Working on Salary
RelaxandRejuvenate said:
One of the worst I have seen is $10/hr, + 15% commission (the menu has 12 different treatment prices), plus 15 of the 18% Service Charge. But, you are hourly, so you can be sent home half way through the day if it is slow!
The problem with %, is that it is not simple -- you have to keep track of the actual price paid. Look at your typical Spa's menu - there are four or five price points for an hour service. Make massage part of a pamper package, and who takes the hit on the discount? Do you work less hard since you are getting paid less?
Plus, you also create a weird situation in which the client signs up for Swedish, but keeps asking you to go deeper. Do you stop and tell them that is extra? Do you do as they ask, not charge them and feel you are missing out on your %? Do you do as they ask, and charge them and to get your %?
I am all for flat hourly pricing and flat hourly pay.
I would love to pay people a salary - $450/week plus tips, 75% of health insurance, paid vacation, etc. (the equivalent of $35K per year, plus tips as an IC) but every therapist we have discussed this with thinks they will be getting screwed if it is a busy week.
in many high end spas, and hourly wage plus commission on the service plus tip is normal. i've never heard of a spa taking a portion of the 18% fee, which is assumably the gratuity. how can a spa take part of a gratutity that reflects the ability and skill of the service provider? that's just stupid, and greedy, i say.
tracking a perceneforum.xxxe is not rocket science. at the resort spa, i had a menu that offered at least 10 different price points. keeping track was as simple as having a rate sheet that i wrote my perceneforum.xxxe for each service. after months and months of working with this scale, i memorized most of them.
and when the spa packaged services, THEY took the hit, not the therapist. we don't give less, just because management decided to offer a discount.
booking the cheapest service (generally swedish)and then saying, "you can go as deep as you want." when there is a rate change from swedish to deep is the biggest sarcastic joke amongst any MT who works in a large spa.the appropriate response is " i'd be happy to upgrade you to a deep tissue massage, which includes the pressure/techniques you're looking for. the price increase is $xx.xx. would you like to upgrade?"
if they decline, they get what they paid for.
flat hourly pricing and pay reflect a stance of someone who has never performed a massage.
some mt's say there is no difference in the effort needed to provide swedish vs. deep. i call bullcrap.not one person out there can convince me that it is the same to provide a deep on a female, 5'0" 100# soaking wet vs. a professional football player who is 6'4" 350# whose ankles are as big as my neck.
oh, please.
i wouldn't work for that salary scale either if i knew on a busy week i wouldn't be getting more pay for more hand-on work.