New Zealand, we declare that tipping culture can go fuck off. We don't have it and don't want it here. I had an american friend come to visit and he thought we were stoopid for not tipping, and he tipped everyone anyway to show mercy to all us oppressed souls over here.
Feels like ragebait
Yeah, lot of people here are falling hard for this AI rage-slop. Besides the customer on the right having no legs (or the world's weirdest chair), there's no visible way this printout is attached to the window, the reflection in the top left cuts off at what presumably is the bar top and then the reflection below it is inexplicably of a perpendicular street, the lack of a ceiling where a ceiling is implied to be and all that similar stuff, the type justification doesn't actually line up. (begrudging credit to r/isthisAI)
It's a good fake but still pretty conclusively fake. And... honestly, it's worrying that people here are falling over themselves to comment as if this is real. Ya'll, we need to try and be a little bit less credulous with boomer memes, especially ones that perpetuate negative BS like this, otherwise we're basically no better than Facebook users.
::: spoiler If you would like yet more proof, this hanging light becomes a window frame.
:::
That specific image might not be real, but the attitude it portrays is very real and quite common in the restaurant industry.
::: spoiler Zach Weinersmith, as usual, says it far better than I can:
:::
This is an exhausting sentiment. Yes, there is a culture of tipping that desperately needs to be abolished. No, AI ragebait images are not a productive way to foster that discussion. This image is just an excuse to justify pre-existing biases, based on a completely fabricated example. It's no different from the fake "Bluehair Tumblr SJW Feminist destroyed with facts and logic, melts down!!1!" images/videos conservatives assume accurately represents all leftists. Yes, it's a real topic and real people share some of the sentiments expressed in the image. No, presenting the argument in such an exaggerated way does nothing to actually resolve the issue - it's just circle jerking about "how dumb" the opposition is, and stubborn refusal to accept that they were fooled.
"It's over kid, for I have already drawn you as the Soy Wojack" is not a way to bring about social revolution - it's just a way to let AI slop divide us further by making a ridiculously over the top caricature of our opponents into what we think they're really like.
No, not "conclusively", it could still be real. You're assuming the sign was printed directly on the substrate. As a former sign-maker, that might not be how this sign was made. It could be cut vinyl on a plastic face. The cutter might have been too small to cut the entire sign at once, and the sloppy way vinyl is transferred to the face could account for the non-convergence. Also, the drawn lines are not quite aligned to the image.
Not "conclusively".
Finally, there's no reason to invoke generational slurs or elitism in this comment. Remember, no war but the class war.
::: spoiler Ok boomer.
"How dare the youth not be overly polite to a generation that has burned down the world and stolen their future. My god, the lack of solidarity. #NotAllBoomers."
Sincerely, if that's what you consider a slur you might want to consider reducing your consumption of the internet. This is a shitpost community, and my use above is a reference to a real and incredibly important problem with older generations and the internet. Facebook is rife with misinformation, and their user demographics skew heavily towards older adults. I'm not about to treat this issue with large padded kidskin gloves just because it could possibly offend some sensibilities.
Dude, look - it's rough to be a decent person and be lumped in with a crowd of vile people just because of some demographic quirk. I'm an american on lemmy, believe me, I get it. But, much as the rhetoric against the US is largely based in very understandable reality, so are the complaints of the youth about the boomer generation.
The only way to avoid that association is to establish yourself as a decent person, and try to change things for the better. Preaching at me about my use of a term in a mildly negative way is not the way to do that. If you want advice, perhaps reference ageism instead of trying to present an incredibly common term as being a slur.
:::
Thermally laminated vinyl signs? I mean I suppose, but I see no indication of lifting or bubbling at the edges like you get from thermally laminating objects that are thick or with uneven thicknesses, and no signs of it on the fine inner details like the interiors of the text. It's also got far finer details than I've seen cut with a drag knife for a small sign, and there's enough variations in the text that I doubt it's been assembled from die-cut lettering sheets (not that I've ever seen a sign shop that used those). If we had a firm idea of the size this would be an easier argument to make, but even without that the cleanliness of the lamination alone makes this suspect. But perhaps they are a supremely talented laminator, one that enjoys leaving large strips around the edges like it was a laminated paper sign hung in a primary school building, and who puts vinyl cutouts on an unevenly cut plastic backing.
