Waitress Questions

General Questions
#1

  1. At some time during my meal, my waitress (or waiter) goes off duty and is replaced by another waiter/waitress. What happens to my tip?

  2. I go to restaurants a lot with my baby. While many people like to oogle and ogle at babies (“Oh, she’s so cute”), waitresses seem to do it more than anyone else. Do you think they are buttering me up for a big tip? Or, is it just that there are a disproportionately large number of 20-something-single-females as waitresses, and 20SSF’s tend to like looking at and talking to babies more than most other people?

#2

Well as someone who waitressed for far too long, I feel I’m qualified to answer your questions. Keep in mind, these answers are from my experience, and individual results may vary.

  1. Chances are the first waitress will get the trip. But this could depend on how long she was there. For example, if you were done eating, and were simply chatting at the table when the shift ended, she probably asked someone else to keep an eye out in case you needed for coffee or something. But if she left shortly after you came in, the two servers may split the tip or the second waitress may keep it altogether. These circumstances are usually agreed on in advance, so don’t worry that your first waitress thinks you stiffed her.

  2. It’s likely that she’s full of it. That’s not to say that your baby isn’t absolutely beautiful frodosteve, but take my word for it, waitresses see 5, 10, 50 babies a day, after a while they all kind of look alike. During my waitressing days I would, on occassion, be genuine in my admiration of a child, however for the most part it was either me trying to be polite, or trying to boost up the tip.

Hope I helped.

#3

And a lot of places pool the tips. So everyone gets part of it.

#4

At the restuarant that I work at, the second waitress gets the tip. The first waitress has a choice to stay if she wants and get her half of the tip (we are a pooling restuarant)if she wants, but we are usually pretty eager to get out of there, and don’t bother.

In answer to your second question, I don’t oogle babies much, but when I do, it’s becuase I think they are genuinely cute, not because I am trying to boost my tip.

Hope that helps.

#5

Speaking as a person who worked in restaurants for quite a while, I’d have to say that bibliophile nailed it on all counts (At least where I worked).

In terms of the pooling tips places- why on earth would you want to work at a place like that? It takes the whole concept of tips and tosses it out the window.

Work at a real bar/restaurant where you’re rewarded for your quality of service.

#6

In my days of waitressing (mostly in a large chain named after a day of the week) there were three options:

  1. You stay and wait to close out the check so you can cash out and get your tip.

  2. You transfer the check to the waitron taking over your section and they get the tip. You also have to introduce the new server to the table.

  3. You ask the “guest” to cash out so you can leave. This was frowned upon because guest are guests and they can stay however long they want.

This is why, why a waitron notifies me that they’re going and says someone else is going to be taking over the table, I always cash out immediately. That way they get the tip for their work and the new person gets the tip for their work. It seems only fair and doesn’t cause any animosity.

As for your second question, it’s to boost the tip. I always (even now) address even the ugliest children as “cutie”. Granted, I do the same for cute kids too. All little kids like being called cutie! :slight_smile: