"it’s simple. I’m being told that the employer is holding an economic gun to the head of his/her employees, and it has somehow become my responsibility to pay the ransom. I’d rather not participate **
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While I saw that you said you do tip, I am taking this opportunity to rant, rave, and attempt to educate the uncaring public. This is not directed at you.
Ahhh. So. You take it out on the server? Don’t tip the server because it’s wrong to have to tip?
That won’t accomplish a thing, and I hope you’re not recognized at any restaurants.
The server has NO control.
Or think about this: All over the world where tipping is the major form of pay, all the servers suddenly go on strike (not likely since we’re all on a shoestring and can’t afford to miss a single solitary shift thanks to cheap dirtwads like you, hiding behind highflown, spurious philosophy in order to excuse themselves from spending a lousy few dollars that could make all the difference in the world to someone, when taken on a cumulative basis)…
We’re all on strike… who’s going to race around getting your fifth water with lemon, who’s going to smile and bow and scrape to you, who’s going to be the soothing non-being on whom you can safely take out all the frustrations of your life, who’s going to break their backs by slow and painful increments carrying out your food…who’s going to serve you?
Take your indignation and spew it out on those who have made it legal to make us into slaves, who have made it law that we live on your nonexistent generosity, puke it forth onto someone who can do something about it, and pray you never come into my place and stiff me. I have, and will again, chased someone to the parking lot to confront them about what was wrong with my labor on their behalf. Did I not work for them? Did I not wait on them? I can’t do a thing about the law that makes you responsible for my income in return for my responsibility for your welfare, and I am, believe me, trying. I would love to see it revoked. I am bombing senators and congressmen with suggestions. I am only one single person but I am one of many. And we many are beyond poor. We are getting more and more desperate as prices rise and rise, and we still get the same shaft. (for whoever complained about tipping now being 20%; guess what. The reason that it’s now 20% is that min. wage has not kept up with inflation, and hey, guess what, servers don’t even make min. wage, so if you want decent service, it IS 20%, or else, sooner or later, everywhere will be fast food non-service and “who cares, won’t make any money no matter what”)
To top it off, within a freakishly short period of time one comes to regard the tip as a personal statement; uplifting to receive a good one, and infuriating to recieve a bad one, and this has nothing to do with money, it has to do with our concept of how well we are doing our jobs. Screwing me over means I suck, whether I did or not. Perhaps monsieur would prefer if I got under the table and did? Ah, but then: “felt teeth; no tip for you”
Finally, how would YOU like it, sir, if you came in to work one day, and you just could not get it together. If you stumbled through it telling yourself, “Okay, focus now”. We ALL have days like that. You do too, Mr. Perfect. Now, how would you like it if payday came, and your boss said to you, “hey, you’re normally an exceptional employee, and I know you’ve done fantastically all month and you went far out of your way to investigate this particular matter and you spent time on something you didn’t have to; however, I did notice that on the 18th, you didn’t smile enough, so we’re cutting your salary for the entire month by 26%”.
THAT’S what it’s like.
I go far out of my way to find out what’s the problem with A: their drink (make it myself if necessary) B: their food (will get it comped) C: anything else; I’ll turn down the music in the entire restaurant or get up on a ladder and disconnect the speaker, which I’ll have to reconnect later, I’ll tell jokes, I give out riddles to tables that seem to have nothing to say to each other and thus give them something to discuss, I even sing to them. I will argue with the suddenly deaf and dumb hostile foreign cooks in their own language, which they suddenly do not understand, since I refused to lock myself into the storage room with any of them since I started there, about how a meal is to be prepared: lactose intolerant, kosher, Lent, whatever. And still…a crappy tip.
Nowhere else in the working world can your wages be cut with such impunity, by so many, for so little reason. (“I wanna speak to the manager: our water had too much ice in it”)
Do it to me and I remember your face. Forever.
Come back, and I will see if you were just short of cash the first time. But I am unusual in this respect. You’re marked, one way or another.
Come back after stiffing or shorting me twice… and I will make your meal a living hell. As much as I can soothe, console, coddle and take care of you, I can aggravate, infuriate, and drive you to the same despair that I feel when I see nothing on a table I worked my butt off for, and immediately start running my tattered finances in my head. You will, in short, finally have a reason to garnish my wages; you will finally be able to justify yourself by saying, “I can’t believe how bad the service was!”
Whatever you want, you will get the most extreme opposite I can dream up, and I have a brilliant imagination. I will also speak to you entirely in the most sesquipedalian terms I can summon, and I can summon them from many other languages. I will make you look like an uneducated idiot. That’s just for starters, pal. Imagine what I can do to you in an argument. I bet you’re still wondering what a sesquipedalian is, aren’t you?
We remember you, all of you.
Trust me, we do. And we resent you in a way that you will never resent your boss, because at least your paycheck stable. A thing I remember fondly, dream about, spend all my disposable income on hunting down, and bitterly envy you for…particularly when you decide that you’re not going to tip because it’s “wrong”, and the only one you’re hurting is me. Like I can do anything. Write your government representatives, and stop hiding behind a cheap facade of convenient sanctimony!
To Insure Prompt Service…TIPS…works both ways. Until this is changed, we are all at the mercy of those who do not care. Please do not take it out on those who have the most to lose and nothing to say in the matter.