No, with all the additional AI-indicating details in the image, I'm sorry, I just don't see this being a credible explanation. This is absolutely, demonstrably an AI generated image.
^edit:^ ^formatting^ ^ate^ ^my^ ^spoiler^ ^text^
If fake it's very believable. The window reflection is pretty damn good for AI generation.
Yeah - The image gen models have gotten scarily good in the past 6 months, and as shown here it can take a great deal of work to confirm an image is AI.
With how long those lines are, they amplify the error made while drawing them by 5-6 times. So for example, the start of the top pink line is slightly too high, and that's why it passes so far below the true vanishing point
That is a great point! One moment and I'll break it down.
(Okay! a little bit of a comedy of errors trying to get these marked up, but here we go.)
You're absolutely correct that the top line isn't fully aligned - this is because it's impossible for it to be aligned, as the top edge is distorted. You can see in the image below that that distortion is another indication this was generated - there's a fairly pronounced distortion of the top edge, but the row of text just below it has no equivalent warping like you'd get if this were a piece of paper that was slightly bowed. This is why the top line is misaligned - it's impossible to line it up, and when that happens it's better to align from the center out, as radial distortion becomes more severe the further you get from the center. The original poster lined it up with the center to the right corner and continued it along the edge to the left until the edge "bends", rather than aligning the corners and ignoring all of the warping of the edge as I've done in green below. (I also want to point out that the image in the OP has cropped the sign specifically to remove this dead obvious giveaway that the image was AI generated)
And you're again absolutely correct that this amplifies the errors - in fact that's rather the whole point. In the interest of completeness I've extended the green line out to intersect with the lower paper edge line - you can see that even corrected, the intersection does not form a regular pattern with the rest of the lines.
^(edit:^ ^clarity)^
^(edit:^ ^even^ ^more^ ^clarity)^
let's be clear
the image is fake
the employers not paying their employees and asking for tips is real in USA
Im tired of seeing that comment every time something is exposed to be fake. "Yeah but it COULD be real!"
I didn't say "could be real"
I say it is real even though the picture may be fake
It is a shitpost. Nobody is claiming it isn't fake.
But it isn't AI generated either.
Wow, didn't know there was this type of stuff ...
I was just thinking that this sign is too off-putting to be real. No business would do that and if it were a real business why isn't there like a Google Maps thing and everyone review bombing like they typically do in instances like this.
For sure, that's the thing that made me suspect it's fake. But unfortunately, "guys nobody did this it's stupid" is an extremely tough argument to sell on the internet, even if (as in this case) you turn out to be absolutely correct.
While I'm strongly against ai rage bait bullshit, I'm also strongly frustrated at tip culture.
I worked in restaurants. It's ridiculous.
I agree - and I find it deeply worrying when social issues I consider very important are being exploited for this kind of sloppy ragebait.
Is this technique reliable? What if paper is slightly bend?
That will still show as a regular distortion of the alignment. If it's crumpled or heavily creased though, this isn't a useful technique.
I agree this is ai slop, but what's with the lines in the image? Never seen that before for judging if something is AI
With the latest models being much better for text, it's a fairly reliable technique - comparing the vanishing point at which each row or major horizontally justified element converges to see if everything is actually aligned (as they would be if a human created it in something like word) or all subtly askew (as gen AI creates it)
I don't know how reliable that is with lens distortion fucking up the vanishing point on real images.
It's unlikely you're using a collimating lens, so distortion is presumed! Not only is the impact of distortion fairly minimal, with radial distortion (by far the most common kind of distortion - usually synonymous with 'lens distortion') it's actually an important aspect; the angles will follow the regular pattern of the distortion and the technique will still work (If your photo has non-radial distortion, DM me; I want to know what on earth you were doing to cause that, it was probably a really entertaining story). As in the above image, the random scattering of the intersections is the indicator that the image was AI generated, not that the lines do not intersect at a single point.
