The truth about tipping

Yes at Ruby Tuesdays they have three automatic tip outs that comes out of your check. One goes to the host, one to the bar tender, and one to the salad bar manager. There is no direct tip outs like at a lot of restaurants. A server doesn't go up to the bartender at the end of the night and give him money. It is automatically removed from the servers pay check and put onto the bartenders paycheck. This $2.13 an hour doesn't help servers at all. What corporations have learned is they can put all kinds of employee's on that scale. They can keep their labor cost low. The tip out comes from tipped employees to keep other employees hourly rate down. It is a shame because all corporate restaurants of that style use a similar system. O'Charles, Chili's, Applebee's, Red Lobster. The list goes on. The truth is these places are a repetitive hiring business. The only way to make true money (not temporary money) is to move up into management. Assistant managers are not payed that much, but get great money by bonus. Labor cost, hence tipping shares. Food cost, ever increasing food cost. can you say $8.95 hamburger. The food cost is going up an the service is not getting better. Servers should be paid minimum wage. Their tip count could then be dropped down to 10% and the corporate restaurant bonus system should be done away with.

That is so true. I am going through here reading the responses, and most people don't understand. The servers are being hit by the IRS and the restaurants themselves. Servers are getting the short end of the stick. As this practice starts to be more widespread then it is. The service quality will continue to drop. Even white table-clothe restaurants will be poor service, or your food prices will go up to compensate the tip outs.

Most restaurants have an automatic gratuity for tables of (8) eight or more. The sad thing is once the bill is paid the waiter doesn't receive a dime. The thing is; it is included in the bill, and thus is part of the establishments cost. So to say. In some places if one doesn't tip the waiter over that automatic gratuity. He doesn't make any money. It also works the opposite way in other places. So the waiter will make more money if one tips over. It is tough working for a table of 12 people for over two hours just to have a automatic gratuity That is taxed, and taken by the establishment to cover their cost first before you get a dime.

As a former waiter, I like getting tips from the customers. Interestingly enough, I was a pretty good waiter, giving excellent service, and I did quite well in tips. Tips give a waiter incentive to really break their ass for their customer. In fact, I was known to buy an occassional drink for some of my regulars. I was making a good wage, part time, just out of high school.

And I didn't have problems "splitting my tips" with the bar tenders and bus boys. In both cases, the customer doesn't actually interact with them, and tipping them is an incentive for them to work harder. Of course, I'd occassionally tip them a bit extra for a little extra service: Whether it was clearing my tables a bit faster, maybe getting me an extra customer or two a night, or finding that my drink orders got taken care of a bit earlier. And something I found was that bus boys and bar tenders that slacked off didn't last long at the restaurants I worked at.

Mark

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