Posted on 01/31/2013 8:54:33 PM PST by Altariel
An Applebee's waitress who posted a receipt with a note from a pastor complaining about the automatic gratuity added to the bill on the Internet was fired on Wednesday after the pastor complained to her manager.
Chelsea Welch, the waitress, wrote in an email to Yahoo News that the pastor (who has since been identified as Alois Bell) told Welch's manager at the St. Louis-area Applebee's that the ensuing firestorm had "ruined" her reputation.
"I give God 10%," Bell wrote on the receipt, scratching out the automatic tip and scribbling in an emphatic "0" where the additional tip would be. "Why do you get 18?" (There were more than eight people in Bell's party, triggering the auto-tip.)
Welch, who snapped a photo of the bill from a fellow server and uploaded to Reddit, defended her right to post the receipt. "I thought the note was insulting, but also comical," she told Consumerist.com. "And I thought other users would find it entertaining.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Well said!
There is a lot of debate here about tipping, but not about should the receipt have been posted on a public site. From the business owner point of view it is not good for business to have it’s employees make fun of the customers publicly, even if all the facts are true. I took time to read the story before posting (this time) and the customer signature was clearly displayed in the post so that she could identified. The waitress that posted it was not the waitress that severed the table but a co-worker. This more of a social media problem where you can post something with your phone before you think about it.
I can understand both sides in the story. I don’t like auto tips. And I know how cheap people can be.
“Alois Bell is a she-”pastor”
Wow! She is filling 2 “bad tipper” stereotypes. The “after church” is a terrible shift for servers and then it is well known that black people tip are extremely demanding of their servers but tip awefully!
“we tip well...by that I mean at least 15% but most often closer to 20%...”
Actually, that is pretty average. Tipping well would be 20% and above. I’m sure yours are appreciated tho, I just wanted to offer a small bit of clarification.
;-)
Which of course led to the common phrase uttered by waiters, “Dangit, I just got a bunch of Canadians at my table.”
Haha, the best part of the video were the dudes high fiving behind her!
The Sopranos did a scene on something similar. Chrissy and Paulie settled a tip dispute with a waiter in a very unique manner. A case of thinking outside the box :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwisejuNOro
I prefer the term she-male.
Yeah...if you ever wonder why you have VERY few friends, a divorce or more, or why there is a general lack of respect for your “genius”, just think about your post and how you care more about yourself than anyone else in your world. I’ve met/known few people like you...thank God!
Yeah, all the cheapskates I’ve known have their “philosophy” of why they don’t tip. Very, very sophisticated too.
Cheapskates, like a few above and the customer in the story, have their, oh so original, ideer that businesses ought to pay waitresses and valet parking attendants sufficient wages so that they would not have to rely on tips. As I said, how original! Take it to the United Nations, because in the United States tipping is an established custom, and a good citizen in any society observes established customs, and doesn’t excuse his petty self interest and greed by pretending to be a revolutionary rebel when disregarding such minor in the end customs. Contemptible, is the word I have for those who stiff waitresses and other low wage employees. Not only do you stiff them, you rob them of the earnings they might have received if a decent human being sat at their table. Stay home and plot your revolutionary plans of tipping free society!
Well that's a silly expectation.
Most adults who weren't raised by wolves understand that in our society you tip the server. It's been like this for what, a couple of centuries? It's too bad your servers have to suffer for your contrarianism. You should at least have some honor and warn them in advance that you're not going to tip. Then they can choose not to waste their time and effort on you.
If owners would increase their prices and pay their wait staff a decent wage we could do away with the outright thievery of tipping, just another way to steal your money.
Water finds its level and you're going to pay for the server's effort one way or another -- either in the form of a tip or a higher price. The difference is that when it's in the form of a tip the customer is in a position to give the server direct feedback on the quality of their service. Which will tend to increase the quality of service, which is a good thing.
Amazing that this is hard for some to understand.
Amen, brother. Contemptible is absolutely the right word for these non-tipping philosopher-revolutionary slobs.
LOL!
Must be a real joy to serve. I come from Restaurant owners and workers in the family. I doubt you could be a repeat customer in certain restaurants. Amazing.
Then you don’t really understand how restaurants work and how tipped employees earn their living or how business works overall.
The Federal Minimum Cash Wage under FLSA for tipped employees is $2.13 per hour (although it is higher in some states and a restaurant can always pay more, but most, excepting for high end establishments, don’t). Whatever the server receives in tips, the employer applies those tips in the form of a “tip credit” up to an amount no greater than necessary to bring the server up to the standard Federal minimum wage which is currently $7.25 per hour (or higher in some states). But if the server doesn’t make enough in tips to apply to the tip credit to bring them up to the minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. I know a bit about this being a payroll professional.
