I don’t really tie tips to good service. It’s just part of the cost of the meal. I don’t pay less than 100% of my bill is the food is mediocre (but not so bad that I’ll send it back), and I don’t pay the chef more if the meal is surprisingly good. By the same token I don’t much alter my tip based on the service. Also, in my experience, a lot of the noticeably good service I’ve seen has been when the waiter gracefully recovers from someone’s blunder. It seems odd to pay extra for that.
I doubt many waitstaff are getting paid less than minimum wage, if they were they’d probably defect to Starbucks where they can get more than minimum wage and benefits starting out.
Despite hacky comedian jokes, there aren’t an infinite number of Starbucks jobs available.
No, but due to turnover rate there ARE an infinite number of McDonald’s jobs available, and they pay above minimum wage too, at least around here.
Most waitrons get paid substantially less than minimum wage unless otherwise required by state or local regulations. The employer is required to make up the difference if the combination of wages plus tips don’t equal minimum wage, but in practice that doesn’t happen.
Anybody who believes that even a significant minority of waitstaff are pulling down six figures or even $50k/year needs to request a clue check along with their fortune cookie. The proportion of waiters making $100K is probably vastly less than the percentage of musicians who earn millions of dollars and have a mansion on Orange Grove Blvd or Laural Canyon Drive. It’s not square to claim that “[peak] X dollars in tips per hour times an 8 hour shift = 8X dollars”. A waiter will have two or three peak hours per shift, max, which is where he or she makes the bulk of their tips. Barternders do better, but they still have their slack times, too. Wages are just gas money to get to work; waitstaff depend upon their tips to pay the rent.
As for tipping, for each his own, but I don’t mind paying the server directly for their service rather than having it combined in with the cost of the meal. I went out to lunch the other day with a large group and was forced into giving an 18% tip for service that was so excruciatingly bad–many wrong orders, food came out cold, some people waiting to be served salads when others were done with their entrees, waitstaff yelling out the contents of plates like it was on auction (seriously, there’s a system for this, guys), et cetera, and to top it off, I had to walk onto the serving line to find our waiter . And the manager was “out on an errand,”; yeah, we won’t be going back there.
Stranger
It’s a good thing I wasn’t saying anything like that. Proportionally certainly not, because waiting tables is one of those jobs you can get skilless that are plentiful. Doesn’t mean there isn’t gainful employment to be found. Though I find your comparison to musicians to be specious. I’ve met only a few million dollar musicians, while I’ve been served by many waiters and waitresses that seem to be doing rather well.
As I said, if they aren’t making their minimum wage, they tend to jump ship.
Really?
Care to lie some more?
Waiting tables well, or even well enough to make a living, is not a “skilless” job. It’s also clearly one that you’ve never held. But don’t let that stop you from talking through your hat like a distinguished expert.
Stranger
Stranger Since you have already called me a liar, the defence would like to see your evidence showing where I said that it was ‘common’* for a waiter to make six figures.
A lot of HS kids get waitstaff jobs at the local Denny’s without prior experience. I count that as ‘skilless’. Of course I did learn a few things when I pumped gas as a teenager, and also when I was a cashier at a grocery store. So I suppose I should consider those skilled positions.
*Or any other thing that you think is synonymous to ‘significant majority’.
Stranger Also for the discriminating decontextualizing uber-literalist, I would also like to point out that I do not think that a ‘good’ waiter is a skilless position.
Let’s review:
Preivously, you said:
If you think that “a lot of waitstaff make a damn good living off of tips,” then either your perspective of “a damn good living” or your conception of how many waitrons get into a position where they can pull in that kind of money are seriously out of touch. There are a relative few waiters who, after working at a restaurant for a few years and having a reputation for excellence, customer satisfaction, and coolheadedness, can demand premium shifts at an upscale restaurant and take home hundreds of dollars in tips from satisified customers a shift. At the same restaurant (assuming it has a full bar) the bartender will almost certainly bring home more, and yet no one is arguing about the ‘capricious’ system of bartending.
Most waitstaff–working full time or as near to it as they can–are making something between $20-$40k/year, depending on location and the quality of the restaurant. You can make a passable living at being a waiter–sometimes better than being in the lower-paying tier of professional work like teaching–but that’s not what I’d call “a damn good living”.
Most of those high school kids at Denny’s won’t last a month; those that do will learn how to balance their tables, maximize how many things they can get done on each trip between the serving line and the floor, expedite plates, deal with irate or unreasonable customers, et cetera. It’s not skilled like being a doctor or and engineer is skilled, but doing it well–well enough to make a living at it, not just some spending money for extra clothes–requires experience, at least some intelligence, and an ability to cope with difficulties on the fly and without supervision. It’s substantially more difficult than pumping gas or being a cashier.
Stranger
Stranger Well, ‘a lot’ depends on how you are measuring, whether there is a high number or a high proportion. Yes proportionally waitstaff gets paid dick. That doesn’t mean there are not thousands of waiters in big cities making a pretty decent living based on the costs of the locality.
40k per year in Albuquerque would be great. 40k in New York is decent.
To me a damn good living is if you can pay your rent and afford to travel once in a while. Doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be rich. However, as far as jobs that require no schooling go, waiting tables has one of the better possibilities for advancement than many.
