Sure, it’s on the books, but is it the norm in the industry for waiters to inform their bosses on days when their tips fall short, and get reimbursed for the difference in their pay? I’m betting it happens rarely at best.
I can’t tell you what you’re missing till you tell me more about your assumptions around this $10 tip for a 2 hour meal. But what I can tell you is that there are very, very few situations where one party sitting at a table for 2 hours is going to leave the server waiting on more than one or two other parties at the same time. Because there are really only 2 situations where a table is seated for that long–someplace really nice, where you’re served in courses and are danced near-constant attendance on, and a birthday party or similar big gathering at a more casual restaurant. In the first situation, the server generally only has one or maybe two other tables in their section–that’s what allows the level of service you get. In the second situation, your group is taking up pretty much the server’s entire section, and they might have a two-top that’s turning while you guys are hanging out.
The server at the fancy place is going to make, at most, $15/hour in your scenario if each table is there 2 hours and leaves $10. And that’s before tipping out the bussers, expediters, and wine steward. The server at the casual place will turn that extra table twice, maybe three times in the time your group is seated, averaging about $5/turn. (Assuming an average bill of around $25 and an average tip of 20%, which isn’t unreasonable for a two-top in a casual place.) So she’ll make $10-12.50/hour before tip out.
And that’s assuming the restaurant is full, like on a weekend evening or holiday. On a weeknight, or during the lull between normal meal-times, those other tables probably won’t be full, or at least won’t turn more than once. And all that eats into your average pay.
That’s not to say that you can’t make good money waiting tables–if you’re a good server and get good (busy) shifts, you can get on pretty well. If either of those things isn’t true, it can be pretty shitty money.
Their pay doesn’t start at $2.13 and then the employer has to chip in more if they don’t make enough tips. It starts at $7.25 and the employer is allowed to subtract if there are enough tips. And it’s over the pay period, not individual days. So if the employee worked 40 hours and made $80 in tips the employer gets a $2.00 tip credit and pays $5.25/hour. If tips fall short there’s nothing to “reimburse” because they aren’t allowed to subtract from their hourly in the first place.
The employee is required to report all tips made, the employee figures the tip credit from that, then withholds FICA, taxes,etc. from their “cash wage” + tips. Which means that if there is enough tip income, withholding may eat up the whole paycheck and then some.
I’d like to think that most restaurants follow the law, but based on reports from lots of waitstaff that probably isn’t true. Which is why I wouldn’t mind seeing tipping abolished, or at least only allowed with a strict paper trail.
I was a cook in a restaurant for a long time. I don’t know if it was typical, but here’s how it went in practice there: Cooks and kitchen employees were paid only hourly wages. Bussers were paid minimum wage plus a % of combined tips. Servers/waiters were paid 1/2 minimum wage plus kept their tips minus 15%. Hosts were paid strictly hourly, but a little bit more than minimum. I am aware of other places that tip share with hosts, also.
Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, this is how the average day shift would break down (the restaurant was open for 2 shifts, AM and PM). There would be 4 servers and 2 bussers. Each server would avg $100 for a 5 hour shift. Then the 2 bussers would split the $60 in shared tips. So servers would make around 85 bucks on an average day and bus boys would make around $55-60 including their $5/hr for 5.5 hours. Servers normally got $0 paychecks because of meal deductions and taxes. If it was really busy and someone didn’t show up then everyone would make more. Dinner was more lucrative at half the pace but 4x the avg check.
I had a GF who paid her way through private college (as a non-resident she was ineligible for most aid) by working doubles all summer. She waited or bussed in AM and split nights between serving at one restaurant and hosting at another. I also know several adults who wait tables 6 months out of the year as their sole source of income, but I wouldn’t say this is typical for the profession.
Bad tipping is a sign of an inconsiderate person.
We all know waiters make $2 an hour and are expected to make up the shortfall in tips.
So someone who doesn’t tip at least 10% (assuming the service was good) is simply inconsiderate.
Call them out if you have to, or just leave the extra tip on the table and apologize to the waiter for the inconsiderate actions of your company.
I don’t care about hurting the feelings of rude people. I would leave my own tip out in the open, and if someone has a problem with it, let them stew in their own butthurt.
