I haven’t waited tables in about 15 years, but the thing is it does complicate things more than you’d believe.
1.) The orders sent to the kitchen are by tabs, where in the kitchen would have 14 tabs for food, and would not group them together - they would come through as 14 tables of one instead of one table of 14.
Because the food is not grouped as one tab, you’d likely each be getting your food at different times even if the server made it to the kitchen early enough to let the kitchen know it was all to be grouped together (when I had this happened, the cooks wanted me to hand write out a replacement tab for them with all the apps & starters first, and then the entrees just to make sure they were grouping the correct tab). Same for drinks, when you order each one from the bar, they’ll come to the bartender as 14 orders which the bartender will treat as individual orders.
2.) The POS systems are grouped by tables, and handling entering it in the POS would be more work. Most likely the restaurant doesn’t have a standing 14 top - so that would be a custom entry for each one.
eg.) 14top-1,1 4top-2,14top-3,…,14top-14
3.) Filling out the tab, bringing drinks, etc is far more difficult - it probably would need to be the only table for the wait staff who had to handle that table due to memory issues. When I waited tables I was easily about to handle 8 to 10 full tables at a time, because each table is a grouped entity. I could remember what table had what, and then after who at that table had which item. It was by grouping things and creating patterns in my head that I never forgot an order or who had it - for separated tabs you can’t group the same way - for both ordering and bringing the order, you end up treating each as a table not an order at a table. When I waited tables, I was a wonder-server - I never needed to write down orders, except with separate tabs like yours because each time I ordered a drink from the bar, or added a food order I needed to also know which tab to put it on. The memory is only so capable - even in the best circumstances, and it is way too easy to put an item on the wrong tab when you have 14 tabs at the same table. Taking any order would likely take 4 or 5 times as long to enter into the system as well because you’d need to open each tab one at a time, enter the items, go onto the next.
4.) Usually large groups with individual tabs end up tipping far less than a large group with one tab, I don’t know why they often tipped less than a one tab group - but they did. The server would really not want to work this table, because the table of 14 with one tab vs. one table of 14 with 14 tabs would be more than 5 times the work for the server - and would need to be the server’s sole table and would end up with less tips. This is something no server wants!
“You can’t split checks! What if one person wants to pay for more than one meal!!!”
Here you go. Waiter brings out individual receipts, even in those individual little black folders. If somebody wants to pay for more than one meal, they can put two of the receipts in with their one credit card, and hand it to the waiter. Or leave the cash for both of those receipts on the table.
Explain to me how that is less convenient than having to ask for split checks every time you are in a restaurant, or the horror case, the restaurant refusing to split checks.
edit: yeah your restaurant’s POS or order system can be a…well…POS but you can institute workflow or at worst buy new hardware or software to fix it. especially high-end high-volume restaurants need to get their act together about this if they want their customers to have the best experience.
Problem is the POS systems besides being POS are tied to everything including spitting the tickets out to the kitchen and bar - which means the kitchen is getting individual orders which likely means the kitchen has no clue you are at the table with other people & you all would like your food at the same time.
To add to my previous post, after a while of working in a restaurant - I took to just keeping the tab together until everyone was about done (either on after dinner coffee or desert) - and then told the manager that the customers needed separate tabs & pulled out notes I had kept on who ordered what so we could split the tabs up. It was far easier than keeping individual tabs from every standpoint, even though the dictatorial floor manager who didn’t even allow us servers to remove or edit tabs hated having to come with his pass card so I could split the bill.
Sometimes they’re my client, sometimes I’m their client, and sometimes we’re at equal status, such as if it’s a conference we’re hosting (I’ve hosted conferences with as many as 80 attendees). In the first two cases there is no issues with splitting checks; in the last one there is an issue as even though I’m providing logistics and assistance, I’m not spending my marketing budget to pay for them.
Why can’t they just say “these are all at the same table?” Why can’t they write it on the ticket? Why can’t someone just communicate?
