Tips
https://www.labor.ny.gov/formsdocs/wp/Part146.pdf
If tips were truly To Insure Promptness they would be given at the start of service, not the end. Same is true of bribes. Tips, or gratuities, for restaurant service are rewards for good or great service and an occasional passive-aggressive 2 penny stance on disappointing service. The current discussion is over whether tipping is outdated and needs to change and whether restaurant owners should pay a living wage for their servers (in this essay server will mean bartender or waiter) or if it should be automatically added or if we should continue our current system and I feel my 35 years in the business gives me an inside look. That said, I certainly don’t have all the answers.
At this time the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. For waiters, it’s $2.13.(Bartenders generally make minimum). Tips are expected to make up for the subwages and, by the way, the IRS expects you to make 11% of your total sales as tips. Waiters do get audited. It’s easy for the government because they can just say you owe it and you have to prove you didn’t earn it. Good luck with that.
Those living in NYC fare better. The minimum wage for them by the end of 2020 will be $10/hour. It’s still shit wages for skilled labor. You cannot live in NYC, or anywhere in the US on $400 a week but that’s another essay. But still at this point you may be thinking: well, my bill is $100 and the tip is $20 so add that to the $10 and they are making more money than me! And they have other tables tipping them! So it’s not fair!. In truth though tips go further than your waiter’s pocket. There are other employees in the mix who get their pay through that: server assistants (formally “busboys” which is a pejorative because most bussers are adult men), bartenders, food runners and sometimes unscrupulous owners have their hands in. And even when they are not taking money directly they are often taking it out of the service charge credit card companies charge. If you tip $20 on American Express, for example, AMEX fees are 2.5% to 3.5% and the owner will take that out of the server’s tip. Essentially what you think is a $20 tip is actually $19.40 and then the other employees each get 5–15% of the tip out which hopefully leaves $11 of the total tip leftover for the IRS. Religious tracts are valued at zero. I have a friend who goes to church and deposits them back into the collection basket. The minister is not amused.
People love to complain about tipping asking “why don’t owners pay a living wage?”. They could, and some have, but the menu prices have to increase to pay for the labor and then it’s mandatory. People can, and do, choose how much they are willing to pay. Well, you’d think it was as easy as 15% or 20% or nothing but there are other factors that customers don’t even realize are manipulating them outside of feeling well taken care of: assets like gender, race, hair color and even breast size, all of which have no real bearing on your experience can unconsciously affect your generosity. Men make more than women. A manservant is far more posh than a woman like a mother or wife who has been waiting on you hand and foot your whole life. White servers do better, we are far too close to slavery to recognize the worth of all people, blondes DO have more fun and big breasts? Talk to Freud. Servers with those attributes make far better money. I do not have big breasts, I have to earn it the hard way.
But is a server really skilled employment? (a discussion on work’s worth is another day). You could think, well, anyonecan do it. But it is actually a tough gig. Good servers are not only clean and well-kempt but friendly, professional and fast. They are keen observationalists who can assess the characters of their guests as they approach. Will they want professional and stern, open friendliness and casual, humorous and at what level? They are fixers adjusting to the moods and varied needs of their guests and multi-taskers who can juggle several chores at once: He needs a check, they need another drink, where is their food? It should be there by now, get out dessert forks, new guests sitting down. Now there’s someone waving as if trying to land an airplane. Don’t forget ranch for table 26 and so forth. It’s an asset to have ADD or cocaine and coke is expensive.
Sometimes, most times, you are rewarded but enough times you are disappointed your careful attention is not. I think it balances out in the wash but that is not true for everyone. I make more money delivering a $21 martini in my posh restaurant than a server who brings a $2 cup of coffee for doing the same work but our tips do not reflect that. In fact the coffee server does more with endless refills.
Living wages attract less skilled employees. No good server will take a job like that when they have to hustle several tables all night and there is always someone who takes it upon themselves to make you miserable enough to cry. We knew Karen long before you ever did. Auto-gratuities create nearly the same experience for a guest. Lazy servers think if the wage is fixed there is no real need for hustle and flow. Why worry about up-selling another drink or dessert when I can distract myself with my phone instead?
So sometimes I go into work with life problems and a bad mood. Sometimes it is swamped and I am unable to keep up, “in the weeds” as we say, sometimes things like the quality or timeliness of food is out of our control and sometimes I’m just a lousy server who cannot create the best experience for you and I can only earn the bare minimum but give me the chance to earn better tips and you will get the best service I can muster. Then reward me.
