[legacyb4]

Don't pay waiters or waitresses? Is that even legal? I would hope at least they would tell you before you enter the restaurant that they don't pay their staff and it's incumbent on you to pay their wages instead...

Then again, I would hope the price of food is reduced accordingly to account for the difference...

I have no problems with a subtle and gentle reminder to leave a tip. A growing number of restaurants don't pay waitresses or waiters anymore, meaning these people very often work solely for tips. At the same time, customers (and all this is not a reflection on anyone here, but just in general) usually don't leave enough in tips to even compensate the waitress or waiter for the time spent to bring the food to the table, much less anything extra.

[Arpe]

Now this isn't a dig at Americans or anything, but tipping seems so crazy to me. Basically tipping is non-existant here (except from tourists) and long may it last. People instead get paid for working by their employers (radical I know). Working for zero pay is illegal.

And surely the govt misses out on heaps of tax through undeclared tips? (Not the main reason reason I delike the system, but just a thought)

[baltochef920]

I have no problems with a subtle and gentle reminder to leave a tip. A growing number of restaurants don't pay waitresses or waiters anymore, meaning these people very often work solely for tips. At the same time, customers (and all this is not a reflection on anyone here, but just in general) usually don't leave enough in tips to even compensate the waitress or waiter for the time spent to bring the food to the table, much less anything extra.

But, of course, those customers often very much expect that something extra - the waitress or waiter to earn that tip, which often means smiling in subservient manner while waiting on the customer hand and foot. And if the waiter or waitress fails to meet those demands, usually no tip (no compensation for the waitress or waiter's time) is forthcoming.

In my opinion, if one wants to avoid leaving a tip, then one should go to a fast food joint or buffet to serve oneself. But, in a restaurant where a waitress or waiter serves, that waitress or waiter nearly always deserves a respectable (good for moderate service, generous for extras) tip, even if for no reason other than they are a human being which has spent time to serve another.

stewart

I have been a chef for a goodly number of years..I understand both sides of this argument, but.........

I often differ quite vehemently with Stewart on most issues, but he has spotlighted in this post what I consider to be many of the pitfalls of the American restaurant system as regards to how serving staff is treated..Both by management, the public, and government..I am going to address all of the points that Stewart raised, as well as some that he did not..

In Maryland, where I live, serving staff are paid the princely sum of $3.08 per hour..This is mandated by law..They get this amount paid to them by their employer, plus whatever they can earn in tips..The law actually reads that all tipped employees must be compensated by the employer so that at the end of a pay period their tips plus wages are at least equal to the amount for the number of hours worked times the state minimum wage..Most servers usually earn more than minimum wage for all the hours that they work, but not always..

I have never seen any employer compensate a server for a bad day(s) in tips by adding additional wages to a their check to bring it up to the legal minimum level..Most servers have no idea that they are entitled to this by law, and any that are so aware would never ask for compensation for fear of losing their job..

I have never understood why the average American eating out is so damn cheap when it comes to tipping..Regardless of the type of restaurant that they are dining at..Let us face facts..First, you have chosen not to spend the time and energy to cook for yourself by the very fact of your presence in any kind of food establishment..This means that you are expecting someone else to take your order, transmit that order to the kitchen, and to bring you the prepared food..

The most common reason for not tipping is dissatisfaction with the food itself..The server almost never factors into the quality of the food itself,so why would a customer penalize the server for something completely beyond their control??..

Contrary to common belief, the server seldom has anything to do with whether or not the food arrives at the table hot..Demanding customers at another table are the most common (75-80% of the time) reason for servers not being able to keep a smooth flow going during service..Remember this when you are demanding special treatment in a restaurant..

Another common reason for food not arriving at the table as hot as you would like it to be is when servers are required to take on additional tables due to a staffing shortage..Management usually dumps this into their laps, with the servers having little to no say in the matter..This almost always leads to poorer service..

Servers are often penalized for the food not arriving at the table hot, or in a timely fashion..This happens 98% of the time due to front-of-the-house management issues, and back-of-the-house kitchen issues..Why take it out on the server simply because they are the handiest target??..

For the past forty years Americans have been mired with very outdated ideas of what is proper compensation for tipping in a restaurant..

In my personal opinion, both as a diner and as a chef, the minimum tip left for completely ordinary service should be 20% of the total bill..Period..For above average service, one should leave between 20-30% of the total bill..For exceptional service, one should leave between 30-50% of the total bill..For lousy service, a server is at least entitled to 10% of the total bill..

For absolutely atrocious service, management should be spoken to privately so that they can be aware of, and hopefully correct, what you saw as the problem with the service..I do not condone publicly humiliating servers in the dining room so that the rest of the diners are drawn into your problems with the service..After all, those other diners came to the restaurant to enjoy themselves..Listening to someone else berate a server in a loud voice is not my idea of a good time spent dining out..Far too many Americans seem to take great pleasure in so humiliating servers in restaurants..

Another thing that has become far too common is the customer feeling as if they must get the server to jump through hoops by demanding extraordinary service in order to feel like the dining experience is complete..Such as food items that are not on the menu..Far too many diners expect and demand things from the kitchen that are very time consuming to execute, or else are completely outside of the restaurant's area of expertise..The same holds true of cocktails..I know several people that take great delight in trying to stump bartenders by asking for obscure cocktails..If there is a particular cocktail that you positively enjoy that happens to not be very common, then do everyone at your table, as well as the bartender and server, a favor and carry a neatly printed version of the cocktail's recipe that the bartender can follow..This way, no one has to suffer through the server trundling back and forth between the table and the bar carrying messages back and forth..Which eats up time, and lowers the quality of the service that they can offer, not just to your table, but to all the tables that they are waiting on..

Now we come to the issue of children dining out with their parents..Why take your children out to a fine dining restaurant serving ethnic cuisine (any cuisine, for that matter), and then expect the restaurant to serve your kids Plain Jane Americanized pablum food such as chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and french fries??..My personal opinion is that the restaurant has NO obligation to accommodate children in this fashion..If your children will not eat anything but Plain Jane American food, then do everyone a courtesy and leave them home!!!..Or, send them and the babysitter to McDonalds while the you eat at the Indonesian restaurant..

Families with children are usually the most demanding customers, require the greatest amounts of a server's time, and usually tip the worst..I once had to chase down a family of 16 at an ocean resort that monopolized a single server for over two hours, demanding all kinds of special service, and left her a stinking $1.00 tip for two plus hours of labor..She should have been able to make at between $50.00-$100.00 in that same time waiting on multiple tables during the lunch rush hour at this very good family-style restaurant..I chased them down in the parking lot and demanded to know what their reasoning was..Their excuse??..Her service was too slow..I told them in no uncertain terms that she was one of our two best waitresses, and that their excuse was absolutely unacceptable..That she had done everything possible to accommodate them, and were it not for their obnoxious children demanding all kinds of special considerations, their service would have been exemplary..After several minutes of argument I finally got them to part with $40.00..Over 15 years later this incident still makes me angry..That woman worked her a** off trying to please that family, and a $1.00 tip for two plus hours work was tantamount to being spat upon..That family left the parking lot convinced that they were in the right..

I agree with others here that the issue of a server asking if the customer wants their change is completely out of line..It is the customer's change, and should be brought back to the customer without any conversation or prompting..

Bruce

[legacyb4]

I certainly don't. The last thing I want to see a waiter present or point out at a restaurant is the crap kids food that's typically served at North American establishments. Good god, how do you expect kids to develop an appreciation for food if all they ever eat are chicken fingers, dry hamburgers, and mini pizzas?

Now we come to the issue of children dining out with their parents..Why take your children out to a fine dining restaurant serving ethnic cuisine (any cuisine, for that matter), and then expect the restaurant to serve your kids Plain Jane Americanized pablum food such as chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and french fries??..My personal opinion is that the restaurant has NO obligation to accommodate children in this fashion..If your children will not eat anything but Plain Jane American food, then do everyone a courtesy and leave them home!!!..Or, send them and the babysitter to McDonalds while the you eat at the Indonesian restaurant..

