When Waitresses Attack

The BBQ Pit
61

God DAMN you’re an asshole GaWd. Your assumption that those of us who CHOOSE to work in the food service industry have no skills is so fucking mile- thick-skull-neanderthal as to make my jaw drop. I have a college degree, I’ve worked in offices dealing with millions of dollars, IT shit, I’m a writer, an actress, a caterer, and just a few months ago I gladly left a $40,000 a year job in a cushy office, with four weeks vacation a year so I could wait tables, because I’m DAMN good at it and it makes me happier than any other job I’ve ever had.

So take your fucking preconceived notions about who waits tables and cram them deeply up your meatus.

62

See, this is where that whole “assuming” thing can get you in serious trouble, wring.

Pay attention now. Read closely. krisolov never definitively says that the boss put one bill on the table. Need help with the quote? Here, allow me:

Note the “I think”? Kinda important there, you know?

Also, you’re assuming (there’s that word again!) that only five people were at the table. Again, though, that’s not certain. Once again, allow me:

Notice the “about”? That’s sort of an estimate, you know? Could be five, could be a couple more, could be a couple less. If there were, say, seven people in the party, then putting a single $100 bill on the table would cover everyone’s $10 meal and leave a very nice tip. Similarly, if there are four people, putting a single $50 on the table would cover the meal and leave a good tip.

Final assumption: krisolov says that his/her portion of the meal was $10, and he/she put $12 (again, note that he/she tipped on his/her portion of the meal) into the pot. We don’t know that everyone’s bill was the same amount. Perhaps others bought a more expensive entree, or perhaps they had only salad or sushi or something similar. Assuming the bill for all the people at the table was exactly $50 isn’t a safe assumption, in my opinion.

However, that’s neither here nor there. Let me tell you where I believe you’re missing the mark in this thread:

  1. First off, you’re slamming krisolov, who did absolutely nothing wrong. He/she says that $2 was added to his/her portion of the meal, which came to $10. So krisolov allowed for a 20 percent tip. Whether the boss intentionally pocketed the money, or honestly forgot to pay, blaming krisolov for the lack of a tip is wrong.

  2. Regardless of how many times you say it, or how fervently you believe it, the customer is not required to tip, and a waitperson who acts as though a tip is mandatory (for example, by chasing diners out of the restaurant and into a train station) is being rude. No one here is saying that a diner shouldn’t tip – at least, not that I’ve noticed. In polite society in the U.S., a tip is left if the service was satisfactory. However, there is no law stating that a tip MUST be left, and a waitperson has no legal recourse if a tip is not left. To quote Benjamin Disraeli, “Them’s the breaks, kid.”

I seriously doubt this will affect your crusade to have those who honestly forget to leave a tip flogged in the court of public opinion, but perhaps others with less vitriol and more perspective will understand what I’m saying.

63

I wouldn’t have chased a customer down who didn’t leave a tip. However, I’d like to say that I am getting those skills needed so that I don’t have to wait tables forever. It’s not as easy as you might think, considering my mommy and daddy can’t afford my rent, electric, gas, insurance, and tuition. You make it sound like going to college and footing the bills are just fucking cake, when I think we all know it’s not.

64

I also find GaWd’s attitude towards servers pretty shitty. He and gobear, who refers to them as “the help” I’m sure would get along famously.

65

Jarbaby, and lezlers-

I was only referring to Little Miss Vibrotronica. I hold nothing against servers at all, I don’t treat them like “the help”, I don’t feel like they owe me anything but good services, and I don’t look down on them for being servers-whether they chose to be one or the job chose them(by nature of being unskilled or a poor job market).

Sorry for coming off like a prick, but Vibro kinda pissed me off with her attitude.

Jessity- I’m the only one paying my bills, thank you very much. See above.

Sam

66

No worries, GaWd, thanks for the clarification.

67

This is the kind of situation it is easy to forget. People all through in money. There is always someone who shorts the pot. Most people also leave out the tax in their mental calculations of what they owe. Sometimes they forget the soda. Final person paying the bill seeing that there is only enough for the bill figures people put tips out. Plunks down the one bill or puts it on a credit card.

I always found that it just did me alot more good to believe it was forgetful than deliberate. If you start to think all the people are asshats then you start to treat them that way and it is reflected in the tips. I also found that the days I went to work focused on the tips rather than on the job at hand my tips suffered. Even with the occasional person stiffing i tended to average 18% so I must have been doing it right.

i cant see that this woman was helping herself much at all. If they were deadbeats then running after them would have only gotten them to say her service sucked at which point she would have no tip and she would have provided less than ideal service for the tables she still had going, which messes up her bottom line more than just letting it slide. In this case it was a mistake, but she has cost the restaurant customers who would be tipping another time, and she has still screwed up the tables she has. The final thing is that studies have been done that sugest that people who have a bad experience at a restaurant tend to tell 10 people about it, whereas people that have a good experience might tell one. So she cost her restaurant customers, possably put her job in jeopardy, and messed up the tips on up to five other tables for at best a 10 dollar tip, some of which would have been lost in the unhappyness of other tables. Gee. I don’t see a win here.

