Ask the chain restaurant worker, part: the two!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hey, if nothing else, the bad grammar will get you into the thread. :wink:

Link to last year’s thread.

Since I’m sure we have new members with questions, and old members with new questions, I’ve decided to start this again. I also started a new thread because since last year, I have had a lot more duties in the restaurant, and can answer a MUCH wider array of questions. Before, I was merely a fry-cook. Drop item X in fryer, wait Y minutes, put it on Z plate with ABC set up and dressing. Since then, I have moved on to being the grill cook and the expo (well…it’s what other places call an expo, we call it QB and someone else is what we call the expo on the other side of the line.) I’ve also started waiting tables, and hopefully I can transition to that full-time, since working in a kitchen sucks one’s soul.

At any rate, feel free to ask about the inner workings of both chain restaurants, and restaurants in general. To get things rolling, here’s some starter material you might already be wanting to know, but didn’t know it yet! (Didn’t know that you wanted to know it, that is…you already knew that you didn’t know it.)

Q: Why do the servers also go on and on about the specials, drinks, and always ask me how I’m doing every minute?
A: We have to. Corporate tells us to do these things, and if we don’t, and are caught not doing them (by a “mystery” shopper, I use quotes because it’s actually pretty obvious when they come in) we get yelled at and what-not. Just to give you an idea, to get a perfect score, I have to:

Greet you within 45 seconds of being sat.
In that greeting, ask if you’ve been here before.
Also use that time to point out at least one thing, by name, on the promo menu.
Take the drink orders, making sure to mention at least one drink by name.
When bringing the drinks, ask if anyone wants an appetizer, mentioning at least one by name.
If no apps, take order now, if they are ready, otherwise come back.
If there are apps, take app order, and come back a bit later to take the meal order.
Ask you how the appetizer is within two minutes or two bites or you getting it.
Bring your salads as soon as possible after ringing in the main meal (which, if you got an app, is done so right when you get the app.)
After you get your meal, again ask how everything is after two minutes or two bites.
Ask to refill drinks at least once during this whole time.
When you are close to done, ask if you want any dessert (yup, mention one by name) or coffee.
Again, ask how the desserts are if you get any.
Wish you a good night/afternoon and thank you for coming in when you’re close to leaving/when you get the check.

2

How is it obvious?

3

Fiorst off, it will always be two people.
A shopper will NEVER cut you off in the middle of a “spiel.”
They always order a “special” drink. Not always an alcoholic one, though if it is, it is a mixed drink or margarita. If it’s not alcoholic, then it’s something that requires us to do more than hit the button on the soda machine, like an Arnald Palmer, or raspberry iced tea.
They always order an appetizer.
They always order a dessert.

Most parties of two (a "two-top) don’t get apps AND dessert, and most people will cut us off at some point in one of our “spiels.”

4

do you work at the cheesecake factory?

5

Emphatically no.

6

Moved from IMHO to MPSIMS.

7

bouv I’m a lifer in the restaurant biz too (with the exception of a 5 yr sabbatical for Real Estate Appraising)…

If you get stuck give me a nod…maybe I can help. I’ve worked from casual to white linen and every position from prep cook to GM…have never been hired as a dish-dog but have busted my share of bubbles…currently w/ a national chain voted “best of” nationally.

tsfr

8

Okay, restaurant folks, here’s a question…

How and when do you recycle your organic waste, such as food waste and grease? Does it go into the city composting system?

What do you do with good food at the end of the day? Do you give it to food banks?

9

Why emphatically?

Also, when someone leaves you a tip by writing the tip amount on the credit card receipt, do you actually get that money? I’ve always felt a little weird leaving my tip that way. Which do servers generally prefer, cash or credit card tips?

10

The company I work for donates all leftover bakery products to local food pantries at the end of each day. Sometimes it is hard finding the pantries to pick up and distribute the product.

tsfr

11

All waste goes into the trash. (ell, not the oil, that goes into a large drum and some kind of grease recycling company takes it away.) And food at the end of the day? We put it back into the cooler and use it the next day. Why would we do any different? It’s a steak house, so nothing that we prep on day one can’t be used on day two or three or four. (Well, depending on what it is, maybe not three or four.)