Technically extra radial
http://cameramaker.se/Lightfield.htm
Or whatever you describe this as
https://gfx.cs.princeton.edu/pubs/Fuchs_2012_DAF/index.php
And then there's this crazy bullshit
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667325824001328
I'm not quite sure what you mean, I'm sorry! As far as I'm aware, extra-radial and non-radial are both generic terms for all the optical aberrations, prisms, distortions and what-have-yous that aren't radial distortion. Though, I'm not terribly familiar with light field optics (beyond what can be gleaned from osmosis while working with optics nerds) so that may well be a term that's relevant there and I just don't know it. Do say more tho, it sounds potentially quite interesting!
Browse All and look at the upvotes. The fediverse is full of the same dumb people as the rest of the internet lol
Adding the hourly wage into the math +2 Choosing $165 instead of $150 or $100 +1, underlined can't and not underlining can't +1 star emojis around thank you +2 choosein 25% intead of %15 or %18 +1 a period of every line even with conversational tone +1 There's a lot to go on there even if you don't follow the lines.
Should... Should we call you a bondulance?
You could, but i'd have to refuse it, costs too much ;)
Right well I'm mystified! You don't seem to be a chatbot from your post history, but I think I might just not be high enough to fully appreciate the deep, ancient wisdom in your words.
We're all meat chat-bots, we're just really slow at training.
The text: seems like AI to me, even forgetting the alignment issues
Adding the person's hourly wage into the sunk cost is questionable at best, 3:1 odds AI
Choosing $165 instead of an even number for a sample. Maybe the average check is $165, but i seriously doubt it, choosing $100 or $200 would be far more likely, even 150 i might have let it slide, 2:1 odds AI
They both did, and did not, underline "can't" in a single 2-line statement. While it would have been marginally ok gramatically, the whole vibe they were going for was not 'hinged' 2:1 odds AI
Adding star emojis around thank you is a telltale AI move. 3:1 odds AI, I'd have given it more but maybe they were emulating a receipt
Choosing 25% is an unlikely target for a 'lesson' on how to tip. 15,18,20 would all be more likely, ode to ragebait, 2:1 odds AI
The tone of the whole thing was very conversational and a bit unhinged. There was a period after every line; it was like they were making a list, but it wasn't. In that frame, I would have expected no punctuation, or a comma in a few spots, feels way off. 2:1 odds AI
It read AI to me without lining it up.
in addition
The perspective problem is also deeper than the lineup. It is laminated, but it feels like it's poster-sized, which would be unusual. The camera is focusing quite close if it's a letter, (reflection looks like it's 3 ft away, which would be 1.5' x 2 , yet the reflections and the shot through the window are quite clear. The reflections show a cell phone picture, but the f-stop would have had to be narrow AF (like F11) to take that shot with distance and close-up details clear.
Ahh, thank you! Yeah, I agree that there's plenty of indications that the text is AI. But people in general like to be certain before they believe something that contradicts their worldview, and this is an opportunity to showcase a fairly quick and fairly easy way to check for AI generated text. You've raised an excellent point about the f stop / focus too - I'm not quite such a good photographer as to be able to confidently identify issues like that, but it's for sure something I'll be paying attention to in the future. Thabk you!
Fake yes but they are plenty of people who actually do believe this. As in people who are in support of mandatory tipping. Specially during covid it was not hard to find doordash or Uber eats drivers putting up videos complaining about not getting a tip or not getting a big enough tip. He had some of them filming themselves harassing people.
Is ragebait
JFC... How about "if you can't afford to pay your employees you can't afford your business."
They're right, but they're wrong about why they're right.
Businesses have successfully managed to underpay staff then shame customers for not making up for it. What a rotten culture.
Yes, but also this image is fake.
Very common around here. Everyone is anti-AI but they will happily jump on an AI image if it suits their views.
I mean, sure but Texas, Utah, North Carolina, Wyoming, and South Carolina accept the federal minimum wage for tipped employees of $2.13. I would argue that's the point, fake image or not. The implication being, if YOU don't tip then their wage for their work is valued at $2.13 an hour.
That's not how the tipped minimum wage works - it's even more arcane and convoluted than that! If you don't tip, then their wage is the local minimum, it's only reduced to where $2.13 plus their tips exceed the local minimum (so if you tip $2, and the local minimum wage is $15, they would make $13 at minimum wage (all the places with a $15 minimum I know of have banned this bullshit)) and as you pointed out, in 45/50 states that's been to some small or large extent rejected. If that sounds like it would make accounting really hard, you win uh... well we're out of candy so your prize is depression. Congrats!
