Tips, originally an acronym for To Insure Proper Service, are something most people who are waiters and waittresses need to learn to appreciate instead of expect.
Orginally in the past a tip was a small amount of money placed on the table at the begining of the meal. The waiter knew what to expect if he gave good service, and the patron could take money away or add to it depending on how well the server did.
Now, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me before I say what I have to say. I have two roommates and both of them are waitresses at resturaunts.
Making rent every month for them can be very interesting depending on the amount of tips they get.
Also I have been a pizza delivery guy and I know what it feels like to depend on tips.
The real problem is that people in any tipping profession (waiters, pizza guys, strippers), learn to expect a certain amount of tips from any given person.
If tips are something extra for doing a good job, why should you expect to get tipped every time? Sometimes there is a mistake and sometimes the kitchen messes up (take it up with the kitchen).
In the end, if you are a good waiter, all the bad tips you complain about for hours on end, equal out with the great tips that you think about for 10 seconds. I know there are bad tippers out there, but there are great tippers also.
The other thing that really gets me steamed is the common complaint that waiters “only get $2.15 and hour.”
That’s fine and dandy, but it’s not true. A waiter is given, initially, $2.15 and hour as their legal minimum wage.
If, after you count your tips, you have made less than $5.15/hour for your yearly total wages, the government will subsidize your wages to match the $5.15/hour.
Not a single waiter I know uses this, because every year when tax time comes around they realize they have made more than $5.15/hour, more than your average Joe Schmoe college student.
On top of that, most of the waiters I know don’t claim all of their cash tips on their taxes so they pay less or get more.
So to you, Mr. Novosad, I say sorry you got a bad tip; s– happens. Get over it!
And to you Mrs. Baker, sorry you got a bad meal; s– happens, and your tip shows how you feel.
I do think that Woody Wallace is out of line and unintelligent for being rude to a paying customer, but as you and he will see, negative advertising will run its course and TW’s will lose customers, like me.
As Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink) puts it in “Reservoir Dog,”, “If [waiters/waitresses] don’t like their jobs, then I have three words for them, ‘learn to type’.”
Go out and get a real job.