Posted on 02/02/2013 6:16:20 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
An Applebee's diner refused to leave a tip for religious reasons. The waitress who exposed it wonders if Jesus will pay her bills.
I was a waitress at Applebee's restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke.
This didn't even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night.
Someone had scribbled on the receipt, "I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?"
I assumed the customer's signature was illegible, but I quickly started receiving messages containing Facebook profile links and websites, asking me to confirm the identity of the customer. I refused to confirm any of them, and all were incorrect.
I worked with the Reddit moderators to remove any personal information. I wanted to protect the identity of both my fellow server and the customer. I had no intention of starting a witch-hunt or hurting anyone.
Now I've been fired...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Them and ex servers! When we go out to dinner, and if it gets out I’m an ex waitress, boy does the service amp up.
The absolute worse tippers are: Women, who are teachers.
What are you supposed to tip hair cutters? I just am flummoxed on this.
Dismissing the topic of the minimum wage, a concept that as Conservatives, FReepers ought to uniformly oppose, characterizing a wage -- any wage -- as obscenely low strikes me as surprising, especially on a site where free enterprise and liberty is held in high esteem. It comes very close to the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street filth who protested against obscene profits.
Perhaps we depart only in semantics with the word "obscene" being used. More substantially, any employer should be free to pay his workers any wage that he sees fit. If the wages are such that workers are hard to come by, then perhaps the pay rate should be increased. I strongly advocate for the unfettered marketplace to work via its invisible hand. For me, adjectives such as "fair" and "obscene" applied to a rate of pay are anathema.
Those points aside, I'm sure we completely concur that the government (at any level) ought to keep its grimy hands out of the pay rate between a employer and employee. Anything else is nothing short of tyranny.
I think it is at the heart of the capitalist mindset, the way I laid it out, and the mindset that expects a tip no matter what is a liberal/union type of mindset.
If I work in a restaurant as waitstaff and want to make money and have a rewarding job, I work my ass off. If my co-workers don’t like it because I put them to shame, I am not slowing down. I can control how hard I work, and if I want to put on roller skates or not take my 15 minute break so I can keep up and keep my diners happy, then by God, that is what I am going to do. People can’t and generally won’t tell you to slack off.
But I know for a fact that happens in unions. There are times when they don’t want an eager beaver around. They may tell him in polite, collegial, oblique, and friendly ways that he needs to dial it back a bit. But if the line isn’t toed, the remarks will get more abrasive, adversarial,direct and even threatening.
You take that mindset, put it into a waitstaff environment, and your restaurant is doomed. Doomed, There is a reason you see carcasses of restaurants everywhere you look, and the main reason is that they forget they have to provide people with a reason to patronize them. Sure, there is a lot of bad management. Inexperience. Poor personnel selection and even poor training. but I think that when restaurants fail, they fail because the first thing that customers see in a dying restaurant is poor customer service, the interface with the customer.
In the town I call home, there was a pizza place. Been there for years, more than thirty. Everyone went there. When you had a party, that is where you got your pizzas. The guy who ran it was an Italian guy, Angie. Knew all his customers, great guy. Always gave you a wave and a shout when you came in, even if you only came in once every few months.
As Angie got older, something changed...probably something personal, outside of work, don’t know what it was. But his job became...a job to him, and he worked at HIS business like an hourly employee who didn’t have a stake in his own enterprise.
One day my brother went in, one of his most loyal customers. Not the kind who tells ten people about a bad experience at your restaurant, the kind who tells ten people about a GOOD experience at your restaurant.
My brother ordered a Tuna sub, and when he sat down and took a bite, it didn’t taste right to him. You know how tuna subs are...if one of the components go bad, it takes the entire meal down with it. In this case, something wasn’t right. My brother walks up the counter and says “Angie...this sub doesn’t taste right to me.”
Angie looks at him, looks at the sub, smells it and rips off a piece and eats it. He puts it back on the counter, looks at my brother and says: “Tastes fine to me” and just looks at my brother. My brother started to say something, stopped in mid-sentence, looked at Angie, then calmly turned around and walked away.
What Angie should have done when my brother walked up the counter should have been this:
MIKE: “Angie...this sub doesn’t taste right to me.”
ANGIE: (Makes direct eye contact, puts down the pizza and walks directly up to his customer with a look of grave attentiveness) “Sorry, Mike. Can I get you something else? Do you want your money back?”
MIKE: “Could I have a Steak and Cheese sub instead?”
ANGIE: “Absolutely.” (in one swift motion, grabs the sub and with as little fanfare as possible, slides it into the trash under the counter, making as little fuss as possible) “Have a seat, and I will have that out to you in five minutes. You want a Coke or something? Just grab one out of the cooler over there, on the house.”
Instead, Angie lost a loyal customer by deciding to die on that beach over a stupid $4.50 sub, which cost him a heck of a lot less. Bad business, bad customer service.
