You’re very welcome.
First off, thanks for ignoring my many typos, and I’m sorry for my impatient tone, but I was getting ready to eat, and the first post I made didn’t come through, and got erased. So I was a little miffed at starting over. This topic is also a bit of a pet peeve of mine, because there are several editorials written into the local paper each month about this very issue, and the entitled youngsters get upset that they’re not making 6-figures (that’s entirely possible in Vegas, where I’m originally from).
Oh, and yes, as you said, I have waited tables, for years, as a matter of fact. I have done everything in restaurant service from dish washing to being a cook, cashier, server, delivery driver, wait staff, supervisor, assistant manager to General Manager (over multiple locations).
As I said in an earlier post, I rarely eat out anymore. The service in the area I live is terrible, perhaps the worst in my experience. I have won an award from the chamber of commerce in Las Vegas, including breakfast with the mayor. When working for a large restaurant, I was employee of the month on occasion, and I have also had out of towners write into the paper to name me by name. I worked for one restaurant chain, and had more comment cards sent into the corporate office than all other employees at all others stores combined for nearly a decade (all positive). I’m not trying to toot my horn, but rather qualify that I understand good, and bad, service. When I was younger, I would always tip (being from Las Vegas, where service is great), regardless of service, because I knew that everybody has a bad day. I’ve lived in my current area (there are multiple small towns, but only one large, main, one) for the better part of a decade, and not only is the food not very good, but the service is terrible. At first I would just tip my minimum (15-20%) if the service wasn’t good. But then I began to not tip when I would have really bad wait staff. (Only once or twice have I had really “good” staff here, the rest varied from, pretty bad to, “don’t come back”).
Anyway, that’s why I have the pet peeve. In places where I have to hail another server because mine’s busy flirting with college boys, or I have to go looking for someone to get me a drink because my server is in the back, texting, and on and on, I figure, “Why bother?” I was, after all, a cook, so I can make it at home, for half the price, and exactly to my taste. That having been said, I think we should get rid of the whole tipping process altogether. Someone higher up in the thread said that if we did that, then we’d have food cost 30% more. That’s pretty inflated. A well run restaurant has between 20-24% labor costs. Well, it’s full service and you remove the cooks, supervisors, dishwashers, etc. who aren’t paid in tips, then if you raised your servers to $10/hour, you may see a 2-4% cost increase, depending on what your meals cost in the first place. If a waitress is serving 5 tables/hour, and in theory gets an 8 dollar/hour raise, then each table pays about $1.60 more per meal. Now, that depends on the number of people sitting at the table, but let’s say it was for 3 people, or 50 cents a plate. Well, if each person orders $15 of food, then the cost goes up by about 3.5%. So it depends on how much you’d pay them, and the demographics, etc. But I’d rather pay the 3.5% and not hear all the yapping about the 15%, 20%, or 25% now being asked for as a tip. I know this post was lengthy, but that’s why I don’t agree with tipping at all. However, the side consequence is that restaurants are very competitive, especially right now, and many cannot afford the labor cost, or to raise prices. So, there’s probably no really good solution to all the problems in the situation.
30% is about right. You forgot taxes for wages that the restaurant would have to pay.
I know of a place that tried it, and that was the result. Also, they had to pay the wait staff more because to attract good help. In the end they went back to tips, because it was cheaper for them.