I don’t understand how this is any different than now. At said $100 a plate restaurants even, it is very common to have one group served first, then the next waiting 5 minutes, etc. even when everyone is presumably on the same ticket. At a conference I tried to organize this Winter, one table got their food more than 25 minutes later than the rest, even though the server wouldn’t split the checks. So with split checks it would have taken, what, an hour?
And no one, with all the technology and IT revolution of the last 30 years, can change this? Really? There’s no person out there able to manage this? And I thought my job analyzing entire power plants was difficult.
When I delivered pizzas to put my way through school, I sometimes had to track 10, 15, even 20 or more different orders at once. It’s the same amount of food and drinks whether you are dealing with one table of 14 or 14 tables of one.
I’m not criticizing your skill or intelligence at all, but what I’m saying is, maybe it seems difficult only because you’re not used to it? I have more respect for the intelligence of good servers than you may think, and I know they can rise to the challenge of separate checks.
I suspect that this is the only true reason behind the pertinacity of servers to refuse to break up tickets.
Do you realize how disheartening it is? I take these guests to your restaurant. You’re a great server. The food is great. The atmosphere is great. Everybody’s happy. Big smiles all around. Glasses are raised in toast. Everyone loves the servers. “Huzzah! I proclaim this to be the most festive eve of the season!”
Then comes the single bill. Suddenly, there’s a problem. “Did Bob order the glass of $30 wine, or did Jane?” Amazingly, no one can remember who ordered what. Ted needs an original receipt, no copies, and can only pay with a credit card. “Who had this for dessert? I don’t remember this?” “Who ordered the appetizer? I thought we were all sharing! I didn’t eat any of it; don’t charge me for that portion.” “I need to go back to my hotel room for a calculator.”
The smiles vanish. People start arguing. “I did not order that drink, someone else must have!” “This doesn’t look like what I ordered!” PhD-level researchers somehow cannot agree who had what food. Part of the reason of course is some of the guests are amoral losers who are trying to skive their way out of paying - and single check lets them succeed. This is made worse if the single check does not have plain English, but rather “1 gl RRMer” or “Lob ris sm”. Then the server has to come over, and try to explain 57 different items on the bill. People get frustrated and angry. They get angry at me. "Grumble grumble … stupid Una shoulda known we needed separate checks grumble grumble … didn’t eat any appetizer … grumble grumble … all I had was water why do I have to chip in for the wine…grumble grumble … " By the time the pain has ended, the only reason the server gets more than a 10% tip at that point is because of the mandatory gratuity.
It’s a vicious circle. Make the meal end on a sour note, and make sure no one stiffs the server for doing such, with a mandatory gratuity. And I’m the one with the problem over this?
Actually, I guess I don’t have a problem - I pick restaurants which somehow have clawed their way into the 21st century to patronize, and drop $1,000’s, sometimes $10,000’s of dollars into their laps every year.
Because I shouldn’t have to put multiple charges on my card* every time I go out to eat because you’re either too fucking lazy or too fucking stupid to tell the server when you order how you’d like the checks split. And even if they add it all up again, that’s still introducing the possibility for an error to occur.
To ask that all bills automatically split is to inconvenience everyone else because *you’re *an idiot. The bill DOES NOT NEED TO BE SPLIT unless you request it. But you have to request it.
*And the business shouldn’t have to take multiple hits from the CC companies.
I worked in a restaurant that insisted on one (paper, carbon-copy) check for each table, for this reason and because they were cheap bastards. But if a table wanted split checks, I’d make a tiny notation by the items to be grouped together, and then figure up the totals separately. Check goes on the table, each person or group gets a slip of paper with their total written on it.
It was sometimes a pain, but there was no way the restaurant was going to drive away business telling customers it wasn’t worth their time and effort to split checks.
From being a customer, not wait staff - it doesn’t seem the POS systems have got much better since I left - seriously it looks like the EXACT same system I used in the late 1990’s at restaurants today. I’m a programmer now, and when I go out I am shocked about the lack of technological improvements to POS systems.
Of course - the cooks can only send out so many orders at once, and a 4top got between order 3 and order 4, and a table of 8 got between order 7 and order 8… And the cooks demand you conform as a server to their methods - you can’t just go in & say “by the way there 14 are all at one table - can you group it”. You have to go to the kitchen as soon as the orders are all in, and grab all the tabs & do what ever voodoo notation the chef desires.
