tipping your waitress?
- Thread starter Monster2
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ChefChiTown
New member
What you describe is legal (pooling the tips together and splitting them evenly).
What Snezy is describing is illegal (forcing one employee to pay another, out of their own pocket).
Snezy
New member
Well the only way that would happen if everyone of your table were to not tip you, otherwise they would be paying out of the remainder of their tips. I don't see how that could be considered illegal in comparison to pooling tips.
ChefChiTown
New member
Pooling tips is a way of sharing tips. Meaning, everybody is paid (minus their hourly wage) based off tips and nothing more. Tips are reported as income on tax forms (or at least they are supposed to be, HAHAHA), but tips are not regarded as part of a salary or an hourly wage. Therefore, mandating that servers share tips with the front of the house is not illegal. The employer (the restaurant) is not altering the employee's (server) salary, which is completely legal (as tips are not regarded as salary or hourly wage).
What you have been describing - where, if I don't tip, the server still must pay the busser, runner, etc - is illegal, as they would then be forced to pay fellow employees out of their own pocket.
Canadian law very well may be different in that regard, but here in the US, that is, in no way, shape or form, legal business practice.
Simple work ethic sweetheart? That, and not being fired I suppose. Some people take pride in their work without any extra money for it. Besides, the more tips you brought in, the more you'd end up with once they were split.
Love
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San2
Mod
Yeah, but wouldn't you have a lot more if you did NOT have to pool? And keep what you earned, and not have to give half of your hard earned tips to the lazy bugger at the next table who can't be arsed to put a decent day's work in because they know they will get the money of the others anyway?
Not saying that that's always the case. I've pooled in most waiting jobs I had, and it was fine. But sometimes it can be frustrating if you work your ass of only for part of your money to go to somebody else, who isn't putting half as much work in.
Snezy
New member
The only way they would be paying out of their own pocked would be in the rare case that every table they served that day/night did not tip them. Otherwise they would just be sharing their tips just much like the 'pooling' method, although obviously distributed differently.
The point I was trying to make when I first posted:
Is that when you don't tip your server, not only do they not gain any tips from serving your table but their total amount of tips actually decreases as a result of serving your table.
I feel this discussion has gone very far off topic to the original question actually asked. I feel I've made my point clear that tipping is essential to the success of every restaurant and my views on appropriate tipping amounts, IE tipping on a server's performance is important as well as what I view to be a fair tipping %.
Iain1974
New member
Back here on planet earth I prefer to be paid on my own merits, not hope that someone else will work just hard enough not to be fired.
ChefChiTown
New member
Whaaaat? No. That's crazy talk, lady. Crazy talk :rolls eyes:
Tips aren't part of a server's salary. A tip is a bonus - something that isn't guaranteed - something that is earned, not handed to you. So, if you don't tip a server, they aren't losing anything. They just aren't gaining a bonus.
Tipping isn't essential to a restaurant's success. It's a small part of management that needs to be worked out. Every restaurant is different, as are its employees.
I've worked at restaurants where tipping isn't even allowed and those restaurants have been very successful. And, on top of that, the employees were kept very happy with fair wage and excellent treatment from management.
FYI - I agree that, unfortunately, tipping servers has become part of our society. Sadly, it is expected that people tip their server. And, because of that, people - both servers and customers alike - have lost touch with the reality of what a tip is supposed to be. A tip is a bonus - not a guarantee. But, tipping has become such the norm in this country that servers now expect to be tipped, no matter what, as if they deserve it for no other reason than "I'm a server, I deserve a tip" - even if they suck at their job and take no pride in what they do. What's even sadder is that customers buy into that mentality and throw handfuls of their own hard-earned cash onto a table and leave it for a jerk-off employee who didn't do anything to earn it.
Meanwhile (and this is personal venting of mine), you have chefs in the back who are busting their asses for 18 hours a day, earning less than the servers do, but customers would scoff at the idea of tipping the men and women who dedicate their lives to mastering the art of the culinary science and take pride in serving complete strangers the best meals they've ever eaten.
I had one lady tell one of my servers once that she would never tip a chef because, and I quote, "I can cook for myself." Really, bitch?!?! You can fill a glass with Pepsi yourself too, but that didn't stop you from handing your server a $20 bill now did it? Stupid customers, thinkin' they know everything about everything, mumble, mumble, mumble...
Back here on planet earth I prefer to be paid on my own merits, not hope that someone else will work just hard enough not to be fired.
Well, here on planet not-stuck-up-my-own-bum, I think it's pretty simple. If someone gives bad service, they get fired. If they give good or even half-decent service, they get tipped. Those tips go into the pool, and are shared. It ain't rocket science hunny.
