On Tipping; or, the Story of How I Got Myself Fired

Part story of how I got myself fired from a decent job recently, part comment on tipping standards in restaurants from someone who relies on those tips to pay the bills.

 

It was July of 2007 when I lost a job due to unfortunate firey circumstances that paid rather well, considering – if you’d like to pare it down to its bare essentials – that my job was to either (a) write down orders from customers and ensure that said orders were delivered to said customers in a timely fashion, or (b) stand in a flourescent-lit jail cell and mix alcoholic beverages for other people who were, at the time, performing function (a).  At the time of the incident, I had also been performing function (a) when I may have suffered a slight lapse of judgement.

            I was working for a high-volume restaurant just off of Times Square, the kind of place where customers from out of town will wait an hour to get in the door despite much better restaurants being within walking distance because they go to the one in Kansas City all the time – a concept that always confused me, anyway, since when I travel to a new city, I try to eat in restaurants that I can’t find back at home, rather than shooting to the nearest recognizable name; it’s like flying to Paris so you can eat at McDonald’s because the menu prices are in euros and they serve wine.  It was also exactly one of those times when we had customers being promised a wait of up to one hour for a table, being right in the middle of the post-theater rush; on 50^th St, where the restaurant was located, a lot of our business came from people just leaving a Broadway show (by the time I left, I knew the entire story of Mamma Mia! despite having never seen the play – all, except why that godforsaken exclamation point had to be included at the end of the title, like we were back in the middle of the eighties wearing “Choose Life” tee-shirts).

            One of the fantastic (read: “terrible”) things about this particular restaurant was its design.  The main dining area was on the second floor of the building, with a secondary dining area on the third floor; there was also a secondary bar on the third floor, as well as a main bar on the first floor, the only part of the layout that made any kind of sense.  I was working in the main dining area at the time, the one on the second floor.  This dining area was situated in, essentially, a gigantic corner, and the walls of this corner were made of glass, making them, essentially, gigantic windows.  Of course, every single party who walked in wanted a seat at the window, I suppose so they could have better views of the Rite Aid or the office building across the street.  I mean, to be fair, it was a pretty impressive Rite Aid – three floors, escalators, the whole nine yards.  The office building wasn’t quite so impressive, except for a restaurant on the bottom floor called Mars 2112 with a giant fake rocketship jutting up about twenty feet towards the sky; even that wasn’t so special, except that I have a fond memory of a German man asking me once if that was where they launched space shuttles from.  I laughed, but I really don’t think he was kidding.  Furthermore, I think my laughing made him feel stupid because he looked somewhat hurt… so I said “yes” in order to make him feel better, and walked away.

            Because of these magnificiently impressive windows, the managers of our restaurant decided it would be a wonderful idea to line them with tables for six.  Even that wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if they had seated people like a normal restaurant would; that is, placing parties in tables that were appropriate for their size.  For example, the next time you happen to be in a busy restaurant, take a look at the hostess’ seating chart and you will most likely find a chart with a list of numbers, and following these numbers, a list of names.  The numbers represent the size of the party, and if a table for six opens up, most restaurants will seat no less than four people there.  Not ours, though.  Our hostesses ran straight down the list, seating people wherever they damned well pleased, and if a party of two wanted to sit at a table meant for six so they could have that view of Rite Aid, by God they were going to have it.

            This becomes a problem for servers – the politically-correct version, I suppose, since it isn’t gender-specific – because the section chart is based on two things: (1) the total number of seats in the section, and (2) the likelihood of that section being sat.  The idea is to have a healthy combination of the two, but having relatively the same number of seats tends to take precedence, and then there’s a hierarchy of sections and the weaker servers have sections that aren’t sat as often.  Hypothetically, this could backfire if, for example, one day every table walking in the door requested to sit in the corner next to the kitchen door, but experience tells me that will most likely never happen.  Also hypothetically, then, the best sections in the house were the ones with tables against the windows, which would include maybe two tables for six and one or two more smaller tables away from the windows.  They should have been fantastic sections.