As for skilled vs skilless, it’s a matter of what is required at hiring, not what you learn while doing the job. A Doctor is skilled because he learns his trade before working in it. A waiter doesn’t necessarily go to waiter school, though in better places you have to move up from bussing tables.
I can speak from expeirence of Los Angeles, San Diego, Beverly Hills and Las Vegas.
I’ve never heard of that, do you have a cite? Perhaps an online want-ad?
As compared to what?
So in New York City, a waiter, at a restaurant were dinner averages $30 per person or more makes a “pretty good money”
I disagree.
If evidence shows me wrong, I’ll eat my words (and leave a big tip).
What? I’ve dined in many restaurants in New York that were no different than your average diner in Akron.
Again, it sounds like you’re making a guess.
But if you’re pulling in $50,000/year no problem.
OK, I take back the BMW comment, it was hyperbole anyway.
I’d say that it’s more indicative of the spectrum than the high end. there are more waiters in diners than at Spagos
You’ve confused me, you’re talking about the “high-end” or the “whole spectrum”?
On preview, I see many of these points were covered, sorry I took 2 hours from the beginning of this post to submit, had to run to the bank.
BMalion I was just pointing out that while the custom of tipping shafts some people, it works out very well for others. That’s all. I was talking about the high end, not the whole spectrum.
Who does it “shaft” ? Can you describe the nature of this “shaft” ?
Then I would reccomend that you don’t say things like:
Few people would call Houlihan’s or Friday’s, fine establishments though they are, a “high-end” restaurant.
Have you ever been a waiter? If not, why are you speaking as if you know what you’re talking about?
It’s his métier.
Stranger
While I think that’s a fair estimation of the phenomenon, I don’t think there is underlying logic or force shaping these developments, nor is it pointless to apply a little reason and skepticism to them. When money plays a role, economics can’t help but come into play to shape the phenomenon in some way worth at least wondering about.
I think one reason people would shy away from tipping their ER doctors, for instance (who I would bet anything are professionally restricted from accepting tips) is because they feel these people make a lot of money compared to waiters. But of course, this answer is probably a mistake, because if tipping an ER doctor were standard practice, a lot more people would want to be ER doctors, and hospitals would probably pay them less to compensate.
Folks can talk about how waiting on tables is a highly personalized service, but so are tons of other professions that don’t get tipped.
Yeah. As I said, the reality is that professions that get tipped can’t really ultimately benefit much from it on average, because if they did, then more people would want to enter the profession, and the wages would get driven down again. So a lower base wage really IS plausibly a reaction to widespread tipping.
But the customer has the same recourses in virtually all industries, it seems to me: almost everyone has a boss who can be complained to, and most professions can at least physically accept tips (though interestingly I think a lot of professional organizations restrict their professions by law or code of conduct from accepting tips).
This article seems to suggest something at least a little in line with my hypothesis about control:
According to this guy, tipping is most common and most widespread in countries with cultures in which citizens are more domineering and neurotic. 
It’s also worth noting that tipping at meals is also a great way to show off ones wealth AND supposed concern for the poor (as WELL as showing off ones power over others), and meals out are often social, dating, or business occasions. I can’t help but feel that this plays some factor in the development of the custom.
Not apropos of anything, but I also found a decent cross-cultural summary of tipping norms:
Interesting on there is Japan, where tipping is apparently considered insulting.
But why should I put in more of an effort if there’s only a 1-in-9 chance this person will even be sat in my section, and even LESS of a chance they’ll even remember me from last time no matter HOW good the service was.
This is the exact case in my industry. We keep all our own tips because because people put forth more effort if they get 100% of the benefit. Why would I give 110% if I’m going to have to give 80% of the results of my effort to people giving only 50%?
ER doc is exactly that. An EMERGENCY doc. But do you go to a different physician every time? A different Dentist? A different OB/GYN if your of the female persuasion?
This needs repeating. Tipped workers rarely have benefits.
So subtract 15% because a waitress is likely only getting 32 hours a week. Subtract $200 a month for health insurance (for a single mom with one kid). Even more for dental coverage. Subtract more because she likely doesn’t want to be busing tables when she’s 85 and wants to retire sometime. I realize matching plans are kind of going the way of the Dodo, but also realize she’ll have to contribute MORE to her plan to make up for this shortfall that she would have in a more traditional career with a matching plan.
- the restaurant benefiting benefits the waiters.
- there are plenty of non-tipped service professions where repeat customers don’t have a high chance of the same server
So how does that make my point invalid?
Ok, so perhaps you’ve made a point about how we should tip ER docs and not ob/gyns. I’d still like to know why we don’t tip ER docs, or why we DO tip hairdressers even though people can and do generally give specific repeat business to specific hairdressers (by appointment).
He’s not talking about restaurants where the dinner averages out to $30 per person. That’s pretty cheep by NYC standards.
There’s a lot of restuarants where you can easily spend over $100 per person (more if there’s wine). Not to mention there are a ton of investment bankers, traders, lawyers, consultants, advertising, media and PR reps and other assorterted business folk who routinely take clients to these restaurants on fat expense accounts.
So if you have 8 parties a week that spend over $1000 and tip the standard 20%, you could easily earn $80,000 just in tips.