Your opinion on this piece about food service professionals

[valleyofthedolls]

@DudleyGarrett

Even though that is your opinion, let me point out where you might be unclear, and stop fucking selectively quoting me, KTHNX.

I quoted the portions of your text that were relevant. KTHNX.

@DudleyGarrett

I think I’ve walked out of a restaurant without tipping twice in my life. Once was because a breakfast meal arrived cold, and I had to wait 15 minutes before I even saw a member of the waitstaff. When she arrived she said, “Of course it’s cold. You’ve been waiting this long to tell someone.” Um, what? Not only did I not tip, but I left without paying (the manager was profusely apologizing – no matter, I never went back).

I forget what the other was, but it was similarly egregious.

But you didn’t say that did you? No, you nattered on about the differences in service between chain restaurants and "quality restaurants. It’s not a valid comparison.

@DudleyGarrett

So, I suppose the server I described **deserved ** a tip, right? Maybe in your rose-colored pedantic world.

No, I probably would have done same or similar.

@DudleyGarrett

“Braying about $50 entrees”?? What does that even mean? $50 is a moderately priced entree.

You said this:

“By casual I mean the waitstaff job anyone can get – low-quality family chain restaurants, greasy spoons, etc, and professionally-trained waitstaff working at restaurants where the minimum cost is $50 a plate.”

I got the sad impression that you wanted everyone to know that you’ve been to restaurants where the “minimum cost is $50 a plate.”

And $50 is not a moderately priced entree. For most restaurants, though certainly not all and leaving aside market priced seafood, some steaks and tasting menus, $50 is getting very much on the high side of things. But you know that, right?

@DudleyGarrett

$6 on a $30 bill is 20% – are you suggesting that I leave more?! Insane.

No, not at all, where did I say that? 15% or 20% is standard.

As I said, if the service was as you described in your last post, I probably would have done just as you did.

But you didn’t say that, what you said was this:

"But then I’ve been at IHOPs or TGIFridays where the service has been dreadful and the food barely edible. I am supposed pay 15% MORE than what I’m already paying? For that? No. I have left these restaurants without tipping, more than once. I supposed it’d be different if I were paying $10 for a dinner for two. Since it’s $30, sorry, waiter at TGI Fridays, you lose. Find a better waiting job.

To me this just reads as if you’re quibbling over a few dollars whenever you enter a chain restaurant and that you expect (and hope) to find some reason to recuse yourself from leaving a few dollars for a tip.

@DudleyGarrett

What I’ve found in this thread is nothing different than you see every day – people looking for a free ride or others telling me what I must do with my money (you know, that stuff I get for working 50 hours a week).

What I’ve found is that your posts, in comparison with others in this thread, just left me with a very bad taste. When I read them, I got the distinct impression of someone who might go to an expensive restaurant just so he could wow his friends with his pseudo sophistication…“I don’t know why the Olive Garden can’t get it right, Thomas Keller always uses a place setting with 4 forks!”

If I’m wrong, well I’ll live with that.

[Kalhoun]

@kaiwik

When we have a large party (such as my daughter’s reception dinner) we book an area in the restaurant ahead of time, we eat and drink leisurely, and the tips are more than generous. The servers are kept busy, but we all mind our manners and I know that the restaurant is happy to see us whenever we are in town.

This is crucial. I love to linger at the table, sometimes for hours with the right group. You need to compensate them for the two thousand drinks you’re sucking down, as well as depriving them of the opportunity to serve a fresh group that would yield them another $40 or $50 or whatever they’d get in tips.

[mhendo]

@Shamozzle

Again the cowardly/lack of courage thing…look, it’s the only course I have available to me if I wish to see justice served and also keep my job. It’s a compromise. I would rather tell the offender off and perhaps punch them, but I would also like to keep my job…

Yes, you would like to keep your job. But if you choose to get back at customers by food tampering rather than lose your job, then that is a cowardly thing to do.

@Shamozzle

It’s justice for me and I don’t see it as cowardice. That’s all I need. Doing nothing would be cowardice. All we can do on these points is ATD.