Chasing patrons also could be dangerous

68

As a person who’s worked in the industry for eight years, I have never condoned chasing people out of the restaurant for their poor tipping habits…but I can’t help thinking it’s damn funny when somebody else does it.

I think what the waitress did was extremely ballsy and not particularly wise–it could have gotten her fired, or even seriously injured–but I can’t help enjoying the embarrassment she caused the OP. I’ve gone out with cheap/bad tippers before, and I always make it my job to count the money for the tab, for this precise reason…somebody always “forgets” to tip, or “underestimates” their portion of the bill, and I don’t think it’s fair to take that out on the waitress. She did her job and she deserves her fair percentage. End of story.

Plus, I’ve noticed a widespread tendency amongst groups of people dining together to think that “everybody else” is tipping, so they don’t have to. This is frequently the case with split checks. Since no one’s tab is particularly large, everybody thinks, “Oh, she won’t miss a couple of bucks. Everybody else is tipping. No big deal.”

And then the waitress is left with eight or ten separate tabs, and a 5%-8% tip on the total tab if she’s lucky. From experience, this really sucks.

FTR, I have “called people out” on their poor tipping habits, and have no qualms about doing so…but I bartend, so people tend to respect me more behind a bar than they did when I waited tables. :shrug: I guess it’s b/c I hold all the liquor. I can get away with it. :smiley:

69

This could easily have been one big misunderstanding. As far as the boss paying the bill, I don’t recall krisolov stating how the boss paid the bill. Quite a few establishments that I frequent for lunch have the customers pay at a register on the way out. We do the same as krisolov with money pooling and one person paying, but while they are standing at the register we walk out and have a smoke or chit-chat.

Is it possible that the boss got shorted through some errant math, and figured somebody left a cash tip on the table? Yes. Is it possible the boss is a tight-ass and pocketed it? Again, yes. Is it possible that krisolov had no idea what happened with the money? Yes.

As far as the waitress chasing them down, she didn’t handle it in the best way but she wasn’t completely out of line. Again – one big misunderstanding.

Where was I when this was voted on? I still thought it was 20% for good service, 15% for average, 10% for poor, and nothing for horrible.

70

Thanks for the clarification GaWd. Just so you know, some of us think waitressing (as weird as it sounds) is our true calling. :smiley:

71

Is it really worth all this vitriol? krisolov’s party made a minor faux pas in forgetting the tip. The waitress made a minor faux pas in running out to get the tip. Unless someone killed a puppy on the way back to the table, I see no reason for getting really upset.

72

OK… just a little bit of Aussie pride sticking it’s hand up here… down here we Aussies aren’t friggin neanderthal cheapskates - we tip waiters and other service folk all the time. But we have a simple philosophy - we like to be given the CHOICE of offering a tip - rather than having the CHOICE forced upon us. Our attitude is simple - if the United States allows service people such as waiters to work for slave labour rates of just $2.10 per hour and THEN, on top of that, tax those said workers as though they were earning say $45 per hour - well that’s your fucking problem you fools - even Blind Freddy can see the maths on that particular quotient is skewed towards non reality.

As I said, tipping is NOT a problem at all with Aussies - never has been. We just like to be able to offer it - as averse to having it thrust in our faces. It’s a much more palatable and ethical way of going about things. It’s worth noting too that your typical waiter in Australia earns $15 per hour and tipping is non taxable.

So, my American friends, I strongly recommend fixing your taxation system coz as it stands, it’s not tipping you’re putting up with at all - merely an ad hoc version of tax collection and wage infusion. And it sucks. It takes all the etiquette out of the concept.

73

Sauron can you explain why you think my posts here have contained “viatrol”?

I don’t agree w/the OP. I think he and his party did a jerky thing, he did not intend to do a jerky thing, but is more angry that the person he was a jerk to, pointed it out to him, than he is for doing the jerky thing.

I see it as: If I accidently bumped into you causing you to spill your drink over your suit, and you run after me to call me out about it, my reaction would be of the sort of “gee, I’m sorry I did that, didn’t realize I’d caused harm to you, let’s see if I can repair the damage” vs. “you asshole, I had no idea until now that I’d done something shitty, and here you are publically letting me know!”

Re: assumptions - yea, sue me, when some one says “there were about 200 of us” I’d likely not assume the number was accurate, but when someone is talking about the lunch they’d recently had and said ‘there were about 5 of us’, I do in fact pretty well assume they’re using a verbal device, vs. hedging about the number.

and, if some one has noted that a bill was paid for with a single bill vs. several, yea, I do believe that as well, even if they don’t speak in ‘testimonial’ language “I know for a fact that it was a single bill” vs. “I think it was paid for with a single bill” . I think in terms of how I’d describe something, generally would say “she paid the bill” in most cases, but would only mention ‘a single bill’ if that had happened and had struck me at the time.

74

But it seems you think you are somehow superior to them. At least, that’s what I got from your post.

75

Am I the only one who’s going to admit to being disappointed that the waitress only ran after them and yelled? After the OP I was frankly expecting a bit more…drama.

