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 ...
I am with you 100%. Minimum wage is an abhorrent concept, and even worse is the concept of a “living wage”.
The next time I’m out with my group of “let’s go to lunch” friends and they say Apple bees I’ll make sure we go somewhere else. My little boycott for firing that waitress.
Anyone else find it telling that the pastor is a New England protestant?
(And just to be clear that I’m not picking on Protestant Christians, “New England Protestant” excludes just about any denominations anyone who might read that post on Free Republic would belong to.)
The tip is part of the cost of eating out. It’s how the waitstaff get paid. But it is also optional, in that the customer can choose the amount to tip. OK, fine, we all know that.
The problem is that there are many possible reasons for a negative dining experience, and the waitstaff has control over only a few of them. The customer’s feedback mechanisms are (1) reducing the tip, (2) lodging a complaint with the management, and (3) not coming back.
#2 is inconvenient and requires a fortitude that a lot of people don’t have. #3 is easy but probably wouldn’t be attributable to a specific problem. #1 is easy and satisfying, but not necessarily fair. But it’s the easiest course of action so that’s what most people are going to do.
Back in 1990, I waited on a party of 8. Then, their bill was well over $100, a huge sum at that time. They left me 4 quarters for a tip. The party of 2 in a booth near that table gave me $10 for all the grief they witnessed me undergo.
The preacher was an ass. Tips are optional, but are also payment for service. If you got service you owe a tip. I will under tip for lack of service, but if you don’t believe in tips, then don’t go to a sit down restaurant.
Ah, the good ole days when you could under-report tips and avoid supporting the welfare state with your hard earned (and still low) earnings. Out of that minimum wage you were paid, all the SoSecurity taxes and such were withdrawn, so you were paying your required minimums. But cash tips? What tips, Mr IRS Agent?
And you know what? You couldn’t buy a car on credit, couldn’t rent a decent apartment, not because you avoided taxes, but because your job was viewed with such contempt. And still is!
I can go both ways on that. I feel that it’s morally reprehensible for a restaurant owner to underpay the staff and have them depend on the largess of the customers to make up the difference in their salary. And then take part of that. I can understand that busboys and cook staff don’t get tips other than what the waitstaff offers but then cooks get paid more. Just saying.
You understand completely. I’ll bet you did a great job. If you do your job well and consistently, you make out.
Not only you, but your employer. People DO go to places for great service...granted, if the product isn’t great, service generally isn’t going to cover that flaw. But if things are anywhere near each other in product quality, service wins out.
ditto
Methinks that ‘pastor’-ess is a member of one of those churches that promote socialism (that the gov should take care of the flock). IE....Black Liberation Theology. Not a church at all. As with Jim Jones.
It's like getting a real back massage for $50 or getting a $1 mechanical chair massage.
I think it is more rare to run across a pastor writing such ignorance.
Then the @sshole employer should pay them what they are worth.
Instead they get to advertize that $2.99 steak sandwich and make their profit by stealing the wage of the server and getting the suckers who go in to take advantage of the bargain prices, only to discover that they must pay a toll to the server.
You don't like the pay take it up with the employer. Good luck getting him to raise his price in order to pay you a living wage.
There are advantages to a system where service providers feel they have to earn their pay. There are also disadvantages in that the same system allows many service providers to receive unjust rates of pay. But of course you recognize that if you don’t pay an adequate tip, it’s the waitress who gets gypped.
And the wait staff at Applebee's doesn't "demand" a tip. It is automatically added to the bill by Applebee's if the table has 5 (I think) or more people to serve.
Thank you very much for that response. I really don't want to divert the thread any more than I have already. I'll just mention that FReepers not familiar with Frances Perkins would be well-served (pun partly intended) to read more about that despicable woman. Along with fellow travelers Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace, that satanic trio set the stage for Barack Hussein Obama. They all share the common trait of never having worked an honest day in their lives.
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Our kids are working their way through school serving tables.
They get stiffed the most by high school students and worthy Mormon priests in white shirts and ties. They see them coming and pretty much plan on no tip.
i think you sum it up well.
I tip fairly well for great service and a great meal, usually 20%, but the opportunities to do so for me are becoming less and less frequent. Money is much more dear than it was five years ago.
If it’s acceptable service for a decent meal, the scale slides downward. Fifteen, maybe even as low as ten if the server didn’t really have to bust his or her hump too much to take care of my table.
Bad service, whether it’s incompetence, inattention or just a nasty disposition will earn a dollar no matter what, unless the bill is under ten, another increasingly rare thing.
The people who absolutely DEMAND a tip are invariably the least capable of earning one, in my exposure.
Don’t get me started on automatic gratuity, the service is always mediocre. They know they’re getting it anyway, no reason to put that much effort into it.
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