To you irgnorant people out there who have never been servers. I understand if we don’t give you great service and you leave a cheap tip. BUT we still have to tip( PAY) out the kitchen. This means you assholes who leave no tip- I effectively pay for you be an asshole to me. This bitch is for the balding prick who came in for his Mom’s birthday. Raved about my service and left me no tip on a $150 bill. FUCK YOU. I don’t feel like paying for you to eat dinner. Your mom would be ashamed- she’s a regular.
—Not part of you party.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2009.
Can we get a tag for Another Whiny Server Bitch?
This is getting more annoying than the break up bitches. Really, let’s face it people. Servers only claim about 1/4 of their actual tips to Revenue Canada. The rest goes in their pocket. Tax Free. So they claim their minimum wage plus around 25% (maybe) of their tips. The rest is clear cash. If you get stiffed the odd time by a cheap prick call it the cost of doing business. There are other times where people tip you way more than they should, or that you deserve. Suck it up or find another profession!
You took the job. So what does tipping out do, take away your actual wage off your cheque or just the FREE MONEY people give you? You’re not paying for them to eat dinner you selfish douchecanoe, they do when they pay their bill.
Get fucking bent.
I think the OP chose a profession that supports gratuity. Wouldn’t all of you be pissed if you made a career decision based on fact and then, once you’re working the job, find out those facts were lies? Like I said in another thread, there’s a whole plethora of mcFastFood chains to eat at if you don’t like to tip for service and you should be prepared to get what you pay for.
As the the OB, sorry… if you worked the whole shift without a single tip… well, that just doesn’t happen, does it? The kitchen staff did their part and their tips are a tiny tiny part of your tip-out so, if I were you, I’d be happy to cut into other tips to ensure they continue to work hard for you behind the scenes. If the customer send the food back your tips will suffer and then who are you going to bitch to over lost tips?
October must be tip your server month or something. Seriously, we had a few months without them, now they’re back with a vengeance.
Why blame the customer for the shitty business practice of your boss. Tipping out is NOT my problem. It’s an employer-employee relation problem. I just want to eat my meal, not get involved in the politics of the service industry. Based on the bitches here, there must be enough angry servers to organize themselves and actually DO something about it.
*muttering*…blaming the customer….sheesh.
I have an easy fix for you…GET A NEW JOB. Stop whining.
These bitches are bullshit
I still don’t get this… you have to pay the cooks if you don’t get tipped? out of your own money? Don’t you just split whatever tips you make at the end of the night?
Its not the shitty business practice of one boss – its industry standard. Servers tip the kitchen a percentage of their total sales – its usually between 2 and 5 percent, which generally works out to be around 20 – 30 percent of your total tips. Not a huge deal, and worth it for the work they do. I would assume its based on sales and not total tips, so that the kitchen is not affected if you have a crappy night/are a bad server – their take is still consistent.
It is annoying to get stiffed, yes, its most likely someone else tipped me a lot, and it evens out – but particularly with a large party, who most likely ate up a good chunk of the night…its frustrating. Especially when they were happy with the service, and you know its not something you did wrong. At the same time, if you’re good at your job, it happens rarely, and usually kitchen/manager will feel bad for you and make you a plate or buy you a drink. So…no big.
I know there are a lot of shitty, entitled servers out there who make y’all hate the rest of us, and the whole tipping thing in general – but it really is a good system, and we do need it to make our jobs worthwhile. Yes, we make minimum wage, technically. But there are very few serving jobs where you can actually get full time hours, and even then, your hours are not guaranteed – if there’s no one in the restaurant, there’s no need for you to be there, and you’re going home – even if you’re scheduled until a certain time. I can expect 30 hours of work in a week, and get 20, or even 15. When your wage is minimum, this just doesn’t cut it. Get a new job, I know…but when you factor in tips, and the flexibility, and the fun, and the fact that someone has to do the job…
Look at it this way – sure, we could do away with tipping, and employers could pay their servers a decent wage. But you, the customer, are still going to pay for it – they’ll just put the prices up. And you’ll pay the same whether you have a good server or a shitty one. Isn’t it better to say that the menu price covers the meal, and basic service – ordering, bringing you food – and that the tips you leave cover all the other things we want and expect a server to do for us? At the end of the day, that extra 15% (although since tax went down, its usually 13%, but whatever) is really not that much more considering what you’ve paid for the meal, but it makes a huge difference to someone who is probably working 2 or 3 jobs trying to get to a place where they can get a better job.