76

You don’t understand why I think your posts in this thread were vitriolic, wring? Try these on for size:

krisolov had already explained that he/she left enough for the tip when he/she passed the money to the boss. You’re saying in this post that krisolov “screwed up,” when it’s obvious he/she did not.

Here you’re calling krisolov a liar.

Again, you’re calling krisolov a liar. And you’re harping on something that has already been clarified: krisolov didn’t put any money on the table. He/she gave money to the boss, who put money on the table. I’m at a loss to explain why you can’t believe folks in a lunch or dinner party don’t necessarily pay attention when someone else is paying the bill.

And the third time’s the charm – the “krisolov is lying” refrain rears its ugly head.

I believe your posts throughout this thread have been unmitigated attacks upon krisolov. You continually state or imply that he/she is lying about certain facts of the encounter, while clinging with the tenacity of a pit bull on speed to assumptions you’ve made based on very unclear language. In essence, you’re picking and choosing which aspects of krisolov’s posts you want to be true.

Here are the facts, as I see them (based on statements made by krisolov:

  1. krisolov paid enough money to include a tip.
  2. For whatever reason, a tip was not left.
  3. The waitress chased them down, outside the restaurant, to get her tip.

I see no reason in any of the above facts to blame krisolov at all in this encounter. However, I do see one place in which blame can be laid – the waitress. She was foolish, rude and unprofessional to chase patrons outside the restaurant in an effort to get a tip. She also misrepresented her errand – there was absolutely no problem with the bill, as she claimed.

There is absolutely no defense for her actions. Nor, frankly, do I see a reason for your repeated attacks upon the OP in this thread.

77

I buy it. I’ve been in groups where one member would pull this often before we caught on to him.

78

I don’t agree with the above.

I do agree that the choice is “pony up or be vilified” - I don’t agree that the refusal to tip 20% is the moral equivilant of theft.

As far as my personal practice goes – having once waited tables myself – I start at 20%, and usually go higher. On very rare occasions, I may drop below 20% in response to poor service. And I do not penalize the server for kitchen or back bar mistakes. I order my steak blood-rare; if it’s cooked more than that, I may send it back, but I don’t shave the tip.

If I’m waiting fifteen minutes for a fresh drink, that’s a ding on the server.

But those are personal practices. Theft is taking another’s property. The difference between salaries and tips is that salaries are negotiated in advance, agreed to by all concerned, before work is done. There is no explicit tipping agreement between the patron and the server. A patron is rude if he refuses to tip; he’s not fit to move amongst decent society – but he’s not a thief. He’s just a cheap bastard.

  • Rick
79

See, I would be well-prepared to call this a “no harm, no foul” situation in which krisolov’s boss was inappropriately forgetful and the waitress was inappropriately forceful, but for this postion of the OP:

The waitress didn’t ask if her service was not up to expectations. She didn’t say “I’m sorry, I expected a tip, is there some reason that you didn’t leave one?” She brought out the bill and implied that krisolov’s party had failed to fulfill the bill. This was plainly false, and she knew it. She made a blatant and dishonest appeal to authority – the obligation to pay the bill – in order to force the hand of krisolov and his (?) co-workers. Instead of trying a direct, honest approach or even a feel-good talk around the problem approach, she went straight for manipulation through deceitful tactics.

That’s just crap behavior. If I were the waitress’s boss, we’d be having a very long and pointed discussion about how that kind of thing would never, ever, ever be happening again if she wished to remain an employee of my restaurant.

80

Saurong - ok, I see what you’re referring to - don’t agree, though w/your characterization of it., though

What I mean, so that it’s clear, when I’m saying that ‘I don’t buy it’ is that I believe that the OP intended to tip the server. That they noticed sufficient info (“I think she paid with one bill”) that warrented the realization that the tip hadn’t been paid (especially if you’re seeing 4 people hand over 12 bucks each to a fifth, see them pocket it and simply leave a single bill, which is the chain of events).

I don’t believe that the OP didn’t have sufficient info at the time to realize that the server was being stiffed. They may have chosen to not deal w/it, shrugged it off, not noticed consciously (but seriously, if you can recall details like the OP does, I think there was some level of conscious awareness, remember they recalled that each paid ‘about 10$ plus $2 tip’ and that the bill was paid with ‘a single bill’) whatever, but they had sufficient info.

I’m not saying that they’re lying. (I should know, you know). I do believe that they, for whatever reasons, herein not explained that they opted for letting the boss stiff the server, and were embarrassed when it was called on em.

I do think that stiffing the server is a bad thing (if decent service is given).

Again - my position is generaly: that if some one is calling you out for your error, I’m hard pressed to think that person pointing out your error is an asshole.

the OP admitted they were in error. If it was an honest mistake, as they claim, then I can understand being embarrased at making the mistake but I don’t at all understand the venom leashed out by the OP (“when Waitresses attack”) at having that error pointed out. Apparently, the OP would prefer to go on potentially stiffing servers without consequence, 'cause if they do forget, they’re not allowing for any mechanism to be reminded.