            In many senses, servers are salesmen (or saleswomen; I don’t know, I don’t think that there’s a politically correct non-gender-specific term for that, other than salespeople which just sounds stupid).  At least, that’s what our managers want us to believe.  They want us to get out there on the floor and sell as much as humanly possible; which, of course, would benefit the restaurant, but – also hypothetically – would benefit the server who is working off of a percentage.  This holds truer in other countries, however.  The American tipping system is unique because it is set up as a set of social norms, almost.  Nothing about a tip in American society is mandatory.  It is suggested, but by God no one in America can tell you what to do with your money.  Other countries handle tipping differently.  Australia, for example, tends to pay their waiters a higher salary, usually in the neighborhood of $20 per hour, meaning that your tip was covered by the cost of your food.  In most of England and virtually all of France, a tip is more commonly known as a service charge, and is automatically included in the bill; this system makes the waiter much more like a salesman in that he (to hell with gender-specificness) is essentially getting paid on commission.  The important thing to note here, however, is that he is getting paid, regardless of whether the customer’s delicate sensibilities or penny-pinching wife allows him to go ahead and leave that little extra for the hard work.

            No, the American system isn’t quite like it in that respect.  The American server is more like a salesman getting paid on commission, only every time he makes a sale, he gets to spin an imaginary roulette wheel to find out just how much he’s going to receive for his work.  Sure, there are social norms as far as gratuities go, but in the end the customer is most likely going to leave what he is used to leaving; that is to say that if Jim-Bob from outside of Little Rock is used to tipping ten percent because that’s okay ‘round his parts, Jim-Bob is going to tip ten percent when he takes Mary Jane and little Suzy to the Big Apple to see all them flashing pretty lights.  The American server, then, is really more like – let’s say – a car salesman who goes all out to sell that luxury sedan with all the high-end extras, only to have his manager say “you know what, John… it’s been a rough month, so even though you worked just as hard as you always do to sell that car, I’m just going to pay you a two percent commission this time.”

            Regardless, the idea is still that with a larger table, a server will be sat with a larger party, which will result in a larger bill, which will result in a larger tip for the server – rightfully so, since a larger bill generally translates into a greater amount of work in most cases.  Even this doesn’t always hold true, since sometimes a server can have a table that orders a lot of food and drinks, but are an absolute dream of a table and extremely easy to deal with.  Of course, the opposite scenario happens, as well, where a table might order a couple of waters and low-priced appetizers, but they want everything under the sun for free, and the server ends up working harder for that one table than every other table he’s currently taking care of.  When something like this happens – more generally, when a server is having trouble keeping up with his workload – it’s known as being thrown “in the weeds,” and the biggest misconception among new servers is that being put in the weeds is a result of having more tables than you can handle, when in reality it’s the result of having just the right amount of tables you can handle except that one of those tables is on its tenth refill of Diet Pepsi, and every time you go back to the table to ask if they’re okay a different person needs something miniscule and time-consuming, like a third side of honey mustard that they won’t actually end up using, but needed it anyway in order to make a cave painting on their empty plate (or, sometimes, table).  The most ironic part of all of this is that the tables that are the biggest pains in the asses are also the ones who feel that a tip isn’t a necessary part of their dining experience, that all of the extra service they were requesting actually comes for free with their order of buffalo wings.

            But then, of course, there are what’s known as “campers”.  These are the people who seem to have absolutely no problem sitting at a table in the middle of a dinner rush for a leisurely and lengthy dinner, therefore decreasing the server’s total sales and total tips with every extra minute they sit at the table.  Time is money in a restaurant, and to boil it down to its bare essentials, while quality is important for your tips, quality service might earn a server an extra dollar or two (if even that, if the server is lucky), whereas “turning the table” – getting a table in, fed, out, and a new table sat – will almost certainly earn the server more hourly.  This isn’t to say that servers spend their time pushing people out the door; the idea is to give the best service possible in the most timely manner possible.  But, still, campers are problem tables for servers, and some can be particularly bad about this; once, I watched a table remain in a coworker’s section for three hours while they nursed the same glasses of water, were loud and obnoxious, and were striking poses for their own pictures in the middle of the aisle.  At one point, they tried to incite an argument with the server and said something to the effect of “yeah, I’ll bet you wish we would hurry up and leave.”  My coworker responded properly with “No, take your time… it’s perfectly okay.”  He’s one hell of a guy.

            I’m not such a great guy, I suppose.  On that particular night – and I do digress, I suppose, for pages at a time – I received a “perfect storm” of a problem table, at the tail end of a problem night, Sunday night, which is notorious for being a problematic pain in the a*s night in every restaurant I have ever worked in (which, at last count, is eight).  In the middle of the post-theater rush, the rush that I and every other server in that particular restaurant looked forward to every night we worked, the hostesses took a party of two and sat them in the only table for six in my section.  These women were rather nice, I suppose; they seemed to be foreigners – at least, they spoke with a heavy accent, if not a decent understanding of the English language – and ordered to smoothie drinks within the first five minutes they were there.  I delivered their smoothies, along with a glass of water for each of them, just to be nice (something, that as far as I could tell, was not required of most people in this particular restaurant).

