Tips:To give or not to give?

江西 吳凡勇

咖啡師申克爾靠小費謀生，但小費本不應該是他的主要工資。近年來，小費__制度的弊端日益顯現，讓我們一起看看吧。

主題語境：社會熱點 篇幅：331詞 建議用時：7分鐘

1 “Nothing beats a good coffee shot,”Schenker says.As a barista since 2010, he takes his craft seriously.He even brings some of his own tools to work,like a special portafilter, which lets him see the coffee while making coffee, so he can make sure it has the right color and consistency.

2 When Schenker started out in 2010, tipping was in cash, and it wasn't much: He took home roughly $10 a day.But tipping gradually became a bigger and bigger part of Schenker's pay,and today he depends on those tips to make a livable wage.“I've never made more than $25,000 a year,”says Schenker.“I cannot even wrap my head around the idea of making $30,000 or $40,000 a year.I could do so with just that much money.”

3 Sylvia Allegretto, a senior economist, feels Schenker's frustration.“I became an economist because I was a low-wage waitress for a long, long time,”she says.Allegretto points out that a lot of tipped workers across the US earn a subminimum wage with the idea that tips will get them up to the minimum wage, but that doesn't always happen.Poverty rates for tipped workers are more than double the rates for other workers.

4 Allegretto says part of the problem is that tipping is presented as a“Thank you!”for great service when in reality it's something else entirely.“Tips are a wage addition to the employer,”she says.“It's not a tip.It goes to your wage.It is just the amount that the employer doesn't have to pay you.And people don't understand that.”

5 Nowadays, there's a lot of pressure to keep prices low for increasingly price-conscious customers.Tipping is a way to get more money from customers without charging them more money that is meant to go to paying workers.And providing customers with a tipping option, when they didn't have one before, can be a way to attract hard-to-find workers without offering higher wages.

Reading Check

Inference1.Which of the following best describes Schenker?

A.Ambitious.B.Responsible.

C.Talkative.D.Skillful.

Detail2.What is a challenge facing Schenker?

A.Unemployment.B.Health issues.

C.Family problems.D.Finance.

Inference3.What does Allegretto intend to express in paragraph 3?

A.Most tipped workers get higher pay than other workers.

B.Her interest in economy led her to the present career.

C.Tipped workers deserve to earn more than they do.

D.Tipping is a way to show customers'thanks.

Detail4.How does the author find tipping?

A.Necessary.B.Troublesome.

C.Customer-centered.D.Money-oriented.

Language Study

Ⅰ.Difficult sentence in the text

Allegretto points out that a lot of tipped workers across the US earn a subminimum wage with the idea that tips will get them up to the minimum wage, but that doesn't always happen.阿萊格雷托指出，美國許多小費工作者的工資低于最低工資標準，這些工人認為賺取小費可以幫助他們達到最低工資標準，但實際情況并非總是這樣。

【點石成金】本句是一個由but 連接的并列句。第一個分句中的points out 后面接了一個賓語從句，該賓語從句還包括一個由that引導的同位語從句。

Ⅱ.Text-centered chunks

take...seriously 認真對待……

make sure 確保

depend on 依靠

point out 指出

in reality 實際上