Being between jobs and needing quick money to keep myself living in my apartment, I decided that a position as a waitress would be the perfect employment. I applied to a sophisticated, dine-in restaurant with an impressive reputation and a menu that included all the usual elegantly named steak and seafood dishes, all to be accompanied by the perfect fruity drink, tea or glass of expensive wine.
Not being a total moron, I had some idea of how the tipping system worked before I took the position. Officially the server is hired by, and works for, the restaurant, but is paid less than minimum wage by the company; in my case, $2.15 an hour. It is expected that the diner will provide the bulk of the waitress' wages through tips.
"What if I don't get any tips? I asked naively.
I was quickly reassured that I would make more than minimum wage, and if I didn't, well, I just was not doing my job properly. Furthermore, if I did not average minimum wage, I would no longer have a job. I quickly learned the reason for this. If I did not make enough tips to average minimum wage, the restaurant is, by law, compelled to compensate to make up the difference; something no restaurant wants to do.
God forbid that any of the restaurant's profits go towards paying the wages of their employees.
Also at this 'learning' session the practice of tip sharing, a custom I was totally unaware existed, was explained to me. It goes like this. The restaurant not only does not want to pay the entire wages due the waitress, but neither do they wish to pay the minimum wage earnings of other employees. This includes: the hostess, busboys, and runners who help bring the food from the kitchen. The waitress, I find out, gets to pay part of the wages of these employees out of her tip money.
"Why," you might ask, and I certainly did. Because, it was explained to me by management, these employees are helping the waitress to do her job, which is to give the customer a speedy, efficient and totally wonderful dining experience. Due to the great overload placed upon the server by the sheer variety of duties expected of her in taking and placing orders, making and serving drinks, making salads and desserts, fetching food from the kitchen, handling special needs, and taking the time to make each diner feel special and comfortable, it is impossible, during busy times, to do all of these duties within the time frame expected and allotted for the optimal dining experience.
Simply put, a person can only do one thing at a time and can not take orders at one table, get drinks for another, fetch food for the third, while putting desserts together for a fourth, all at the same time, although all of these things needs to be done at the same time for each table to have the perfect dinner.
Since a server cannot do the job alone, helpers are hired in the form of the hostess who seats the customer, busboys who help clear the tables, and runners who help bring food from the kitchen. For this gift of help, the server is expected to give 6% of the gross amount of her sales, out of her tip money, to help pay the wages of these support personnel. This is not, mind you, 6% of the total tip money she makes for that shift, but 6% of the total sales. This means all of the food the waitress serves to her tables each shift is placed in the computer under that waitress identification number. At the end of the shift, this amount is totaled and the server pays 6% of that amount. If a server receives poor tips that shift, she may take home very little money.
"But why doesn't the restaurant pay the wages of the busboy, hostess and runners," I wanted to know. Is it not the restaurant's duty to provide adequate personnel to get the job done? I was bewildered as to why it was my responsibility to pay their wages. It was explained to me, as if I were slightly simple for not immediately grasping why it was my responsibility, that these support persons were helping me to do my job, and since it was my job, it was my duty to help pay them.
Well, we can take the support personnel away, it was subtly suggested, and then see how many tips you get. After all, if the diner has a bad dining experience, (say there are no clean tables, or the food is late coming from the kitchen) the server is the one who will be blamed and not get a tip.
So, I grudgingly agreed to help pay the extra help. By that time even I almost believed it was my duty to shell out my hard earned money to receive support help. Why not, after all? Apparently it was my duty to persuade the customer to pay me; by that logic it only stood to reason that I get more from the customer to pay the rest of the help too.
It was only after being hired and spending countless hours memorizing the hundreds of menu items, the long list of wines, whiskies and various coffee drinks, as well as absorbing all the other endless tidbits I would need to know in order to dazzle the customer with my suave serving skills, did I realized I was doing a lot of work but making little money.
First there was the waiting. Not the serving kind, but the standing around waiting for a customer to arrive kind. And while hanging out, I was making the whopping sum of $2.15 per hour Of course the restaurant wasn't going to pay 7 to 10 servers more that that to stand around waiting, although they wanted that many available just in case the restaurant got busy. I don't know how many other business would keep employees with that practice. If the restaurant didn't fill up and the waitress waited on only a couple of tables (or none in some cases) and went home with 5 bucks (minus the tip share, of course) well that was just the waitress' hard luck.
Now, to make things worse, before leaving each waitress had 'side jobs' that had to be finished each shift. Side jobs included stocking the salad bar, condiment bar, and dessert bar, cleaning the bathrooms, mopping the restaurant, bisseling the carpet, scrubbing down walls, hosing down trash cans... the list was endless. Sometimes I spent as much time doing side work as I did waiting on tables. And for side work I was paid waitress pay of $2.15 an hour. Restaurants can't get away with slave labor, but it's close.
I never became a great waitress, although I did eventually get into the range of about ten dollars an hour. Yet I did learn that when dining out, to tip my server really well because I understand how difficult the job is. I also know that the server is not being fairly paid by the company they are working for. Yet each time I lay down that tip, I can't help think how unjust it is for the customer to be expected to pay the wages of an employee rather than the company they are working for. Somehow, it seems to me that if an employee gives a good days work, they should be fairly paid a just wage by the company they work for. Every other company has to pay their employees using the government minimum wage standards. Why should restaurants be given special privileges? Tips should be used to show appreciation, not as a means for a company to bypass its responsibility to pay its employees a decent, well deserved wage.
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