Tipping Points
I’ve never been a waitress. I earned my pocket change in high school working at my step-dad’s pharmacy and the local flower shop. In college, I worked retail at a bath and body store in the mall and at cool jobs around campus. After graduating, I went right to work in my chosen career, publishing.
That said, I have huge empathy and respect for those who can make a living waiting tables. Faced with that much humanity in a day, I’m not sure I could be nice to my cat, let alone any other people. And that is why I tip well.
Especially at places I frequent on a regular basis. At the Tin Hat, my regular bar when I lived in Seattle, I’d get a bill for $20, oftentimes, I’d tip $20 on top of that. After a few months of at least weekly visits, the staff had become my friends, (and they made whiskey sours the drink special on Thursday nights, just for me, but that’s another story). At my regular coffee place in Pioneer Square when I worked down there, I’d tip a buck on top of my $1.50 grande drip. What’s that, like, a 65% tip? Just ’cause I liked the people.
Of course, that was all before I moved to Portland–a city so famous for it’s bad service even die-hard fans and native sons like GTB, who will defend all things Portland with his teeth and fingernails if necessary, admit that it’s pretty dismal. It’s a rare occurence for me to eat out in PDX and NOT been frustrated, if not flat-out baffled, at least once by the crappy waiter.
Seriously, it’s mind boggling. And I don’t consider myself to be that high-maintenance when it comes to this kind of thing. I read Waiter Rant. I understand busy nights, and slow bartenders, and that the awful-tasting food isn’t the fault of the person serving my table. But when I can see the bar, and that my drink has been sitting on it long enough that condensation is running down the glass, and my waitress is standing in the corner having a ten-minute long conversation with another waitperson, I get a little miffed. Follow that with a twenty-minute wait between table-clearing and check-getting, and you can be sure she isn’t going to get more than 15% out of me. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is still a pretty damn good tip for shitty service.
This morning, I read this article. And it’s got me wondering how Oregon restaurants pay their employees. In Washington, I could be fairly sure that the tip I left for my waitperson was going directly to the waitperson. So despite what they were making for a wage, they knew exactly how much pay was coming right from me. In Oregon, if they are having to share the tip with busboys and kitchenguys and hostesses, maybe my tip doesn’t mean as much.
I’m sure there’s a flaw in my logic here. I’d love to hear about it if you think there is.
In either case though, I’m still a big believer in tipping appropriately for service. So I disagree vehemently with the proposed idea of adding an automatic 20% to every bill. If the service is worth 20%, great! If not, well, too bad. You’re still going to have to pay it.
Plus, and I know I don’t know enough about this to even go here, but shouldn’t the restaurants be responsible for paying their employees? If waitpeople are having to share their tips or are otherwise being paid so badly that they aren’t even making minimum wage, why is that my fault?
Anyway, I could go on and on about this, but I’m pretty sure the more I write about it, the more I’m going to alienate my future sister-in-law, a perfectly lovely and professional, and, by all acounts, stellar waitress.
Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.
September 18th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Having spent my fair share of time waiting tables or cocktailing through high school & college I’m the first to tip well if the service is good. I can say that when I worked in Phoenix the state was allowed to pay us a whopping $2.60 an hour based on the fact that they knew we’d be recieving tips. If you sucked and you didn’t actually make good tips you were always on the losing end of the equation. I can say that it is NOT fair for the state not to at least pay minimum wage – in fact I really believe that restaurants should take a bit more pride (and dip into their own pockets) to pay a bit more for a bit more skill. Especially when we know the price paid for a burger at McMenamins and the price for a good steak at a fine restaurant aren’t deserving of the same hourly wage. Hell – go ahead and pay your bus boys and dishwashers a decent wage as well so that they don’t go home with a lousy extra $30 at the end of a long shift and feel shafted every time. I’m sure it would encourage many to improve their level of service and those visiting their restaurants would be that much happier….