So if the industry standard sucks, and servers are part of that industry, do something about it. Lobby the gov’t, get organized, make a change. It’s still stupid to blame the customer when it’s the boss that’s the problem. With so many people working in the service industry in this province there should be enough of you to make a real change if you kick up enough stink. The business owner have no trouble influencing minimum wage law because they are organized. They count on the high turn over of their employees to keep them from doing anything about their shitty situation. But now, more and more people are becoming career servers with no benefits and shit wages. It’s time for a change in the industry.
Serving food is not a job. People should not be tipped!
I have to add to my previous comment. Whiny bitches like this one piss me off. Did you choose your job…or did someone put a gun to your head and MAKE you do it? I can say with about 99.9% confidence that you chose your job, therefore, you have an option to change it. If someone did, in fact, (and how unlikely it is) put a gun to your head and demand you perform this job, I can see your frustration…..but they didn’t, so moving on. If you’re not happy with what you’re doing because you’re not getting tipped enough (to your standards) then go get an education and find a better job where you don’t have to rely on minimum wage plus tips to live. Simple.
I’ve only ever felt bad about tipping once… and that was because it was an amazing time and I tipped the 13% (tax total) because I was in a rush and wasn’t thinking clearly.
Other than that, no regrets… and yes you get what you pay for.
it takes quite a bad server to get no tip from me… but it’s not unheard of.
There are some fantastically horrible people out there.
Remember when servers were called waiters?
Tipping is not mandatory. Period. Most do. Some don’t. It all averages out at the end of the shift. Tipping out is based on percentage of tips, not percentage of sales.
Some businesses require tips be pooled and shared, including a percentage to be split in the kitchen and/or among the bartenders. In others, the server earns tips for themselves and must ‘tip out’ the bartender and kitchen accordingly at the end of the shift, usually 15%, but there are bartenders who expect 20% plus.
All customers tip differently and usually the great tippers make up for those less enthused about it…so it really does average out. In a perfect world everyone would be a great tipper.
Zzz.” and yes you get what you pay for.”-So if you get poor service and leave the related tip, the next time you enter you’ll get poor service because,- last time you left a poor tip. So really it’s, leave a good tip and you’ll get some kind of service.
“This means you assholes who leave no tip- I effectively pay for you be an asshole to me. “
I just don’t understand this math. I thought the servers paid a percentage of their tips to the kitchen staff. 30% of zero is still zero. How is it exactly that someone who doesn’t leave a tip ends up costly a server money. I genuinely want to know. (I always tip, but I would like to understand the logic.)
@greenish-bluish: Because at most restaurants the waiters tip out to the support staff a percentage of their total sales for the night, not a percentage of their tips for the night.
balls, I don’t frequent places often enough to be a ‘remembered customer’.
I have that advantage as I like to go to different places all the time in search of new, quality food. I also like to cook so I don’t eat out all that regularly either.
I used to go to a certain plumb all the time but since the lack of nuts provided, have really started to open my eyes to the alternative food providers available.
I don’t think I’ve been to the same restaurant thrice or more since …
except for my breakfast place… which doesn’t really count because breakfast isn’t that hard in comparison.
lol @ “lack of nuts provided”
trying to be explicit and vague at the same time is rather difficult.
🙂
looking forward to going to “the perl” place in D-town next week if I can arrange it….
heard they have good eats.