Exactly. And that was my point: that the connection between how the law reads and what really happens may be rather tenuous at best. So I’m not sure what your point was in going into more detail about what happens in theory, given that you agree it likely isn’t that way very often in reality.
I’ve got no problem with tipping, just that it should be European-style - a much smaller tip, that is an addition to a regular paycheck rather than the bulk of the paycheck.
One of the unintended consequences of such largesse is that Americans on holiday tend to way overtip the locals, who then come to think ALL foreigners should give big tips, even when tips are not expected. Hence, “tip boxes” in places like KFC etc.
BTW, in the US, is tipping expected in fast food restaurants like KFC or in places that add a “service charge” ( do they do that in the US? ).
I prefer New Zealand style- NO TIPPING, and they pay the staff a decent wage.
Tipping is expected when you have an actual waiter. Not in KFC or McDonald’s. Although many places nowadays ask you when you check out if you want to donate $1 to so-and-so charity, then try and guilt you when you say no. I abhor that nonsense. You should be aware, however, that foreigners have a reputation in America as terrible tippers. Probably because they don’t understand that tipping is integral to a waiter making a living.
Those of you who don’t want to tip anymore: how much more are you willing to pay for a meal to “abolish” tipping? Five dollars? Ten? What do you think will happen with the fancy places where waitstaff make a lot over minimum wage — will the restaurant give them a hefty salary approximately equal to their tipping income, or slash it down to somewhat above minimum wage? If some places did away with it, and some didn’t, what would you expect to happen to businesses on either side of the fence?
(That last question, BTW, is why I think that any effort to do away with tipping as the majority of a server’s paycheck is doomed to failure unless every single restaurant does it all at once.)
Though of course I’m not personally responsible for the well-being of servers, and though the low wage tipping culture is not the norm around this planet it is what we have in Canada and the US. If I was able to supplement a bad tip despite good service I would certainly do it. My wife and I dine out fairly frequently and from what I see, most servers are extremely hard workers with a fairly remarkable skill-set. And, depending on where you are some are doing this at low end places, some are paying their tuition and, in many restaurants in larger cities, they are full-time, lifelong professionals. There isn’t one homogeneous set of server characteristics.
Unless you’re going to tell me my deliberately low estimate of $10 tip every hour is too low, the figures aren’t what I’m missing, so I don’t think telling you more about them will help. In the interest of clarity, though:
One table was the lowest number of tables I expected one waiter/waitress to have at a time. $10 was the lowest average tip I’d guess per table. Two hours is the longest I can imagine a table being used for by one person/group. I expect the actual average number of tables to be higher and the average time to be lower, but I can’t be sure.
It sounds to me like you’re agreeing with those expectations of mine.
To rephrase the question, based on the figures I see in this thread ($10, $20 or more for tips), I don’t understand how a waiter or waitress can earn bad money without a considerable amount of bad luck. What factors might I be missing?
Well, off the top of my head:
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Prime versus non-prime shifts: ie, Friday and Saturday nights are great, the restaurant is full, you can make max tips. The Tuesday 11 to 5 shift? Not so great.
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Time at the beginning/end of shifts where even if it gets busy eventually, you’re lucky to have a table or two. IE, early dinner time (4-6), late night for some places. You still have to have staff there in case people show up, but it can be slow.
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Slow periods in general. I know in my town, November and April are notoriously slow months. They’re in-between summer and snow season, not many tourists in town, etc. The waitstaff doesn’t make nearly the money they make in, say, July when it’s super busy.
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the time spent not doing actual waiting jobs - ie, some places required their waitstaff to wrap the silverware or do other such jobs at the beginning/end of their shift.
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slow restaurants in general. In my town, there’s maybe 2-3 restaurants where the wait staff can count on a lot of customers, and they make a decent wage working there. Competition for those jobs are tight. Then there’s the other restaurants that aren’t quite as popular, and the staff can’t count on them being busy all the time.
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As many people mentioned in this thread, not everyone is a good tipper. That party of 8 senior citizens took a lot of your time and sat for an hour after they were done eating, sipping coffee and chatting. They didn’t order the big meals and alcohol, and maybe they’re stuck in the past and think that $2 on a $50 bill is a good tip. That pretty seriously brings your take-home down.