So either way; good service or bad, the server is still going to make at least full minimum wage under FSLA but if a majority of customers stiff on tips and the employer has to make up the difference out of their bottom line, you are still going to pay the server’s wages, either by supplementing their measly $2.13 per hour with tips or absent any tipping and or very poor tipping, in the form of higher prices as the employer has to make up the difference for you cheapskates and we all end up paying a higher price that has nothing to do with the quality of service we receive.
I very rarely tip. I hate tipping, I pay for a meal and expect the wages of the staff to be included in that price. If owners would increase their prices and pay their wait staff a decent wage we could do away with the outright thievery of tipping, just another way to steal your money.
Then you would be happy to pay much higher prices at restaurants for the privilege of not being expected to tip your server and wouldn’t feel like you were being robbed? That you would be willing to pay $20 for your average Applebee’s entrée instead of $14.99? And that with no incentive for the server to go above and beyond since they’d in most cases only be making minimum wage no matter what, do you think that would improve service?
Like it not, and I’m not sure I like this system BTW, it is predicated on the idea that restaurants that have very slim profit margins and that by providing very good service they can pay the minimum of $2.13 per hour to their servers and keep the price of their meals reasonable and that customers, pleased with their service, will tip their servers accordingly or at least to the extent that it will bring the servers up to minimum wage, but if the service is very good or exceptional, it will bring the servers up to well above minimum wage - a very real incentive to provide good service – Capitalism at its finest.
I worked for a living since the age of about 15 and not one customer of the businesses I worked for(mainly lumber industry)ever paid me or any of my co-workers a tip.
But I’m sure you were paid at least the full minimum wage and not the equivalent of $2.13 per hour that restaurant severs make absent tips. And in many establishments servers have to share their tips with busboys and even sometimes with bartenders, greeters (Maitre d) and cooks. And some servers have to perform other tasks like bussing tables and helping with food prep for which they don’t earn tips over their shift. I bet you didn’t have to share your hourly wage while working at the lumber company with any of your co-workers or make less per hour for sweeping the floor.
This is also why many restaurants add an automatic gratuity of 15% to 18% for large parties of 8 or 10 or more, as someone else on this thread correctly stated, large parties tend to not tip very well. I suppose it’s because 18% on a $40 restaurant bill doesn’t seem like that much but 18% on a $200+ bill seems like too much to many, but keep in mind that for a large party, there is often more than one server involved and several busboys and that auto gratuity is shared among them all, not to mention often having to rearrange and put tables together, add extra place settings, provide high chairs and other demands that large parties often make, like at the very end of the meal, demanding separate bills, all paid by separate credit cards – a real PITA for the servers and a greater expense for the restaurant in credit card fees.
But bottom line, no matter what you were paid per hour while working in the lumber industry your employer still passed along the cost of your wages and your benefits and employment taxes and their other overhead costs and an allowance for a profit margin along to their customers. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t stay in business very long.
ETA – I am for a woman (women and blacks on average tend to be poor tippers), a rather generous tipper except where the service was exceedingly bad – 18%-20% on average. And when I’ve been part of a large party, I’m often the one who will add extra to the tip to make up for the cheapskates in my party. I also tip my hair stylist 20%. Why? A lot of people don’t realize that in many salons, the hair stylists have to pay rent to the salon for their “chair” and have to pay for many of their supplies like scissors and razors and pay for their annual licenses and for continuing education out of their own pocket.
I never worked in the restaurant business but over the years I worked off and on in retail – grocery and convenience stores and for a big box retailer for a few years during Christmas and put up with a lot of very rude, crass and nasty people while working my butt off for minimum wage. I didn’t receive tips but those customers who were nice, who appreciated my efforts to serve them well, were treated accordingly. Repeat customers who were consistently rude and nasty, well, not so much. When I was 19 and working at a convenience store, one time a woman got a cup of coffee and the creamer curdled. I profusely apologized and offered to get her a new cup and fresh creamer from the walk in box and what did she do? She told me to “shove the coffee up my a$$” and then she threw the cup at me, nearly hitting me in the face with the scalding hot coffee and stormed out. I should have called the police but she left so fast and I was so shocked, I didn’t get her tag number. The very next customer who came in saw the look on my face and the coffee stains on my clothes and said, “Looks like you’re having a bad morning”. I just smiled and pretended like it never happened. But honestly sometimes it was hard not to take out my frustrations over nasty customers on every customer. More people should keep that in mind when dealing with service workers and treat them more like they’d like to be treated.
Agree on all points. I tip from 20 to 30 percent unless the service is willfully negligent because I’ve been there and know what it’s like to be dependent on tips.
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