It's a ridiculous system that should be abolished - but nearly all the criticism in these comments is treating it as though the exaggerated entitled behavior in the image is real - when nobody has actually behaved that way. If you think it's simply a meme that's fine, but it's presented as being an image from a real event, and that's what people need to be aware of.
And beside all that - why are we comfortable accepting AI content when it reinforces our positions, but reject it otherwise?
Yeah, go ahead and tell your boss to actually adjust your hours because a table stiffed and watch your hours magically get cut. The math is easy, take your $2.13 and don't complain or you'll get the back tables by the kitchen and then only get scheduled for 20 hours next week.
Mmmhm. So when you file your taxes, this is checked for. It's fairly easy to confirm compliance from the taxes info your boss files + the tips you're 100% extremely dutifully reporting, especially if you do something like automatic withholding (as I understand it a colossal pain for a tipped position unless you're in one of the many states that has passed rules to make the process less absurd). This is why it's important to report things like tips, because it's the #1 way bosses like that are caught.
Of course the economic reality discourages people from actually doing that, and thus we carve out yet more niche to stack exploitation in.
This has to be fake... "we don't pay our staff..."
"our people work damn hard ... for only $2.13/h"
"show some respect ... to the workers we only pay $2.13/h"
I shouldn’t have to pay your staff with tips but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Armetitis.... I'm afraid it's terminal.
Really? I've heard it's relatively armless.
It works in my terminal. It’s this fucking markdown.
\︵¯\(ツ)/¯︵\
I thought the normal tip for satisfactory service was 15%.
Dont do well, ignore me, make faces if i ask for more water.... then lucky to get anything.
20% and over was for really good service of something they did for you above and beyond.
When did 25 and 30% become normal
I think it was around the pandemic, or shortly after, when everyone started asking for tips. Either way I think it's bs and use the original scale
Huh. The recommendation around here is 10%, if you're really satisfied. Europe.
This offsets costs for the business and makes the customer compensate for lower wages. The whole point here is to make you pay for it not corporates and corporations. That's why taxes should be higher like 99%. Except they own politicians.
That can’t be real.
Have you visited the United States…?
It is our daily hell.
In all seriousness I doubt that any business would post this and invite the backlash. People do stupid stuff all the time though, but I still doubt on this one.
No they're right, this image is AI.
Not since 2015 and probably never again if I have a say in it.
If your customers can't afford to tip, you should consider paying your staff.
They could have saved money on ink by stopping the printing after the 2nd line.
Leaving their point aside for a moment, their math is nonsensical, as they included the waiter's salary in the total.
Lol I didn't even notice that. This has to be fake, right?
Maybe you should just start paying your wait staff a proper wage, where proper means a liveable income. That way your waiters can turn around and eat at your diner too, increasing your profit.
There are no waiters. The food is slop. The only wages paid are to shareholders and the one lone tech at the data center, carefully replacing endless worn out drives. Each one costs more than he makes in a month. The raid controller accepts the handshake, and the drive begins to fill - somewhere, a user pays $0.03 and generates an image of Jimi Hendrix with enormous, guitar-shaped breasts. Another one generates the above image. The tech goes on break, scrolling memes on his phone as he cracks open a Cafe Chai Soylent™. He upvotes this - tipping is ridiculous. Those owners are clearly out of touch.
(Er. Anyways. The image is AI.)
I’d imagine this is fake, even here in America. No company name or anything.
Too lazy right now to search
It's highly unlikely any restaurant would be stupid enough to put up something like that, but the attitude behind it is near ubiquitous in the US.
Get the fuck outta here with that 25%. You get 20% for good service, and if you're lucky I'll round up to the nearest dollar if I'm paying cash.
15% for normal work; 20% for FANTASTIC service. 25% better come with free dessert and a car wash.
I start at 15%, and for everything notably good I go up 1%, and for every bad thing I go down 1%. I've been as high as like 27%, and as low as zero.
This way I'm always happy - I either get good service or I save money.
have tipped 30% before, when a server basically saved a friend's bday by accommodating a large, loud group of just-off-deployment-soldiers at a busy place.
