Where i work, the forklift drivers make about 15 buck an hour. They can start with no training, but they’d better aquire them fast. Besides the handling of the lift truck with all its attendant hazzards, they also have to master the onboard computer that tells them what to get, where to get, and where to place it.
I’m around these guys all day, as well as the front office staff who themselves have to use various computer skills, customer service skills, and basically resolve hundreds of ‘here is the problem, how do I solve it?’ decisions, both routine and crisis-level, all day long. These people make between 12-15 dollars an hour.
Then I go to a restaurant and spend an hour. If I spend 50.00, I’ll leave the standard 20% tip of ten dollars. But then I can’t help comparing what the waitstaffer did to what I saw all day at work. It took my coworkers 40 minutes to earn the same as what I tipped.
I’m not saying that waitstaff are making out like bandits, the proof being that they aren’t living any better than other working-class folks. Unless the restaurant is a tomb except for lunch and supper, or the vast majority of people stiff them on tips, why aren’t they earning the same as nurses or plumbers?
There’s nothing a plumber can do that I can’t, but there is a difference between us: he knows how plumbing works. Except possibly at the very bottom end of the wage curve, the wages for a given position match up pretty well with the degree of specialized know-how necessary to do the job.
I hate to say it, pal, but I think thats your answer right there. While waiting tables was one job I never had, I have worked as a cook in fast food. And if you throw in breakfast too, you’re right, most eating establishments are pretty much dead except during mealtimes. Also, its been my experience that nobody leaves a 20% tip. Most people I know just double the tax, which is around 15%, and most people I know are pretty good tippers. I used to know a number of guys in the army who never tipped at all, or only tipped if the waitress was a hot flirty college girl.
So you’re right, if everybody tipped 20% and ate out 24 hours a day, waiters and waitresses would probably live the high life like plumbers and nurses. They’d make more than teachers, thats for sure.
This is where percentage based tips are a problem at both ends of the meal cost spectrum.
I am certain that the wait staff in an expensive restaurant I ocasionally going are making huge amounts of money. The typical patron would be spending more than $100 per person, they are constantly full in the evenings, and each waitstaff gets to serve on about 6 to 10 tables. That is arround 0.2 * $100 * 6 * 4 in tips about $480 per day. Even if the server gets only 1/3 of that they could be making around $50 K per year from tips alone.
Of course this means that the jobs there are highly sought after and so competition brings the best wait staff to that restaurant. But these are still high paying jobs for low work skill requirements.
On the other hand, a nice Chinese restaurant where food works out <$20 per patron the percentage based tips rules would give the servers only $10000 a year even if they were as busy as the upscale location. This is to people who quite likely aren’t even being payed the legal minimum wage, and yet are doing a job very close to the same level as their high earning bretheren.
That’s not actually true. There is a good deal of training and skill required to be a waitron at a very upscale restaurant. While many such restaurants have somliers on staff, some don’t - it then falls to the waitron to have an extensive knowledge of wine, both what it goes with and how to serve it.
Additionally, there are a very specific set of “rules” as to how food is put on and taken off the table, who get’s served first, the flow of the meal, etc. etc.
There is a lot more knowledge and skill required than to simply bring out an order of pancakes at IHOP.
While I won’t say that there is no difference (there are too many variables involved, and it can go either way), the amount made by the waitstaff at a high end restaurant doesn’t necessarily vary that much from what a waitress at a cheaper restaurant makes. At the high end restaurant, they will have significantly fewer tables per waitperson, will show up well before the restaurant opens, will have patrons that sit at that table for much longer, will have a hell of a lot more people that they have to tip out, are more likely to be “punished” in the tip area for anything that annoys the patron, and in many places work in tandem. Ringing up $2,000 in sales would be considered very good in most places. On the other hand, at the less expensive restaurant, the pass is far more hectic, but the turnover of tables is higher, they have for more tables they take care of, fewer tipouts, and very unlikely to work in tandem. Ringing up $2,000 in sales would be considered very good in most places.
That said, it certainly is possible for a waitperson to pull in 50k gross, but through working many hours, not through making out like bandits. This is true whether they work at a sports bar serving chicken fingers and beer, or at a high end place serving Nantucket Diver Scallops Shabu-Shabu.
Those are skills, but not a big deal to learn. Very few places even know what silver service means these days. The chinese restaurant has staff who are bilingual know about 3 times as many food items also follow careful serving methods including ability to prepare certain items at the table (hot rice soup, toffe bananas, and probably others).
I am talking somewhat extreme cases, but it is to put forward my belief that for tipping to be fair it should not be based on a simple percentage. A fair system might tip 30% on the first 10 dollars, 20% on the next $40 and 10% on anything beyonde that.
$5 meal = $1.50 tip
$15 meal = $4.00 tip
$55 meal = $11.50 tip
$150 meal = $21.00 tip
where the value could be calculated or just estimated to a similar sort of progression.