[Jasvox]

I think the issue here is not the philosophy or custom of tipping in your country, just the slightly presumptuous attitude sometimes of a server who asks" do you need change" without even having looked at the amount offered with the check. Common courtesy is to take the money and the bill, bring back change and hope your tip is left as usual. I think 95% of Americans will tip 15%+ plus if the service was adequate or above. Isn't this the customary amount anyway?

[Nowhere Matt]

In my opinion, I can go a great deal of places and get good food. The service is one of the things that should set the competition apart and why should we pay extra for that?
If you have a business and want customers to come back and do business with you again, do you not think you should give them good service?
It is not my fault what wages for the service industry may be or why it is that people who bring you food or drinks are some of the few workers that are automatically expected additional compensation for doing their bloody jobs.
I mean you go into a business where the staff greets you, you find something that you would like to have, the staff brings it to you for your satisfaction, you pay the business and leave. Now is that a night out at a bar and grill or did you just get a gallon of paint from Walmart?
Why not tip your auto mechanic? The UPS guy? The effing dentist?
Hey I am coming to your restaurant cause I like the food and being served and they want you in and out so they can sell the table to the next guy and get his money. You give me good food and good service and I will increase your profits buy coming back.
Leaving a tip for the wait staff remains somewhat ridiculous in my convoluted way of thinking.

[joele]

Now this isn't a dig at Americans or anything, but tipping seems so crazy to me. Basically tipping is non-existant here (except from tourists) and long may it last. People instead get paid for working by their employers (radical I know). Working for zero pay is illegal.

And surely the govt misses out on heaps of tax through undeclared tips? (Not the main reason reason I delike the system, but just a thought)

LOL have to agree, though tipping is pretty common in Australia (much smaller % than the US and I have never had staff ask for it like at the start of this thread), it is not expected at the levels needed in the US as our waiting staff get paid, and legally min wages don't factor tips into the amount, so they have to be paid 'at least' the min wage either way.

P.S. Minimum wage for an 18 year old waitor/waitress in Australia (well Victoria) is just over $15 per hour (goes up with age)...

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Last edited by joele; 01-10-2009 at 11:17 PM.

[Kei]

......A growing number of restaurants don't pay waitresses or waiters anymore, meaning these people very often work solely for tips....

If I know there's any restaurants that having their waiter/waitress to earn tips alone and not getting any hourly wages, I will simply stop going there altogether. To me this is no different than restaurant owners AND the customers jointly exploiting the waiter/waitress. Restaurants offer cheap food, customers get cheap food, while the servers are making a living entirely from optional tips.

Tips are widely expected these days but they are not mandatory; some cheapskate customers can still leave nothing on the tray even after they get exceptional service (I've seen that myself.....many times).

Back on topic, if the change is more than 15% of the bill and the waiter/waitress is asking me that question I'm sure I won't be leaving a lot of tips. In my case 10% is the norm/minimum, 15%+ tips really depends on the service that day.

[Arpe]

In my opinion, I can go a great deal of places and get good food. The service is one of the things that should set the competition apart and why should we pay extra for that?
If you have a business and want customers to come back and do business with you again, do you not think you should give them good service?
It is not my fault what wages for the service industry may be or why it is that people who bring you food or drinks are some of the few workers that are automatically expected additional compensation for doing their bloody jobs.
I mean you go into a business where the staff greets you, you find something that you would like to have, the staff brings it to you for your satisfaction, you pay the business and leave. Now is that a night out at a bar and grill or did you just get a gallon of paint from Walmart?
Why not tip your auto mechanic? The UPS guy? The effing dentist?
Hey I am coming to your restaurant cause I like the food and being served and they want you in and out so they can sell the table to the next guy and get his money. You give me good food and good service and I will increase your profits buy coming back.
Leaving a tip for the wait staff remains somewhat ridiculous in my convoluted way of thinking.

Yeah - good point, why do waiting staff get singled out?

LOL have to agree, though tipping is pretty common in Australia (much smaller % than the US and I have never had staff ask for it like at the start of this thread), it is not expected at the levels needed in the US as our waiting staff get paid, and legally min wages don't factor tips into the amount, so they have to be paid 'at least' the min wage either way.