As far as CC tips go, it all goes to me. The way it works is like this:
At the end of the night, I “check out” and a long slip is printed out that shows all my sales, as well as all the CC tips I received that night. The CC tips I got are then subtracted from the total amount of cash payments I received (not just cash tips, all checks payed by cash. We don’t put any money into a register (we don’t even have one,) we just hold on to all of it until the end of the night.) If there are more CC tips than total cash I took in, I am owed money by the closing manager, who takes it out of the lock box in the manager’s office. If there is more cash payments than CC tips, I owe him money (which is usually the case.)

12

[ul]
[li]How much infighting is there when it comes to tips? Do issues regarding apportioning of tips cause a lot of contention amongst staff?[/li][li]What things do you have to do (within the context of work, of course) to stay on the good side of the kitchen staff? What things do they need to do for you for them to be on your good side? I’ve read in other threads that bad kitchen/server relations can contribute to overall poor service.[/li][li]Categorically. who are your best customers or groups of customers? What demographics (age, gender, social status, NOT race/ethnicity) do they tend to fall into? Who are the worst?[/li][li]What is your biggest tip received? How often do you get stiffed, and if so, have you ever been stiffed when you expected it because you know you or someone screwed up royally? How about getting stiffed when you delivered exceptionally good service?[/li][li]Do you manage to have adequate, balanced staffing? In my experience working fast food, staffing was a continual headache. People would either get sick (or claim they were sick), or just not show up or quit altogether, and scrambling to find replacement workers was a big pain in the ass. How often are you called in to work on days off? Now that a lot of people have caller ID (caller ID was in its infancy when I worked in fast food) I imagine it’s harder to call workers in when you need them to cover vacated shifts than it was when not very many people had the luxury of caller ID to know that someone from work wanted them to cover a shift before picking up the phone. Sometimes in desperate times we’d have to train someone on the fly and give them a crash course when we needed someone to fill a spot he or she wasn’t experienced in.[/li][/ul]

13

There isn’t any issue regarding tips because my tables = my tips, plain and simple. We don’t pool and divide up tips at the end of the night like some places might (the exception is the two bartenders, who both serve all the seats at the bar and also a few tables if it’s not busy. They split their tips 50/50.) At the end of the night, I tip out 1.5%-2% of my gross sales to the host staff, and 1%-1.5% to the bartenders, everything else is mine.

Well, keeping in mind that I am kitchen staff (I’d like to go full-time front of the house, but they don’t have enough kitchen staff to lose me.) Basically, the servers have to put in their food timely and correctly. That means not yelling at the cooks to hurry something up because they forgot to ring it in, and food not coming back because they forgot to say no onions/ketchup/wrong temp. As far as the cooks go, basically just cooking things correctly and in a reasonable amount of time. If a certain cook is consistently ODing steaks or missing information on the tickets (like extra this, none of that) then people are going to get mad.

By and large, the elderly are the worst tippers, and I imagine it has mostly to do with how they grew up and the society they lived in. Tipping wasn’t as big a thing in the 40’s-60’s as it is now, so I don’t really blame them. The elderly are also some of the nicest customers I get. Younger people can sometimes tip poorly (as in teenagers/early twenties…pretty much if it’s a party full of people who can’t drink, they on average tip less.)

And I’m going to get pitted for this, but sigh French Canadians, on average, don’t tip us well. Exceptions to every rule, to be sure, but they average less than 10% tips. I’m confused by this, because AFAIK, Quebec has a similar tipping structure as the US. Servers get less than the normal minimum wage, with the rest expected to be made up in tips, so I don’t know why this seems to be the case. I know we have Quebec dopers here (who may or may not be French Canadian, if so, I apologize for lambasting your entire ethnic group) so maybe they can educate me as to the tipping system up there, cause I can only assume it is different.

