If you asked me how I felt about not working in a restaurant as a hostess, take-out girl or server this summer, you would probably see me exaggerating my “yes” response with a huge smile on my face and a sigh of relief. The past two summers and breaks back home I worked at California Pizza Kitchen, a casual dining restaurant chain that specializes in California-style pizza. I was more than delighted to get this job because of pizza, obviously, and it was the first one I applied for that I got immediately after my interview. I worked my way up from seating people, to putting together take-out orders, and then finally becoming a server.
When I started working as a hostess, I noticed how hard servers worked to treat their customers like they were their highest priority. I also noticed how customers treated them so rudely, most of the time for no apparent reason. The thing that I don’t think most people realize is that servers don’t just bring you your food. They are the reason the restaurant functions the way it does, because they have to make sure their customers are happy and satisfied all while serving drinks, taking orders, cleaning glasses and tables, expo-ing food, serving bread, bringing out high chairs, cleaning up after kids, refilling salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese, running dishes to the back, bussing tables, folding napkins, cutting lemons, and restocking, all while making sure YOU are happy and enjoying your experience. And people wonder why servers get a little upset and aggravated if people don’t leave good tips or any tip at all. It's not like they do this to you:
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Servers only get paid $4.95 an hour in Illinois, and it is even less in other states. Tipping was established so that restaurants could keep prices low by paying workers less. They don’t get to keep all of their tips, they have to tip out for the hosts, bussers, and bartenders, too. Credit card tips are taxed. If you leave no tip, we still have to tip out, and we are literally paying for you to eat at the restaurant. Servers live and die off of what you tip them.
The most discouraging thing as a server is to feel like you did the best job serving a table by being prompt, helpful, attentive, friendly, and respectful to them and they leave you a tip less than 15 percent. While a server always hopes to get a 20 percent tip, they are still okay with 18 percent or 15 percent, but less than that is a slap in the face. Tipping has become a permanent part of the way restaurants function, so treat it like one.
For anyone who thinks tipping isn’t necessary at a restaurant, please, please, please put yourselves in their shoes. How would you like it if you were making less than $5 of an hourly wage, where restaurants purposely pay less than minimum wage because tips are automatically assumed to be received, and someone didn’t leave you any tip at all? That sucks. Running around and tending to five or more tables at a time is not easy. Tipping servers should be taken more seriously by customers because the server is there to make your dining experience a great one, by tending to all of your needs, no matter how absurd they may be. Please consider this article as a message to you the next time you go out to eat and give your server a good tip (if they did a good job of course). They will appreciate it more than you know. Happy tipping!
Last thing I'll leave you with: if you can’t afford to tip your server, don’t eat out. It’s as simple as that.