This just feels like the same thing as the idea of advertising the product in the shop without the tax added on, and then going to the till and the price being different. What's the point in the other price when that isn't the number i'm going to be paying.
Just make the food cost the second price in the first place and pay your workers. Scumbags.
In my region, all prices are without tax-in. We just learned to do percentages in our head really fast.
Is something like this acceptable in the U.S. in any way? What kind of absurd attitude toward customers is that? What kind of restaurant owner would even think of something like that?
My reaction to a sign like that would be to never ever "dine" there ... not in a million years...
A fake restaurant owner. One that will only serve you AI coffee seasoned with pumpkin spice lies.
Yes, I agree.
Nevertheless, the statement still holds true: In the U.S., it’s common for service staff to rely on tips to make ends meet. This isn’t just exploitative—since dining out in the U.S. is already very expensive—but it also turns the whole idea behind tipping on its head: Instead of rewarding particularly competent service staff for their performance, they are penalized if their service isn’t outstanding—and even when the service is outstanding, but the customer doesn’t have enough money to acknowledge it with a tip.
This practice reflects the ideology of this country, which results in countless people in the richest country in the world living as if in a Third World country—without mandated health insurance, with virtually no labor protections, and with completely absurd excesses like private prisons.
Therefore: Yes, it is most likely AI, but the post nonetheless draws attention to a social injustice that many U.S. citizens probably do not even recognize as such, since they are so accustomed to it.
The image itself is rage-bait; the excessively entitled behavior in the above example is fabricated, as are the many similar versions of this meme. While there absolutely does need to be reform around tipped wages, starting that conversation on a lie is not a productive way to have that conversation. People are treating this as an actual example of behavior in the country and their response is then proportional to the percieved actions of these fictitious restaurant owners and the very misleading hallucinated figures in the image, and again, it's all in response to a fake image.
If you want good news about this, 44/50 states have passed some level of extra restriction on tipped minimum wage positions - ranging from a simple increase of the minimum wage or state auditing to prevent tip theft, to an outright banning of the practice of adjusted wages for tipped employees. There is absolutely still work to be done, but this is not an issue that is ignored nor is it one that even conservatives see as unimportant - the Trumplings championed how specific language exempting tips from federal taxes was included in their Big Beautiful Bill, as a way to sell it to their base.
And, aside from all that, do you not see the irony in relying on an AI generated image to spread the idea that exploitation of workers is bad? It is not a particularly great way to demonstrate our conviction to the cause if we show up to the rally driving the orphan crushing machine.
Well, it’s certainly true that it should be pointed out that this is not a real image, but rather an exaggeration that also contains information that is unfounded—or even worse: false.
To me, however, it seems more like a caricature, a political satire, if you will: Here, too, exaggeration is used to express criticism and elicit an emotional response.
Nevertheless, you’re right, of course: It must be obvious that this is satire. Since this image isn’t a drawing that makes that fact clear, it’s right and important that you point it out—thank you very much for that!
And yes, you’re right on this point as well: Using image generation to criticize exploitation is indeed hypocritical.
We're the best country in the world... at refusing to value people's work.
Yeah, sure, but blaming customers for the boundless greed of this store’s owners in such an arrogant way is truly insane.
Well, maybe it’s just another effect of the MAGA regime: The monsters are dropping all their restraint because the worst of them always get away with it.
I can't say I've seen a sign like this, but I have seen people lose their shit over not being tipped as much as they think they should have
THEYRE SO FUCKING CLOSE
$2.13 an hour??? And the president has the gall to call other places "shit hole countries". I always had an idea it was bad in the US, but this is basically slavery with extra steps. JFC
Yeah, jobs that are traditionally tipped here have that as a base rate of pay, with the expectation that tips will make up for the rest. It's a terrible system.
Take my business elsewhere, you say? Gotcha. And for the record, I tip very well.
If this isn't fake, the proprietor is clearly completely tone deaf to the demands of the hospitality industry.
You can easy check from this that the salary should be $44.65 an hour without all of the bullshit.
Baiting in the afternoon...
TWENTY FIVE PERCENT TIP?
That's gotta come with handjobs for everyone at the table, even grandma.