            Then, as is standard, I asked them if they needed some time to look over the menu.  They said yes, I said okay, I’ll be back over in a bit.  I gave them five minutes, then went back.  They still needed more time, they really weren’t sure.  I suggested a few items that I felt were particularly good, but they weren’t overly interested; so, I let them be and tended to my other tables, the four other tables I had at the time since my section was full.  I gave them ten more minutes – twenty minutes altogether, in a glorified fast-food restaurant – and went back over to see if they were ready.  They were not.  I asked them if they had questions for me, concerns, anything I might be able to help them with… no, they didn’t, they just wanted some more time to sit at a table for six and discuss their options in our rather limited menu over a couple of banana smoothies.

            I dropped back by a few more times, since I happened to be in the neighborhood – my section – anyway.  Finally, more than forty minutes after first sitting down, they waved me over; urgently, as tables that take a long time to order usually do, since they can wait forty minutes to decide what they want, but can’t wait more than two to order their food once they finally do.  I rushed over, eager to finally take their order and let them be for a while until their food came out, and the ordered two appetizers, and asked for them to go.

            At this point, I should mention that in order to be sat in the dining area, they have to walk up to the hostess stand at the entrance to the dining area, which doubles as – and this is made very clear – a take-out food counter.  We had on our staff, at all times, a dedicated take-out specialist whose sole function was to order take-out food for customers, pack it up, and hand it to the customers.  She was paid an hourly wage for this that was far more than the $4.60 per hour I was receiving, in addition to receiving tips from those customers.  Her name tag said “Take Out Specialist”, she worked next to a telephone that she answered by saying “Take-Out, will this be for pick-up or delivery?” – her function really could not be any more obvious.  I, on the other hand, was a waiter on the floor of the dining area, surrounded by many, many tables, paid a low hourly wage and who was required to tip out three percent of his sales – regardless of whether or not I was tipped by the table – to the people around me who help me, such as the busboys, food runners, and service bartenders – regardless of how well they performed their functions.

            When things like that happen, that’s the point when a waiter gives the phrase “grin and bear it” true meaning, then walks back to the kitchen, away from the customer, and b*****s endlessly to his coworkers about the table to get it out of his system; most restaurants keep their beverage service areas separated from the dining areas for this exact reason (at least, I’m assuming that restaurant planners and designers are keeping the venting of frustrations in mind when designing the floor plans).  Naturally, this is what I did, overwhelmingly frustrated at having a low check at a large table as well as inconsiderate campers who could have just as easily accomplished their end goal at the counter near the entrance.  Approximately ten minutes later, their food was in the window.  I gathered the necessary condiments that went with their orders, packed the order into boxes and bags, put in forks, knives, napkins, and menus that I had to get from the take-out counter, and walked the food back out to the table, along with their bill.

            In this particular restaurant, as in most Times Square restaurants, a gratuity is printed on the bill, in part because with the amount of work the servers have to do and the number of people who come from out of town or out of the country, their turnover rate would be through the roof if there wasn’t some sort of signal to let the customer know what a standard New York City tip is.  Each place prints a different amount, but at this restaurant it was seventeen percent (which automatically becomes fourteen percent, just as a ten percent tip automatically becomes a seven percent tip, and a $5 tip on a $100 bill automatically becomes “pointless for even trying”).  There were very strict rules associated with this gratuity; really, one strict rule, and that was that the only thing the server could say regarding the gratuity was that the customer was not required to pay it.  Nothing else, not even a sarcastic “oh, thank you, a couple more tips like this one and I’ll be able to afford the picture-shows with my best gal this weekend”.  If the customer asked about the gratuity, all we could say was that it was not required of them to pay it, which became especially problematic with non-English-speaking customers who paid with a credit card and assumed the tip had already been charged to their cards, which resulted in waiters walking back over, credit card slip in hand, and using the best of my grandfather’s teachings on how to speak any foreign language and saying in a slightly raised voice “YOU WRITE THIS NUMBER HERE.”

