I am so tired of hearing about how servers don't get enough in tips.
Here is a description of your job: You write down what I want, and then someone else prepares it. You pick up what I asked for (that someone else prepared) and bring it to my table. If I ask you for something like more sugar or ketchup, you bring it to me. You keep refilling my glass. That’s it. It isn’t skilled labor. That is why they call it the ‘service industry’.
You complain about how hard your job is? Try working a summer in building construction, laying roofing tile. Think your pay as a server is low? Get a job running a cash register at Wal Mart.
Look, let’s say that you work at a restaurant that assigns you four tables, and each table spends about an hour eating. Let’s also say that the average check for each table is $60, and let’s also say that your employer only pays you $3 an hour, and the rest of your pay comes from the ‘cheapskates’ that you are serving. Even if half the tables stiff you and the other half only tip 10%, you are still making $15 an hour. Where I live, that is double the minimum wage, and there are many, many people who make less than that. In this scenario, if one in four tables stiff you, and the others tip the 20% you constantly whine for, you are now making $39 an hour.
Sorry, what you are doing isn’t worth $78,000 a year. So my new tipping policy: I tip 15% for GOOD service, and less for crappy service. My tips are capped at $10 for each hour I am there. That is more than enough, and if you work a second table during that hour, means you are making more than I am. For carrying stuff. Be happy you have a job.
My sister is a high school dropout. She went back and got her GED, but the highest paid job she can get is waiting tables at TGI Friday's. She comes home from an 8 hour shift with $80-100. That is in addition to the $4.77 an hour she gets from her employer. Of course she complains that her check is frequently $0, after taxes are taken out, and that she must rely on tips for her entire income. Welcome to the real world. We all pay taxes, and your pretax income is $15-17 an hour- pretty good money for unskilled labor.
Every notice how no wait staff has ever admitted to screwing up an order? To totally ruining a person's night by making a simple task of getting a meal unbearable?
ReplyDeleteOr to being rude?
Or to flat out not doing anything but the bare minimum and sometimes badly at that?
I did the restaurant business as a teenager. I realized then it would take being an owner or manager to make decent money. That is why I quit that business and got a job elsewhere.
I have no pity on those who choose to stay in an entry level job.