Every six months or so, I try to take the family cars to get detailed at my local car wash. You know, try to keep them in good shape and all. Well, yesterday I took the Explorer over to my local car wash here in Irvine, to find that, to my dismay, the price had increased by $15! The manager was nice enough to give me a ride back to my house after I brought over the car, and we had an interesting conversation.
I asked her about why the price was increased for the detailing, and she told me that they raised the price because of the hike in the minimum wage — the car wash is just passing that cost along to us. But she said that it really hasn’t worked well because the number of people getting their cars detailed (at least at their carwash) has dropped — because people are unhappy with the higher prices. So because of that, she is having to cut back on the hours of the employees who detail the cars. Go figure.
But wait, there’s more. I asked her how the wage increase is effecting the rest of the car-wash operations. She said that in response to the wage increase, and a recent increase in cost for their workers’ comp insurance, they also hiked up the car wash prices by a dollar. She said that this has led to a lot of their costumers reducing the gratuities that they gave to the staff (who work at minimum wage). She said that the employees actually are taking home less money than before the raise.
Of course, I was the bearer of ill tidings for this woman, when I asked her if the owner of the car wash provides health care insurance for their workers. She said that they do not, because they cannot afford to. She said that to provide health insurance, they would have to raise the price of the car washes significantly, and they are all ready on the edge. She said that just the dollar increase this year has really impacted their business. I asked if these folks are going to other car washes — and she said that the higher prices are just leading to more and more people choosing to wash their own cards.
Needless to say, when I told her that under the Governor’s proposed healthcare plan, their carwash would have to come incur the cost of a 4% payroll tax, she rolled her eyes. This four-year veteran of the car wash manager’s chair told me that such a rule would be devastating to their business.
Go figure.
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.