No, doing nothing is prudent; food tampering is cowardly nd dangerous.

@Shamozzle

Also, I don’t know where you worked, but I’d say that if in six years you never witnessed a single instance of food tomfoolery then you weren’t paying attention or you didn’t work in an average restaurant.

Before and during college, i worked in the food and drink service industry for the better part of ten years. I worked on three continents, in establishments that varied from working-class pubs to fine-dining restaurants. Never once did i contaminate a person’s food or tamper with it in any way likely to disgust or endanger them.

The only time i ever gave someone something other than what they asked for was on a few occasions when we ran out of regular coffee, and i would give people decaf (never the other way around, because someone who drinks decaf might have adverse reactions to regular).

Also, despite the dozens, perhaps hundreds of stories i’ve heard about food tampering, i never actually witnessed anyone else do it either. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, or that none of my colleagues ever did it, but i never once saw it happen, and there was certainly no culture of food-tampering-as-retribution in any of the places where i worked.

If i wanted to exact retribution on an asshole, or on someone who had stiffed me on a tip during their last visit, there were plenty of other ways to do that. I’d make sure they got seated right next to the bathroom or the kitchen doors, in the highest traffic area. I’d serve and clear other tables before serving them. If they raised their hand for attention, and some other table did the same, i would go to the table with the good tippers first. This sort of thing gets the point across, and does so in a way that’s clear yet legal and also within acceptable restaurant practice. If tipping is a reward for good service, then it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that decent-tipping tables will receive faster, more efficient, and more solicitous service than shitty-tipping tables.

@MichaelQReilly

The one point that you still haven’t adequately addressed is the fact that waiters are usually paid at below minimum wage. If the state sees fit to make a below minimum wage provision for tipped employees, then the rest of the money should be coming from tips.

Actually, the federal law that allows tipped employees to receive less than minimum wage also requires that, if tips do not bring the employee up to minimum wage, the employer is obligated to make up the difference.

[Mister_Rik]

@mhendo

Also, despite the dozens, perhaps hundreds of stories i’ve heard about food tampering, i never actually witnessed anyone else do it either. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, or that none of my colleagues ever did it, but i never once saw it happen, and there was certainly no culture of food-tampering-as-retribution in any of the places where i worked.

As a cook, I’ve certainly never tampered with a customer’s food, though there have been times when I’ve wanted to. But I’m too professional for that. However, I don’t mind letting an asshole wonder. It’s like certain pitchers in baseball — Gaylord Perry, for example — who have/had a reputation for doctoring the ball. Maybe they’re not really throwing spitballs, but the hitters are sure they are, and that gives the pitcher a psychological advantage.

[DudleyGarrett]

@valleyofthedolls

If I’m wrong, well I’ll live with that.

Every single one of your impressions is incorrect. So, I guess you can start living with it.

[mhendo]

@Phase42

As a cook, I’ve certainly never tampered with a customer’s food, though there have been times when I’ve wanted to. But I’m too professional for that. However, I don’t mind letting an asshole wonder. It’s like certain pitchers in baseball — Gaylord Perry, for example — who have/had a reputation for doctoring the ball. Maybe they’re not really throwing spitballs, but the hitters are sure they are, and that gives the pitcher a psychological advantage.

Color me confused.

How do you, as a cook, make an asshole wonder if his or her food has been tampered with? Do you leave a little sign on it?

[Rilchiam]

I don’t know what a cook would do. But in that Stained Apron link, one waitron put down the entrees, said, “You were here last night, weren’t you?..Yeah, I remember you…Enjoy your…meal.”

[dalej42]

Wow, what a thread. I think I can say that from my experience in working in restaurants that the waiters are probably less likely to actually damage your food, but might try to “take revenge” by not being as generous with the quantities of food. This applies double to drinks ordered from the bar.

[JohnT]

I tip the 15-20% regardless, and am always polite. What… because I spend $25 on a friggin entree I get to act like the King of the World?

