[Peachie]

Originally Posted by ilovetv

This is where dining at a restaurant is different from eating fast food in McDonalds or in the car at Wendy's parking lot.

At the fast food place, once the tray or paper sack of food is handed over the counter or out the drive-thru window, that employee is done with the customer. Not so in a dining establishment where constant interaction between server and customer is required, and the server must pay close attention to their orders pending at the bar and in the kitchen, and getting everything entered into the computer for accurate ordering and billing, while paying close, gracious attention to their customers......

This kind of service is largely a multi-tasking balancing act and an art, not a production-line process (a robotic arm could be used to open the window and hand the bagged McDonald's order out the drive thru window to the person in the car).

Restaurant servers are constantly interacting with and have to rely on:
- kitchen staff (moody, histrionic chefs, and the cooks who don't show up);
- bartenders who are busy schmoozing their bar patrons and are supposed to fill the server's orders too;
- busboys in their first job at age 16 who have never cleared dishes or cleaned a table at home before;
- hostesses who can load up your section suddenly with 6 tables full of demanding cheapskates with bratty, screaming kids, while the pet (suck-up) server gets the well-mannered singles and couples that are regulars that leave outstanding tips; and with
- the customers at his/her tables.

With all that going on, the server needs incentives to smile and stay courteous and gracious, and to keep the customer at the top of the list of whom to be patient and gracious with. Tipping is a good way to incentivize the server to put the customer first and keep the customer from having ANY idea of what kind of clamor is going on behind the scenes in the kitchen and outside the back door where smoke breaks are being taken by cooks while your customer has been waiting for their entree for 30 or 40 minutes.

Being a good server takes a huge skill set and exemplary people skills!

Thus, pay a decent wage. Why subject these people to the whims of others and what they MAY receive in tips.