Most of you know my husband is a server at Outback Steakhouse. Listening to him after coming home from his shift every night has inspired me to share this little post about tipping. I happen to think that the restaurant tipping system in our country is the stupidest idea in the world and that servers should just get paid like normal employees instead of their customers deciding how much they get paid each night. But no one asked me. So I've taken it upon myself to share with the world some things that apparently not everyone knows:
1) Restaurants do not have to pay servers the standard minimum wage. Minimum wage for servers in Utah is $2.13/hr. Which pretty much covers taxes and maybe the gas to get to work and back. Their entire income is basically tips. So when you stiff your server or leave a bad tip your server doesn't get paid.
2) Almost all servers have to split tips with someone. Sometimes 5% goes to the bartender, sometimes another 5% to the hostess and/or busboy, and when I worked at Tucanos, both of those applied plus 45% went to the meat server. So for any given table, I only received 45% of the tip left. I'm not exactly sure how it works at Outback, but the portion of Tanners tips that go to the bartender/hostess/busboy is calculated as a percentage of total sales and not total tips. Meaning that servers can actual lose money on a table that orders a lot of food, spending a lot of money and then giving them a tiny tip. Consider this when you tip thinking what your leaving is sufficient to cover the services given to you by your waiter--he doesn't get to pocket all of it.
3) USING A COUPON DOESN'T MEAN THAT YOU TIP BASED ONLY ON THE AMOUNT YOU HAD TO PAY!! You should tip based on the amount your food would have cost you without the coupons. I can't even express how annoying and cheap this is. Example: you and your date go out to Tucanos on your birthday and get their buy one meal get one free coupon bringing your tab to about $20 instead of $40. That doesn't mean you calculate your tip as a percentage of $20--you calculate is as a percentage of $40. With or without the coupon, your server did the exact same amount of work. If anything, you should be more generous with your tip because you got a free meal.
4) If you can't afford to tip there, don't eat there. I can 100% sympathize with someone who can't afford to eat out at restaurants a lot, but you shouldn't splurge on a dinner that is stretching the budget and then leave a terrible tip because you can't afford it. Opt for a less expensive restaurant or somewhere that you don't have a waiter.
5) A big factor in how much money a server will walk home with at the end of the night is how many tables they get. Each server is assigned a section of the restaurant (usually just a few tables) and every time one of their groups leaves, they get a new group. That means that if you park it at your table for hours, chatting it up and never ever leaving, your server is missing out on tips from the groups that would be getting sat at your table but aren't. I'm all about catching up with old friends over dinner, but keep it reasonable and be considerate of your server. Leave and go get drinks or dessert somewhere that you can chat, or go on a not-busy night and specifically ask the hostess to seat you outside of a servers normal area so that they can continue to seat new customers there. Or just hand over a very very generous tip at the end of the night to make up for hogging the space.
5) When you leave a terrible tip, (or you are on an awkward date, or you make out with your date through half of the evening, or you have annoying kids, or are just awkward/weird/rude/cheap in general) your server will probably go back to the kitchen and make fun of you so that all of the other servers can have a laugh at your expense. Just so you know.
6) If you're in high school or college and you go to restaurants in large groups (denny's anyone? IHOP?), hardly order anything (or nothing at all) and just hang out there for hours, making lots of noise and mess and leaving little or not tip at all--you are definitely getting cussed out in the back. Not saying I never did it, just saying you are oh-so-hated.
7) Generally, parties of about 6 or more will get an automatic gratuity put on their bill of 18%--1st of all, that's because 18% is a normal tip (10 or 15% is NOT a good tip. sorry) 2nd of all it its totally not ok to cross out the auto-gratuity on your receipt and leave a smaller tip. so. not. ok. It's there for a reason which is so that servers don't spend their entire evening helping a large group and then get stiffed.
If you're still reading I'm impressed. Sorry if I've bored you all out of your minds and made you think I'm a cynical angry person. One more and then I'll stop I promise. You people know (right?) that we mormons are famous for how cheap we are. No, you're not being "frugal" or "thrifty", as far as tipping goes, those are just euphemisms for cheap. Especially when you only had water to drink and the smallest steak they sell. For heavens sake, fork up that 18-25%
Oh my, I had no idea that 18-25% was an appropriate tip. Sad. I apologize.
ReplyDelete