My biggest tip in terms of percentage was $10 on a $11 check, though I suspect she was making up for the rest of her party, who all tipped about $1 on their $10-$11 checks (a party of four, all separate checks.) Biggest in amount was $30 on a $200 check. The closest I’ve gotten to being stiffed was less than $2 on a $35 check. Yeah, we get pissed, but you get over it quick because if you are pissy to your other tables, you’ll get less fro them.

I’d say we’re staffed pretty good. Hell, if anything we have too many servers, and it’s rarely a problem to find someone to cover a shift. The kitchen is another story…we could use another guy back there, and it’s a bitch getting someone to come in on their day off.

14

Come out to CA, we don’t have the tipped staff exception to minimum wage. Plus our minimum wage is higher.

15

The custom in Quebec is to tip 15% of the value of the meal, taxes excluded. Actually, before last year’s lowering of the GST (the federal Goods and Services Tax), we were told that we could actually just tip an amount equal to the sum of the (federal and provincial) taxes, which at the time added up to close to 15%. What is the total percentage value of (federal, state and other) sales taxes in Burlington, and if it’s less than 10% have you noticed that these customers tip an amount very close or equal to the amount of tax? Because I could see them being so accustomed to this method of calculating the tip that they don’t even realize that it makes them, say, tip only $6 on a $100 bill. How well do anglophone Quebecers tip, by the way?

Personally, what I do is I take the amount of tax and increase it by a fair margin, in order to tip somewhere between 15% and 20%. In other provinces or countries, I’d try to remember that the tax structure isn’t the same and calculate the tip myself.

16

Apparently, my wife and I are often mistaken for “shoppers”.

17

So let’s say my wife and I go to our local mid level chain eatery and act like this. We order, say, a pink squirrel and a virgin daquery. Follow this up with cheese sticks and spinach dip. Listen carefully to every word of the specials. Order our meal very specifically (I order a medium rare steak and she orders a meduim well steak). And close with dessert. It’s possible for us to be mistaken for “mystery” shoppers and receive a slightly higher level of service* than normal?

*Not to imply that most waitstaff does not provide top service to everybody. Just that there are some who would make sure the spoons are polished and the glasses are spot free if they thought they were in it for a (potentially job effecting) review instead of just a tip.

18

Sales tax here is…7%? 8%? One or the other, so yeah, I guess if that’s what they are so used to, that could be why. But honestly, unless someone is really bad at math, they must realize it’s much less than what a standard tip for a similar bill in Quebec would be. They must have noticed that if their bill up there was $100, the total tax would be about $15, and yet down here, it is just about $8.

And it’s NOT hard to get 15% or 20% in your head. Drop off the last digit, there’s 10%. Take half of that, there’s 5%, now add them together, and 15%. 20% is even easier, just double the 10% number.

As far as anglophone Quebecers go, I’m sure most off us don’t notice them as being from Canada, since their accent isn’t as noticeable, like Francophones.

And as far as shoppers go, there is usually only ONE special drink, the other person almost always gets a soda or water. So if both of you get a special drink, you probably won’t get mistaken for a shopper. If you are mistaken for one, then yeah, it can only help your service, really. The reason being that whatever company is paying for their meal has guidelines, and usually one of those is they will only pay for one special drink, not two, but they will pay for two entrees.

19

Of course, if they’re attentive, but not everyone looks at their bill very closely. My point is that if you’re used to just tip whatever amount is written on the tax line, so much that the fact that a standard tip is 15% isn’t even in the front of your mind, it may happen that you end up tipping too little without even noticing. I wonder if this couldn’t be solved by posting a notice somewhere, maybe on the menus? Something like “When getting your bill, remember that the suggested gratuity for satisfactory service is 15%, while sales tax in Vermont is only 8%.” I’m not sure how to word it so it wouldn’t sound too pushy and possibly backfire, but I guess it’s at least worth considering.

20

Whats funny is that my wife doesn’t drink, and I always get the high end margarita. We always order the chips and dip appetizers. I’ve never interupted the spiel, and we always get dessert. No wonder I always get good service. I guess the only problem is, we tend to be repeat customers. That and in my hometown, my parents are on a first-name basis with most of the wait staff.