Be Careful About Being Nice to Your Waiter

Some more than others. c.i.

Have you ever gotten so pissed off that you steal a tip from another table?
Or set a glass full of water upside-down on the table?

Me neither, but I've considered it. You?

Cav, nice Norm McDonald reference.

Heh heh, love that Norm...

Have you every tried removing a tablecloth from the table full of junk? Me neither. c.i.

I do it all the time at restaurants for fun. It never works, and the food goes flying everywhere. But practice makes perfect.

:-) Or when your date gets really drunk, lays across the table and offers you a belly-button shot? Have you ever... well, that never happens to me either.

Slappy, They tell me the trick is in the wrist. c.i.

LOL!

I've only had bad service a few times where I left no tip. I'm a very easy customer and when I'm treated rudely or ignored completely, it's not appreciated. I've been lucky as to have had great service in places, so my tips are usually between 20% and 25%.

I've waitressed and bartended, so I know how important it is to provide good service. I'm natuarally friendly to everyone who is civil to me, so my job came pretty easy to me. What really bothered me is when I would provide the best of service to someone and they left me no tip and it was usually someone who was wearing a very expensive outfit. I noticed that the so called "VIP's" didn't tip as well as others.

As far as that waiter is concerned, he's a loser who should never be working with the public!

$2.25 an hour!!??

Thats fuckin incredible. I'm sorry to get profanic here, but thats just ...

I know, its basic, elementary knowledge I guess, but you do forget, and it's not on CNN every day, and then you hear it again and you're just - dazed into silence. And angry.

You're - cause this is just one of tose things that reverts one to a collective "you" - one of the very richest countries of the world. Hell, the Netherlands is one of the very richest countries in the world, but even compared to us your average wages are higher, your gross domestic product is higher, hell, any which economic indicator is substantially higher - and you pay your waitresses $2,25 an hour!? How is that possible? In Holland, minimum wages are something like $5-$6 an hour. Your country is so much richer and you cant afford to pay your mimum workers more than half of that? And dont even start about unemployment, we have 3% unemployment here in Holland, its rising at the moment but its still around 3% and its been that low for nearly a decade.

And yes, I know, they get tips. Some here even said that that's the reason people give as much as a 25% tip. Now thats weird, if you think about it. The customers pay the money that the employers won't, to get the waitresses' wagers to a level that they think would at least be something minimally decent. Thats like charity taking the place of proper wages on a massive scale. I mean, the logic behind that comes down to the average citizen picking up where the employers (or the lawmakers, re: establishing a proper minimum wage) fail to ensure what he considers minimum decency. Leaving minimum workers dependent on the goodwill of Joe Average to gain a proper living wage. And you can only wonder about kitchen staff or other workers in other sectors earning that kind of salary.

<shakes head>. To be reminded of such "details" works wonders to reignite all one's mistrust of the blessings of capitalism, huh, 'End of History' my ass. Reminds you that the eradication of poverty in W-Europe (among legal citizens, at least) is as much thanks to socialdemocracy as to those wonders of the free market.

My favorite is the old: "Are you finished with that baked potato, sir? Thank you. Hello table 4, here are your potato skins."

And I've been a bartender and a waiter myself, and I must say, the waiter job is one of the most difficult jobs I ever had! I'm serious, I found it a lot more difficult than what I do now, and I still find it strange this earns me so much more.

nimh, I believe the following link provides info the minimum wage in the US. I just can't provide information on how many illegals are working under the minimum wage established by our federal government - especially on farms and some factories. http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefacts
c.i.

nimh, I know what you're saying. When we were kids, we lived in the city, but were required to go out to the fruit farms of Northern California to do harvesting work. It was back-breaking, hot, sweaty, hard work. After I graduated from college and became a bean counter, my earnings jumped, even though the work was sitting at a desk and running some numbers on a calculator - and later on a computer. c.i.

Yeh, interesting, that, isnt it?

From Communist countries we know such bizarre stories as how miners earned two, three times as much as teachers, and that of course is not a very effective stimulus for a society to increase its collective knowledge, education, etc. (Not that teachers in the West aren't underpaid as well). So I can see how jobs that in the end contribute most to, say, the intellectual-commercial progress of a country pay more, so as to encourage kids to strive to those, rather than to strive to be a miner.

But on the other hand I have always seen a perfectly logical premise in such things as the communist miner's income, too. The work of a miner is simply much harder than that of a civil servant, so why shouldn't they be paid more? (Not that the party / ministry apparatchiks weren't paid still more in Rumania, too).

I am always reminded of this when I get into a discussion with those wholly loyal to the free market ideology, and they defend all income inequalities with a reference to how 'one should be rewarded for the work one does'. I mean, sure, if you take away all wage differentiation there's no stimulus left to work harder, better your skills, improve your efficiency, etc. But, however naive this may sound, I've simply never gotten how anyone, even a CEO, can be argued to "deserve" an income a hundred or a thousand times as high as a miner's. I mean - that much.

They can explain to me how that's just the way it works, in a market economy, and the unfairness that's implied is just the price we pay for an efficiently growing economy, but they can't convince me that it's morally right too, that such a guy somehow "deserves" to earn so manifold more because of what he does.

Oops ... took your human interest thread and turned it into politics again ... surreeh ..

I have thought the same ideas; those CEO's making millions don't see how unethical it is, nor do they care. Morality must begin at the top; most fail. c.i.

Well, nimh, as usual you articulate m'thoughts re wages of sin, no, I mean work. My daddy was a union founder, albeit a relatively plushy job type union. Well, not plushy, but relative to coalmining.

I am thinking prices and therefore tips depend on location, location, and location and level of restaurant, level of restaurant, etc., plus the all important factor of the owner's amount of heart while trying to survive in many instances. Check the rate of restaurant opening and closing in San Francisco and you'll see (and then you'll tell me, 'cause I am not going to look it up.) Or read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain instead.

My ex got an mfa in drama at barf, USC (kidding, I went to the school across town) and a lot of the graduate students worked as waiters (I use this unisexually), as a relatively flexible earnable place to be. You may think that Los Angeles' restaurants are higher priced because, well, it is LA, but I don't find the hinterland (where I live now) lower. Delivery costs are higher here in hinterland, for example. In the trendy parts of LA, perhaps. But tips are probably always way better in the trendy parts of the world's big cities.

Also, what triggered my last post but I forgot to mention, I have a call in to m'Ex to see if he knows going base pay for waitering in LA now.

This is a salient point which cannot be overemphasized, as regards all of our relationships in public. I always try to be cheerful with folks, and i love flirting with waitresses in diners--and i always get good service, before they have any idea what sort of tip i will leave. It costs nothing to be friendly, and the dividends in good will, good service and good humor outweigh anything that your money will buy you . . .

Nimh is rippin'! You go guy! :-) Yes!

I admire your ability to speak with such outrage, without putting anyone on the defensive with name-calling, accusation and blaming. THAT's the way to rant!

I never looked at it from your point of view before, but it makes a whole lot of sense. It inspires me to think about it more ... and see how we can improve this ridiculous system ...