Miles – I did not mean to imply that the industry standard sucked. The opposite, in fact. I like the industry I work in, and how it works, most of the time. I think tipping is the best solution to the problem of how to make serving a good job. I think its the best way to ensure that customers get excellent service. Higher wage for servers = higher food price for customers, and does not necessarily = better service. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that equation.
expatriot – how, exactly, do you propose restaurants should work without the job of server?
oceanlady – in my experience, very, very few places (as in, nowhere I have worked in the 10 + establishments over the last 7 years, in North America or Europe) tip out based on percentage of total tips. Even places where tips are pooled, the kitchen takes a set percentage of sales. Bartenders, bussers, host/ess etc, can be tipped out of total tips, but not kitchen. In my experience. And yes, it usually averages out at the end of the shift. The only situation where its particularly frustrating is if they were a particularly large and/or demanding table which took more of your time, keeping you from other tables. I’ve found this more since I moved into more fine dining – less people stiff you, but when they do, it sucks more, as you have far less tables to make up the average.
At the end of the day, serving is a good job. Occasionally you have a customer who makes you want to throw sharp objects around. Mostly you don’t. Most people who go out to eat are there to enjoy themselves, and that’s a great atmosphere to be in. My take on these bitches is….If you’re not having fun, you’re probably not doing it right. Get better at your job, and shut the fuck up.
itsnotme : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conveyor_belt…
no waiting staff. very easy and efficient. in fact, I think it’s an awesome idea for any restaurant.
Fair point. I would like to go to there.
Although, for all the “can I have my sauce on the side with half the cream you would normally use, no mushrooms but extra tomato, 3 egg omelet made with one yolk and 3 whites, caesar with extra worchestershire but no tabasco, make sure nothing on my plate is touching, i’m allergic to garlic but i want to eat italian food, what’s the cheapest wine that would be good with my food” etc etc etc….
….I think my job is still safe. 😉
They pay a % of their tip out to the kitchen, not a % of their orders. This tool is just trying to attention whore because somebody did not pay him above and beyond the bill.
So in reality, if you don’t get a tip, the kitchen does not get a tip of that meal. I know because when I was younger I used to work as a server.
I was unfortuantly a server for a brief period during university. I tipped out based on percentage of sales whether I got tipped or not. So OP is not a tool. Also, while tips do average out, a large group which dominates your time is frustrating when you give good service and get no tip. This is a bitch site after all, would you rather OP take it out on your food? Have some fucking decency people… I hear ya OP, these people all seem a little bitter… So fuck em…
If your service sucked I wouldn’t tip you either.
FICTION: All restaurants do their tip-out the same.
FACT: Restaurants have various methods of tip-outs.
I was a cook/chef for nearly 10 years here in Halifax and worked in 17 different bars/cafes/restaurants (for you nit-pickers, I almost always worked 2 jobs at a time, I like money, what can I say).
One place I worked at, the servers put 1.5% of their sales into the tip-out. Since the average tip is 15%, tipping out 1.5% meant that the kitchen staff was getting roughly 10% of the tips. The tips were then divided up on a bi-weekly basis and whatever percentage you worked of the total hours was the percentage of the tips you got. Example: 5 cooks worked 40 hours each, for 2 weeks. That’s 400 hours. Each cook worked 80 hours during those 2 weeks, getting 20% of the tips.
Another place had the servers tip out 3% of their sales, which meant they were putting roughly 20% of their tips into the tip out. The cooks then got an hourly tip out rate (depending on how long you’d been there) and the remainder of the money went into a staff party fund which the owners would match.
A third way was that the servers didn’t tip out at all and the owner would pay out 5% of sales to the tip fund for the kitchen. Each cook working that shift would get a portion of the tip out.
The point I’m making is that there are many different ways to do tip-outs. When I started in the industry way back when, there were no tips for the kitchen staff and I was cool with that. There’s a reason that cooks get paid more than servers. Cooking (generally) requires more skill and is more labour intensive.
Fact: LTWWB has actually changed Cranky’s tipping habits, he’s actually much more discriminating with how well he tips waitstaff, no longer offering an automatic 15-20%.
Fiction: he hopes to one day have service bad enough to result in a ‘bad’ tip and get himself referenced in LTWWB
If someone pays cash and tips, and you pocket it how would the boss/cooks etc know how much they should be getting? You whine about the shitty tipper, but I bet you’ve shorted the kitchen staff in the past if you had a bad tip night, which I suspect happens alot. Grow up, and accept the fact that some people are cheap.
As a side note I make a point of never tipping less than 20-25%, just the way my parents brought my up I guess.