            An hour after they had originally sat down so that they could order food to take out, they called me over to – what else – question the gratuity, which was all of $5.  They asked me what “gratuity” was, and I explained that it was my tip.  They asked if they had to pay it, and I said no, they did not.  They could have left it at that, like most people did if they didn’t want to pay the gratuity on the check; but, they did not.  Instead, they chose to inform me that they felt they shouldn’t have to tip me because they weren’t eating their food in the restaurant.  So, I leaned down over the table and made a very big mistake – I felt like Ryan Reynolds should have been standing behind me, telling his trainee “You see that… don’t ever do that…” – every instinct I had in my body was telling me to just keep my mouth shut, but instead I looked the woman in the eyes and said to her, “Ma’am, you certainly do not have to pay the gratuity printed on the check.  You are not required to tip me.  But, you just sat at my table for an hour, ordered your food to go after walking by our take-out counter designed specifically to handle orders to go, and now you’re informing me that you feel you shouldn’t have to tip me for that.  And, regardless of whether or not you tip me, I’m going to have to tip out to other people based on this check.  So, don’t tip me if you don’t like, but at least do me the favour of keeping in mind that by doing so, you will have wasted my time and cost me money.”  And, since she was paying in cash, I left the check presenter on the table and walked away.

            Naturally, she asked to speak to a manager.  I made sure the rest of my tables were okay, found a manager who was free (which was rather easy, most of them usually are), and went and hid out in the beverage station nearby.  At one point, I swear that the woman was crying; which was perfect for her, since the particular manager was known for disappearing into the women’s bathroom for her own personal crying fits – but really, who cries over that?  It was ridiculous, I maintain, but nonetheless, she did.  At the end of it all, the manager comped her entire bill, and the ridiculously silly woman left all of the food she had ordered on the table untouched – which my coworkers, vultures that waiters are, descended upon and devoured in the back of the restaurant; somehow, I didn’t feel right partaking in the feast.  My manager, who had hired me and promoted me at our previous restaurant in Queens, hired me and promoted me at that restaurant in Times Square, a woman who I had drank with, smoked pot with, crashed on her couch when I was too fucked and tired to make it back to Jersey City at five in the morning only to catch a cab back into the city four hours later to open the restaurant, asked me with a look on her face that was begging me to tell her what she wanted to hear, if I had actually said that to her.  I could have lied to her and said no, that the woman made it all up, she didn’t want to pay the gratuity and wasn’t happy, but I certainly never said any of that to her.  I could have easily been untruthful and kept my job; but, I refused to lie about it.  I was suspended for one week… upon my return, the general manager informed me that he had to fire me, despite the pleas of his head servers to keep me on, in order to set an example; essentially, after a year’s worth of excellent service to the company and half a year at that particular service, I became nothing but an example of what should not be done.

            I suppose, though, that they were right, that I should have kept my mouth shut.  I’ve worked in high-volume restaurants before without losing my cool; actually, doing so was more out of my character than in my character.  I should have kept in mind what type of industry I was working in – the service industry, where I’m hired on to serve people who, as the same general manager pointed out, are allowed to be rude to me, but not vice-versa.  It makes sense, from a managerial point of view.  And from a waiter’s point of view, too, it makes sense not to let the bad tables drive you crazy enough to really get to you, since, after that night, you will most likely never see them again.  By every logical perspective, I really should have just let that woman leave me nothing on the bill and go on her merry little way down the streets of Manhattan, nachos in one hand and self-satisfaction in the other, happy in the fact that she got out of paying five whole dollars, knowing that I would, in all likelihood, never have to see her again.

            But I don’t regret it for one instant… because it felt amazing.

Reviews

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Wow. That was one classy lady. Having worked in a restaurant myself, I can totally relate. I was a hostess but I remember the servers going crazy in the kitchen because of rude customers and low tipping customers. Personally, I value service people almost more than any other and go out of my way to try to be as nice as possible.

Would you mind terribly if I told you one of my worst restaurant experiences as a customer? Hey, after that marathon! :P I went to a restaurant once where we were seated for a good ten minutes before we were even talked to by the server. Then, she took our drink orders and left for another ten minutes. After that, she proceeded to bring out our drinks, take our menus but not take our orders! Finally, after another ten minutes she came back and said, "Oh, I didn't take your orders, did I?" Genius! It was all downhill from there.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy your story. I found it very humorous and relatable, especially since I've worked at a restaurant before too.

P.S. I always tip 25%. ;)