I think he realized at the end, especially because the cab ride was to the bar I worked at.
A comp tab is where you list the free stuff you give away - you tend to get either a flat amount per shift, or a percentage of your overall takings to comp customers with.
It’s shit like this that makes me have less sympathy for servers than I normally would. You know what? Not everybody drinks alcohol. And though I order appetizers most of the time I go out, sometimes I’m just not in the mood for one, and I rarely ever order dessert. And, hey, sometimes, though I do so love my prime cuts of red meat or a good seafood dish, all I’m in the mood for is a sandwich and fries, or even (gasp!) a meal-sized (and -priced) salad. Yes, I know you earn most of your money from tips, and tips are based on the total bill, and restaurants in general (and servers in particular) just love it when people order alcohol, because the mark up’s so high that that’s where they make their biggest profit, but, you know, you do have sandwiches and other lesser-priced items on the menu for a reason. The best waiters realize this, and provide stellar service despite the fact that maybe the table’s bill won’t be as large as they’d originally hoped. Those same stellar waiters are the ones, not coincidentally, that get the jobs at the highest-end restaurants, where the real tip money is. The others remain stuck at the local O’Charley’s, and sit around bitching and watching dreck like Waiting all the time.
I don’t “feel sorry” for the driver so much as it irritates me that a fee marketed as one being used to cover delivery costs does not actually go towards covering the delivery costs (ie: those incurred by the driver, aside from the 3% the driver may receive, or the gas money the restaurant fronts).
This is how tipping should be done, IMO. The price of the meal is absolutely irrelevant in determining how much one should tip; the same amount of effort was involved in carrying out my steak as it was in carrying out my side of fries.
Until the majority of people begin tipping like this, though, it just looks cheap to the server. That may or may not matter; depends on how often you intend to frequent this establishment.
It’s not absolutely irrelevant though, if the waiter’s tax liability is being determined by it.
I blend - I’ll throw percentages out the window on low cost things - if I go to a diner and get good service on a plate of eggs & hash that costs $4.50, the waiter’s going to get a $5 (or more likely $5.50 as I don’t deal well with change). Now if I have dinner for 2 costing $200, and a bottle of $100 wine on top of that, I’ll not tip as heavily on the wine as I would if it was all food. Probably $375 total.
It is, ideally, how tipping should be done. But that would require I first determine the relative value of moving 1 dish from the kitchen to my table. Then do I multiply it by the total number of dishes? Or the total number of trips? Is there are “water refill” bonus? Is the number of other patrons in his or her section an X factor?
You think it’s difficult for people to multiply a check by 15%, try implementing the math when each person is forced to calculate how hard their server worked for them.
Hell, man, don’t blame the diners if they don’t want to order a week’s worth of food at one meal. At one place that we like to go to, if mashed potatoes are a side, it seems that the cooks pile on about two pounds of potatoes. Now, I like mashed potatoes, but I’m only supposed to have like half a cup at a meal. And I was raised to clean my plate. I was punished for leaving food on my plate, like many people of my generation. And at many places around here, the SMALLEST meat serving is six ounces. I’m supposed to have no more than five ounces of meat/protein per day. So don’t blame the diners if they are trying to keep their meals at a reasonable size.
Dressing should ONLY be served on the side. People have different preferences as to how much dressing they want. And again, having the dressing on the side allows the diner to control calories.
I have to admit, I’m very insistent on not having raw onions on my food. This is because I have inflammatory bowel disease, and if I eat raw onions/garlic/shallots/any allium, I’m going to be quite ill for at least three days, and more than likely for a full week. But there’s no excuse for not complying with a fairly simple request like “no onions” or “no tomatoes” if it’s easy to leave off. If the onions or tomatoes are cooked into the sauce or something, I understand that you can’t just have the cook whip up a new batch of sauce. But how hard is it to leave off the tomato? How hard is it to tell the cook not to put the tomato on a burger? You get no sympathy from ME on this issue.
Part of being a server is to serve, to give the diner what they want, within reason. Even McDonald’s will fulfill requests like no tomatoes on the burger.
I do agree that hitting on a server should not be done. The server really can’t get away from the diner, and can’t even tell him/her how creepy that is without severe consequences. All I can say is that some women are creeps, just as some men are creeps.
Reading that reminded me of this (starts at about 3:50). 
But I do agree with you. It’s best to serve dressing on the side, always.
No - dressing should always be available to be on the side, but if the chef thinks that the salad requires pre-dressing, I’ll go with his knowledge of the dish as the correct way to serve his own creation. I can’t toss a salad properly on my plate in the dining room.
If the customer wants it on the side, then of course the customer should have that option available (if it is feasible, and I cannot think of a situation where it isn’t right now). But to dictate to everyone that a salad should be served that way strikes me as somewhat unfair to others.
Eh, I might be biased because I’ve never had problems with distributing the dressing as I prefer it. I tend to like more dressing on my tomatoes and less on other parts of the salad, and I like to savor any avocado chunks without any dressing to distract from their perfection. But maybe I’m in the minority.
I don’t see where Bouv said anything about not giving people good service because of what they ordered. He said that those types of folks who tend to order high priced items, not carp at him all night, and tip well are the best customers for a waiter to have. Is that even debatable? No one is waiting tables for their health.
I"m confused. Are you saying that the ONLY compensation that the drivers receive is gas money and tips? Or are they paid a salary? If they are actually paid an hourly salary, then of course the delivery fee is used to pay this hourly salary.
Are you saying that pizza places actually make a profit on delivery, in that they pay the drivers less in hourly salary than the business receives in fees?
Thank you. I don’t hate people who don’t order big, so long as their polite. I mean, if someone came up to you and said “Hey, here’s some money!” wouldn’t you be happier with $20 as opposed to $10? Obviously you’re not mad with $10, but you’d be happier with $20, no?
But you are missing the important economic distinction between a fixed cost and a variable one. The delivery charge is used to pay the driver no more or less than the money the store brings in by the sale of Mr. Pibb is used to pay the driver.
If there are no deliveries that night, and therefore no delivery charges paid to the store, then the driver still gets his hourly salary. If he is driving every second, and hence there are a lot more delivery charges, he gets the same hourly salary.
Therefore the delivery charge no more pays that salary than any other revenue the store receives. So if you would find it OK to say that the delivery guy gets none of the $2.50 that a walk in customer pays for the 2 liter bottle of Mr. Pibb, then it is just as OK to say the driver gets none of the $2.00 delivery charge.
Exactly. The driver’s income is unaffected by the existence of the “delivery fee,” so, while that fee goes into the Great Big Magical Pool of Money that pays for everything in the company, it’s reasonably accurate to say that they don’t get any of it.
Fair enough.
“Great Big Magical Pool of Money that pays for everything in the company?”
I like that. You should be a professor in an Accounting program at Harvard, or something.
Bolding mine.
My retardo meter just broke.
Your letter carrier isn’t delivering in his own car (depreciating it), and paying higher insurance for it.
Please consider that those people ordering small might not be there at all if those items were not on the menu. Unless your place is always full, so these folks are forcing out those who would order big, the alternative might be an empty table.
Unless s/he’s a rural carrier. I’ve lived most of my life in places where the mail carrier drives a privately owned vehicle with a “U.S. Mail” magnet on the door.
I have no idea how they’re compensated for that, though I’m sure they are.