People are gonna tip partly due to the service, but also partly due to the quality of the food. You work someplace with decent food, and you're able to put a smile on your face while you're delivering said food, then you're gonna get tipped. No waitor or waitress, no matter how crap or unhappy, will ever not get tipped. If they don't EVER get tipped, they're doing something wrong and will get fired.
But please, feel free to patronise me some more. Out of interest, how long were you working in the waiting industry for?
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It depends - you can have a bad day, and still share in the tips. Some days it works for you, some days it doesn't. It's still better than a wildly changing pay cause of good days and bad.
Think of it like a graph with big peaks and troughs - pooling your tips together smooths those big jumps, so although on your good days, you won't be earning as much as you could, on your bad days you'll still be earning a decent amount. I think most people prefer regular income they can bank on. I know I do
Besides, if we could tell someone wasn't pulling there weight, day after day, we'd pull them up about it. We were a team - pooling the tips meant we would help each other out more. It wasn't every man/woman for themselves. Our joint efforts brought in our tips. So it made us work better together. Better than some asshole treating his tables like royalty to earn the best tips, while never lifting a finger to help the rest of us, cause he wouldn't get any extra money
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Snezy
New member
I can see how this would help the overall service.
It's fair to say that there are servers that simply give better service than others. This pooling method punishes them and the weaker servers benefit from it. That would frustrate me.
ChefChiTown
New member
It's not rocket science to figure out that sharing your tips, if you are good at your job and actually care about performing well, is going to hurt you - not help you.
If I make $200 in tips in one night and I don't have to share, I just made $200 for working hard.
If I make $200 in tips in one night, but have to share with 4 other people who, when added together, made a total of $400 in tips, I now just walked way with $120 instead of $200 ($200 + $400 = $600 : $600 / 5 people = $120 each).
How is that fair? How is that a good thing for me?
The quality of the food almost never factors into the equation when it comes to tipping. Most people - and I mean most people - aren't going to tip differently for a magnificently prepared $10 seared tuna steak served with a shaved radish and cucumber salad, drizzled with a fennel and honey vinaigrette than they would for a sloppy $10 cheeseburger and greasy fries.
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Iain1974
New member
I've never waited but I have worked in a kitchen. I've also worked for bonus. Nothing I've ever seen makes people work harder than knowing that their performance is entirely responsible for how much they get paid.
I can see the reasoning for pooling some tips but too much pooling reduces individual responsibility. If someone is going to get the same pay for working hard or just going throught the motions then some people will always take the lazy way. It aint rocket science, sweetheart.
San2
Mod
But it's not a wildly changing pay - your pay stays the same, no matter what you do. The bonus is what changes - a bonus that is supposed to be an incentive for me to do better than average.
If I knew I'd have to share, it'd irk the hell out of me.
For example - when I worked at the Hardrock, we pooled. Not because we had to, we were told that we could handle it whichever way we want - but because we wanted to. Because we worked well together, and because it was a team - everybody, not just the waiters. Everybody who was in there at the time got a share. We rubbed off on each other, motivated each other, and almost every night I worked, my part of the pooled tips was about 5% less than what I would have gotten if we hadn't pooled. But that meant that the chef, the runners, and even the woman who cleaned the loos got a share of the tips as well. And it was fine that way. Loved it, wouldn't have done it any other way.
On the other hand, I had a job in a smaller restaurant with two other girls. One of them was ok, the other bone idle. We were told to keep our tips, and there was never a mention of pooling. I made on average 15 bucks per table (which, at the time, was good), while the other girls made between about 5 and nothing. If somebody had told me that I had to pool the money with the others, and lose out, you know what I would have done? I'd have said 'screw it, I won't work my arse off while those two do jack shit', and I would have started to slack off just like they did. Because I'd rather get less than to have to give it away to people who don't deserve it.
I'm not saying pooling is bad as a rule. In a good, working, motivated team where nobody slacks off, pooling is a valid way of doing things. But to force people to pool will inevitably be detrimental to the overall motivation.
Snezy
New member
I agree with you that someone will not tip differently based on whether they're paying 10 dollars for a burger, or a high quality meal. But I do believe that someone will tip differently if their food is prepared well/poorly. For example, if I were to receive a steak that was medium when I asked for it rare, the tip would be negatively affected by the cook's performance. The same would be true if I were to receive a burger with toppings that I asked not to be on it.
I also believe the opposite is true, if the food I received were to blow away my expectations and leave me feeling extremely satisfied, the tip would be positively affected.
ChefChiTown
New member
Umm...huh?