Heavens… imagine worrying whether some kid earned a $6-8 tip on a $40 check. If you’re such a goddamned skinflint, eat at a place where you order at the counter. :rolleyes:

[Mister_Rik]

@mhendo

Color me confused.

How do you, as a cook, make an asshole wonder if his or her food has been tampered with? Do you leave a little sign on it?

Why, you just wander out to the table when they’re about halfway finished, and with a sweet smile on your face you ask, “How was everything?”

[OpalCat]

@MichaelQReilly

Here’s the thing that almost everyone in this thread is forgetting about tipping. In every state that I know of, waiters make less than minimum wage per hour. So while tipping isn’t mandatory, it is IMHO a seriously messed up thing to not tip.

Another important factor to consider is that many waiters are required to tip out bartenders, hostesses, and busboys. At the restaurant I worked at in college 3% of our total sales were taken out of our tips for this. This means that if a table screwed me, I actually had to pay for the pleasure of waiting on it.

When you think about it, the restaurant owners have a great racket going. They get paid no matter what, and they get to farm out a large part of their labor expences. Not bad.

When I worked as a cocktail waitress, it was like this:

I got paid nothing by the club. Not even the $2~ hour that most waitstaff get.
I had to pay $25 for my staff shirt.
I had to pay $25 for a tray to carry drinks on.
I had to pay full price for any food or drinks I ate while on my shift (and there was no lunch break, I just had to squeeze in time to eat when I could.)
I had to tip the bartender 10% of what I earned.
I had to pay a management tip-out of $20 per shift.
And we didn’t have assigned tables, so every single drink we sold to every single customer (except those running credit card tabs) was a matter of beating the other waitresses to the table to take that order. I had other waitresses actually flat-out RUN to a table with an empty glass to get there ahead of me when I was already heading to it and only a couple of steps away.

It can be cut-throat out there, and it’s totally possible to actually lose money. Customers who didn’t tip got pins in the special Customer Voodoo Doll that evening.

I rarely tip less than 20%. I once left a half-penny tip, though. Yes, we actually had a penny in my purse that we’d cut in half with wire cutters when we were bored, and we left half of it. That waitress was so incompetent and rude it was staggering. When we finally got her attention to get our bill (and we were polite the whole time) she stormed past our table and THREW the check from about five feet away. We were filling out a complaint card for the management at the desk as we were leaving when some people who’d been seated near us came up and asked for a complaint card as well. I’m guessing she probably didn’t keep that job very long.

As far as dealing with bad service that is the kitchen’s fault, when I worked as a waitress at a pizza place way back when, I played that up for all it was worth. I had a timeframe I felt was reasonable, and if the food took longer than that (even if I knew the kitchen was slammed and had good reason to be running behind) I’d go to the table and apologize that it was taking a long time. I’d then voluntarily find the manager and see if I could get a discount for my table. That way the customers knew I was taking care of them, and since the kitchen staff was never penalized for it, it only made sense. Lots of times my biggest tips came from tables with mistakes or late food, just because I took care of the issue before they even got around to needing to complain. Similarly, I used to deliver pizza, and I remember one time showing up at the door with a pizza that was rather late. The person opened the door looking angry, but ended up giving me a huge tip when I said “here is your pizza–it’s free, sorry it was so late. Here is a 20% off coupon for next time” because I knew when I left the store that it was late, and I haggled with the manager on their behalf.

As for table camping, I confess I’ve done it many times. However, I will ONLY do it if there are plenty of other empty tables nearby. If I feel like I’m preventing anyone from being seated in my server’s section, I’ll leave.

The waiting around when there are empty tables thing bugs me, though. I have no problem waiting around, but please let me do that sitting down. Just explain it to me so I know what to expect, but let me at least get settled in, and be able to enjoy that time with the other people I’m dining with, rather than shuffling from foot to foot in the foyer.

Additional note: I have many times either asked to speak to a manager on the spot or called when I got home to praise exceptional service. I complain when it sucks, but I go to the same effort in the other direction when it’s good.