P.S. Minimum wage for an 18 year old waitor/waitress in Australia (well Victoria) is just over $15 per hour (goes up with age)...

Stamp it out now man, while you still can!!

[baltochef920]

I deliberately did not bring up the issue of exploitation in my previous thread so that I could see how others viewed the situation..

In my opinion, the very best thing that could happen to the entire restaurant industry in the United States would be to start paying servers fair wages based on talent, competency, length of service, value to the restaurant, etc..Just as we do in virtually every other line of work..Then the issue of tipping could be removed from the dining experience..This would, however, raise the cost of restaurants doing business, necessitating across the board price increases in the menu..But, at least the customer would then know right up front what the true cost of a meal was..Tipping should be reserved for those very rare occasions where the service was extra-extraordinary..Then , the entire restaurant should share in the tip because it is not just the server that made that meal extra-extraordinary..

The way that servers are treated currently is exploitation, pure and simple..

First, the job is not easy..There are many dangers in kitchens that servers are exposed to daily depending on the layout of the kitchen..Very few restaurants are professionally designed to maximize the productivity of either the front-of-the-house, or the back-of-the-house..Most restaurants are laid out to accommodate the building's quirks & peculiarities, not designed to maximize safety and productivity..

Second, is the fact that they must put up with an increasingly hostile and demanding public..Not hostile in the sense that people mean actual harm to the server..But, hostile in the sense that many more people seem to be entering restaurants with a view to finding fault, and to making the server, bartender, and kitchen staff jump through hoops, as opposed to just having an enjoyable experience..

Third, they are paid abysmally low wages with the hope that tips will raise the level of their income to a living wage..In no other industry are workers so exploited..If a server has a bad day regarding tips they are expected to suck it up and deal with it..In all other lines of work if the person has a bad day they still get paid their normal salary..Like I said in my previous post the average server makes a decent wage..They generally work damned hard in a dangerous environment in order to earn that average wage..A small percentage of servers earn extremely good wages waiting tables..They are definitely in the minority..

Forth, servers are expected to declare 100% of their income to the IRS, which, of course, no one does..They hide as much income as possible, generally to make up for those days when tips are low to non-existent..This means that billions of dollars a year are not being taxed..We piss and moan about illegal aliens being off the tax rolls, but many more full-fledged American citizens are off the tax rolls working for tips in the food service industry than are illegal aliens..The current system encourages illegal behavior..In order for a server to pay taxes on 100% of the tips that they earn, it would require them to save a large portion of the tip money over the course of the year in order to have a large lump sum to pay the IRS at tax time on April 15..Then, they would be expected by the IRS to pay taxes on any interest earned by saving the money in order to pay the yearly income tax..The very act of having to save from 20-35% of their tip money would eliminate that money from being able to be spent, thus reducing the average server's income from a low middle class income to an income level not too far above the poverty level..Is it any wonder that servers fear and distrust the state and federal taxman??..They are damned if they do, and damned if they don't..

The food service industry has enormous political clout..They like the current system of low mandated salaries coupled with optional tips..This keeps their personnel costs artificially low..Less than 5% of servers are full time employees..This means that employers pay far less state and federal taxes for Social Security, Worker's Compensation, etc..It also means that most employers can get away with not offering any kind of health care to the average server..So the server not only has to work in a dangerous environment for a low state mandated wage coupled with the hopes of being adequately tipped, they almost always do do without any kind of health insurance other than Worker's Comp..

The entire system really needs to change..

Bruce

Just to clarify my position here. I am a very good tipper. When I receive good service, I always tip 20+%.

I do realise that Waiters/waitresses are not accountable for poor prepartation of food. I do disagree with the person who said they are not responsible for your food being delivered at the proper temperature, they are.

When I have complaints about the preparation of the food, I take that up with managment in the restaurant and am very quick to point out to management that I have no complaint with the server in those situations.

Whether you like it, or not, Waiters and Waitresses in the US receive a reduced minimum wage if they are tipped personel. Any one of them worth their salt will exceed what straight minimum wage would have paid them. And, typically, most do not pay taxes and FICA on their gross income as there is a system in place that allows for a portion of their tips to be taxed based on their sales.

