I have spent my entire adult life in the restaurant business. Over the years restaurant owners have used tipping to exploit their employees. Oh it started off innocently enough but has become a way for owners to not give the hardest workers in the business a fair shake. Servers get no overtime pay or healthcare or vacation time or sick pay or pension or 401K or any other benefit that would be normal on most other jobs. And to add insult to injury, even if they are lucky enough to work in a place that is busy and they make good tips, the owners say, "Hey you have to pool your tip money with all the other servers" that simply means that the best server in the place is penalized for being the best, and bringing in good money, and the bad server is rewarded for being the worst. Heard enough yet? Well there's more. After the pooled tips are shared equally, all servers have to tip other employees for helping them. Like the bartender, the bus people, the expediter and others. All of these people are being paid less then minimum wage, because of tipping, so that the owners can make more money.
I could go on forever on this subject but, I'm sure that I am boring some of you to death. please accept my appology for this rant. It just galls me when someone says, "I didn't get good service, so I didn't leave a tip" It has been my experience, that when the service is poor, it is almost always the fault of management. Did they hire enough people? Do they expect too much from the people they did hire? And finally, did they take the time to train these people properly?
I know that nothing can be done to change this situation as it has been going on this way for years and the owners would say "If I have to pay higher wages and benefits, I'll have to go out of business". I would hope that everyone that reads this, would be just a little more generous when tipping but, more importantly, the next time a server comes to your table, remember some of the things that you have read here and treat her/him with more dignity and the respect that they earn and deserve.
Thanks
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