I’m sure there’s a dozen other things that I don’t list here. Unless you are on the staff at a top-tier restaurant in a city, you’re not getting rich waiting tables. It’s almost always a job that young people take until they get a “real” job, or people take on as a part-time thing to supplement their spouse’s income. Hard work, variable wages, I don’t envy wait staff at all.
I don’t know if your $10 estimate is low, because I don’t know what kind of table you’re talking about. Is it for a couple who took up one table and had a $70 tab? A couple who had a $30 tab? A party of 16 who took up your whole section and had a $300 tab? For the first scenario, that’s about 15% and not bad. For the second, that’s stellar (and probably a result of them feeling guilty about keeping you from turning that table for so long.) For the third, that’s fucking abysmal, and it’s happened to me more than once.
But honestly, what I think you’re missing is the difference between percentage and dollar amount. I don’t see people talking about 20 or more for tips--I see them talking about 20**%**. For a tip to be ****20, you’d have to have a relatively high tipper and a tab of $100. At a casual place that’s not a particularly common confluence–tabs are likely to be in the $12-$15 pp range, so to get to $100 you’d have to have a pretty big table. And big tables like that are notoriously bad tippers–that’s why some restaurants have mandatory gratuities for parties of 6 or more.
And, of course, you’re missing that outside peak times, restaurants tend to be pretty empty, and that a significant minority will either refuse to tip at all, or leave something well below the 15% average. No matter how much you’re bringing in during the rush, the dead times and the deadbeats eat into your average pay something fierce.
Most places in the US, it’s somewhere between the two (but not including cooks). I confess I don’t quite have the details, but “tip pooling” of some kind, is common.
The law is another complicating factor. For example, in NC, if you don’t make enough tips to make minimum wage, the venue kicks in the difference. The laws are complicated enough that many venues take liberal interpretations – interpretations where the staff gets less of the tip total. Servers can’t afford lawyers, so if it gets unbearable they take their chances on the next venue and hope for better.
My son is a cook and bartender and currently tends bar and waits tables, and has some horror stories about how complicated things can get, and how far the venues sometimes go in their liberal interpretations.
My dad is such a tipper…even though he knows that I have made my living off tips for the past fifteen years, as a waiter and then a bartender. He just can’t bring himself to leave more than the bare minimum, if that…and it is odd because in other aspects he is an extremely generous man.
So I just tip behind his back. My mother is in on it too; if we go out together, she will slip me a $10 and tell me to go find the waiter before I leave.
On a few rare occasions I haven’t been able to, and I feel badly about it, but I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. I overtip when I go out, for all the other jackasses who don’t, but I can’t control what everybody else does.
Something I’m finding hard to understand.
The US news tells me that the US is in financial meltdown, and people have no money to spend, while on here, so many are talking about tipping 10. To me, either most people are still making plenty of money, or the value of the US has fallen to very low levels.
If where I live, I had to tip the equivalent of $10 for a meal, I wouldn’t be eating out at all, ever.
:dubious: :rolleyes: That’s a nice formula, but, no, it doesn’t work out like that at all.
The US as a whole is in financial meltdown, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is broke. My husband and I are pretty comfortable, due mostly to choices we made in the past (for instance, we lived in a house well below our means for about 20 years), and partly due to sheer luck, for example. We’ve got money to spend. This doesn’t mean that we are lighting our fires with $100 bills, or even $10 bills, but we really aren’t worried about money, for the most part. I’ll admit that I’m the sort of person who washes out jelly jars and re-uses them.
When we go out to dinner, it will usually cost between $30 and $80, depending on where we go and what we have. We both tend to drink iced tea as a default, though sometimes I’ll have water if it’s close to bedtime, and sometimes I’ll have an alcoholic drink. So, once or twice a week, we’ll tip $6 to $18 bucks. It’s not going to break us. We eat most meals at home, partly because it’s cheaper, partly because I’m a pretty good cook, and partly because I have irritable bowel syndrome, which means that it’s hard for me to find things I can eat at many restaurants.