My beef is with those who assume that my change should be theirs. IMO, the most proper way for any waiter to handle this situation is to simply say, 'I'll be right back with your change." This allows me to tell them "Don't worry about it, the change is yours." Or to simply wait for my change and leave an appropriate tip from that change. When you say to me "Do you need your change" I interpret that correctly as meaning "You are tipping me, aren't you?". I simply do not like this method and a waiter/waitress doing so does not receive my highest level of tipping.

One of my very best, and longtime, friends in Houston, TX has been a waitress at the same restaurant for 20+ years. I asked her feeling about this when I spoke with her on the phone this morning. Her comment, 'If you do that at my restaurant, you will find yourself very quickly without a job."

For those who think that wait staff should be paid a much higher wage and not have to rely on tips will find a very reduced level of service in Restaurants if that ever happens.

[George A. Williams]

My son is currently a waiter, and, by being pleasant and helpful, does quite well with his tips. He NEVER asks if the person wants change, but says (with a smile) "I'll be right back with your change." That lets the patron continue to be in charge of the transaction. I think it's a very nice way of handling the situation, and it certainly seems to work well for him ... the kid's rolling in tip money.

[stewart_photo]

Don't pay waiters or waitresses? Is that even legal? (snip)

It depends on the individual state. A couple of decades ago (roughly), the tax collection agencies of some states (not all), at the urging of the IRS, got wise once again to the money earned by the underground labor market and passed even more laws requiring employers in the hospitality industry to pay wages, report income (including estimated tips for each waitress or waiter), and so on. The goal of these agencies was obviously to collect taxes, not help employees. The immediate response from some restaurants (again, not all) was to change the status of their wait staff from employee to independent contractor (no wages, no job benefits, no wage taxes collected by employers, etc).

That lasted until the state agencies stepped in once again (mid to late 90's), this time defining, based partly on IRS definitions, the wait staff as part-time employees eligible for reduced wages (roughly $3 per hour, but also varies by state). However, some of the slicker restaurant owners quickly got around that by simply charging the wait staff for the pivilege of working in their establishment, usually an amount equal to what the employees should have been paid. The wait staff went along with it simply because tips usually exceeded what they might have gotten paid anyway.

Today, apparently most of the truly ligitimate restaurants do at least pay some wages (usually sub-minimum, but a few pay well). However, I'd still estimate the slight majority don't pay their wait staff at all, with those waitresses or waiters working solely for tips. And a smaller percentage (many of the franchises, not all, in the Hooters chain are a good example) still either charge a fee to work, collect a percentage of tips earned, or both.

Of course, all of these are generalities (darn hard to pin this down in any detail) based on what I've read, discussions with those (including family members) working in the hospitality industry, or other sources, and vary greatly by state or restaurant establishment. Some of the info was also obtained from my wife who worked on a project relating to this for a period while employed by the IRS, including discussions she or her co-workers had with those in the hospitality industry.

stewart

...or if you order a beer and they bring you back $7 in change...all in ones.

i hate it when they do this: say the bill is $14 and some change, i pay with a $20 bill, and they bring back (whether they asked if you wanted change or not) a $5 bill and a $1 bill or the change...don't expect i have other money for a tip, or that you're getting a certain amount...

[Maxington]

LOL have to agree, though tipping is pretty common in Australia (much smaller % than the US and I have never had staff ask for it like at the start of this thread), it is not expected at the levels needed in the US as our waiting staff get paid, and legally min wages don't factor tips into the amount, so they have to be paid 'at least' the min wage either way.

P.S. Minimum wage for an 18 year old waitor/waitress in Australia (well Victoria) is just over $15 per hour (goes up with age)...

Tipping is not common at all in Australia, unless it's far different in Melbourne than it is everywhere else.

I hate tipping. There are so many service industries that a person would never think of tipping the employee, why should wait staff be any different?

People should be paid a wage by their employer, and the cost factored into the product. A tip is for service above and beyond the job at hand. It should never be *expected*. It devalues the whole idea.