He went out of business in a few years. I was in my late twenties when that happened, and the guy was gone shortly thereafter. With a few more years to reflect on it, I feel bad for Angie. He must have lost his way. Maybe his wife left him. Maybe he had an illness, maybe his kids were problematic. I often think something must have changed, because he stopped with the over the shoulder look, wave of the arm, and “Heya! Mike and Bob! How are you boys doing today? What you want today?” I often wonder.
Part of me hopes it was something like his wife leaving him, rather than him just getting tired of serving pizza and subs and making satisfied customers.
And the other part of me (in equal portions) hopes it was the other way around.
80 percent of the time I give 20%
5 percent of the time 15%
15 percent of the time much more than 20%
It is a habit and it blesses people.
I worked in the industry once. I know how important tips are.
Gratis is undeserved favor. It is “grace”
Thank God for grace.
My daughter (Iraqi vet), see my page, waitressed before joining the military. Now, her and her husband (5 tours) are vets and getting their lives back to normal. Guess what she’s doing while both of them going to school?
Shure, the owner is raking it in. Except if you have been to a food store and scene that the price of virtually everything has close to doubled in the past five years. That relates to wholesale prices as well. Also the massive government interference in the job market, LIKE O’Bumbler care, new regulations on food service, employment, significantly higher taxes on property, sales and government services. Don’t forget, the owner is paying payroll taxes on 8% of the employees sales on top of the wage.
Restaurants are a highly risky bet, One bone chip in a chicken salad sandwich, or an olive pit in an olive sandwich and some lawyer has you bent over. Add to that the fact that you have to buy right, price right, advertise right, and some how get the right amount and mix of people into the joint in the first place.
If the owner paid minimum wage or greater, the prices would increase a minimum of 35% making the 2 for $20 more like a 2 for $35. That is a Hell of a lot more than 15-20% on good service. If the service is poor, I tip less, maybe 10 - 12%, or I tell the waiter about it. That will generally lead to a manager talking to you and giving a deal or a free meal. Even than I tip for the wait staff. Most of them are working pretty hard and as long as they are nice and try to do well, they deserve a reasonable tip.
McDonalds and Burger King go for the clients that don’t want to tip.
I don’t think a business owner changes tradition for 1% of A-holes.
As we left, I was last f-i-l in front of me. We passed the waiter, who held the tip tray out (the bills were spread, like a poker hand) and he said:
"Sir? I believe you may have made an error..." (as he said this he tapped the bills)
f-i-l w/o missing a beat said:
"Oh, I think you are right. Thank you for telling me."
He then reached out and took a 20 from the tray (the service had been terrible).
Indeed. And I would then serve the food to myself and keep the 18%. As matter of fact, that's what I do - if I step into a [fast] food place I just buy food. I have arms and legs and I'm quite capable of carrying my purchase. I don't need to hire someone else to carry a tray for 10 yards.
I never give tips; but at the same time I never visit places where tips are expected. This way restaurant's people are happy, and I am happy. Perhaps they'd like to see me as a customer, but they need to change their ways for that and get rid of tips, like this:
I then look at the prices and make my decision. I pay what the number says, and that's it. I hate uncertainty and fuzziness.
Congressman passes a bill. leave a tip... No wait, that's always been the case.
Isn't that in a nutshell? This is the problem with America, they control how hard they "not" work. Thanks gov.
The guys at that table ripped him a new one.
"Whadda ya want? Her to suck your di@k or something? Cough it up, cheapskate!"
Nowadays a "Mr. Pink" refers to a stiffer.
That is a great story!
I experienced a memorable moment in a restaurant a few years back, also watching a group of deaf teenagers. There were probably about ten of them with a couple of adults with them.
They looked and acted like most rambunctious teenagers at a place like that do...but in this case, they were signing madly to each other.
There were two of them, face to face, signing furiously at each other. The longer they were face to face, the faster the signing got, and the higher their hands got, until their hands were directly in front of their faces, so they couldn’t probably have even seen each other’s faces.
Suddenly, one of the adults appeared right in front of their hands (facing me) and calmly placed his his hands on top of theirs, his left hand on one kid’s hands, his right on the other pair.
They stopped signing, and the adult slowly pushed their hands down to the bottoms of their thorax.
For a split second it didn’t hit me. Then it did all at once., and I nearly fell on the floor when it did:
“Keep your voices down.”
We make $3.50 an hour. Most of my paychecks are less than pocket change because I have to pay taxes on the tips I make.
Wow, you're better without that job, whiner. Anyone who continues to work as hard as she describes for so little money is an imbecile.
I wouldn’t of been able to watch that and not do anything about that, some people need occasional reminding of gentleman like conduct or ladylike conduct. That’s extremely ignorant of them.
Hahahahahaha! I would have paid money to see that!
I’m a very good tipper, however, I also have a strong negative reaction to “autotip”.
I agree. They are both idiots. But I take more issue with the waitress. She was the professional. The customer was just an idiot, a commodity of which there is no shortage.
That said, even them most pig-faced idiot of a customer knows they can spend their money elsewhere.
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