As I said in a thread right after, instead of fighting with the cooks about grouping tabs, it was easier to keep notes & then break apart the single tab while the table was having coffee & desert. Because eventually I just ended up splitting the bill while the customers were on desert, the customers never knew their orders weren’t on individual tabs to start with, but those tables still did tip less.
Remembering orders in a restaurant is a bit different than pizza, you have multiple courses, levels of done-ness, sides and soups and salads and of course the special requests to replace the asparagus with another vegetable or to grill instead of saute the chicken, and by the way could you bring the sauce separately… Brain-wise - sometimes one more thing to remember just seems to break your whole mental system.
By the way - in no way do I think a restaurant should refuse to separate tabs - despite the extra work involved in making sure you conform to the cooks standards about how orders must come in, and remembering a bit more.
So glue down a fuckin’ ten cent calculator next to the goddamn cash register if you’re afraid that the same people who added your food once into one receipt can’t add two receipts into one bill.
“More possibility for error bloo bloo” there’s already errors all over the place. That’s why you’re already watching your receipt and card statements.
And if by “inconvenience everyone else,” you mean save thousands of manhours detailing every table’s individual check-splitting, or trying to figure out who’s short so you can come up with your total plus tip target, you’re welcome.
I would love to not eat with most people ever again but I can’t ignore all of them. Besides, there are some genuine great people and brains that I’ve met that just somehow fall apart into inanity when a restaurant tab is in front of them.
I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree respectfully on the level of effort required and the complexity involved.
Perhaps things would be easier if restaurants would stop assigning servers in a 1:30 ratio; meaning if I have a group of 30 I’m lucky if I get more than 1 server to help all 30 people.
That’s it, the chef needs to know at a glance that he’s got five steaks, nine specials, etc, to the side of the order you write numbers for your reference, or you do that on the carbon copy if the chef can’t stand to see your scribbling. That way you’ve got the original of what everyone ordered. You can then start their 20 separate tabs, breaking it down from the original combined order each time.
But from what I’ve heard/read servers say, splitting checks when requested to do so is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. And they consequently love to get all butt-hurt about it.
Waaaaaaaaay too much. You figure a couple of pre-dinner drinks at $10 a pop, then the bottles of wine which are $100+ per bottle (one idiot at the last get-together bought a $300 bottle), then there are the cigars afterwards (usually only 1/4 the group of males and 1/100 the females will do this, but they freaking charge $20 a cigar!!!), and then dessert, which of course was not included in the dinner cost…and then there is nearly a 10% tax, and of course a mandatory 20% gratuity. It all seems to magically add up in ways that are alarming and astonishing.
Almost every decent-sized city has at least a couple of places where you can drop this sort of money on a meal, and big cities like New York and LA and Dallas and Chicago have a bunch of them.
People who think it’s easy to split checks when you have several tables and a kitchen to work with really need to spend some time working in an actual restaurant for a few days.
Split checks increase the chance that your food won’t come out at the same time because the kitchen will miss something, which you will then blame on the waitress. The more pieces of paper you have floating around, the more chances there are something will go wrong somewhere.
If every check in the restaurant were split, that little bit of time spent would mean less time spent actually waiting on customers when you add it all up, and that means more customer complaints, more time waiting for drink refills, etc.
Waiting tables is all about timing. When you hem and haw about your order, run your wait staff 6 times when you could just tell them you what you need so they can make a single trip, or ask them to split checks, you are preventing them from giving good service to their other tables. Then the next table of people is sitting there wondering why their waitress didn’t show up withing 2 minutes to take their drink order. By the end of the night it snowballs if a waitress has several tables full of pain in the ass/pissed off customers.
In contrast, if everyone just orders their food, says ‘I’d like such and such’ when asked ‘can I get you anything else?’ and doesn’t play silly games, an entire section of people will leave at the end of the night thinking they had good service and the waitress won’t be frazzled.