I don’t know where the ignorance for food staff comes from. As a daughter of a server and someone who has worked in a restaurant, I can’t even fathom treating someone this poorly.
There has been a post circulating Facebook recently of a man saying that he puts $5 under a knife in clear view of the server and every time a mistake is made or something is not to this man's liking, he removes a dollar. I have an issue with this for a multitude of reasons.
First off, unless you are going to a place where the price of food is low enough to make $5 a decent tip, $5 IS NOT A DECENT TIP! I believe that even with crappy service, give at least 10%. But if you had good service and a nice meal, give 20%. If it was amazing service, give a little more if you can. Some of these people live off of tips. That is their main source of income. If they work their butts off and receive very little tips, it’s like a slap in the face.
Secondly, taking away a dollar for every mistake while the server is right there is rude. What if the mistake is not your servers fault? They can’t control what the chefs in the kitchen do. Now I’m not saying servers are always perfect, but some things that people see as “mistakes” are things that normal people do. People forget things, especially while working in a high stress environment like a restaurant. So just take it easy and don’t hyper-analyze what they do.
Lastly, remember that your server is a person too. Sometimes they have off days. Sometimes they have so much going on outside of the workplace that some of that stress slips into their mind no matter how hard they try to keep personal life out of the workplace. They have families to support, loans to pay off, rent to pay. My dad works at a restaurant part time as well as working a full time job. He does it not only for the extra cash, but he likes talking to people. He likes customer service. But when he gets home from a night of work, at which I know he worked hard, and he has made barely any tips it’s like, why bother. He is doing this for my family, not just for himself, and for that I am so grateful. I also used to work at the carry out counter for a restaurant and would hear the horror stories from the other servers. I will never forget the day a waitress was waiting on a table for almost the entire lunch period, taking care of them because lunch is usually slow so she had not had many tables that day. Well when the people left I saw the waitress almost in tears. They left no tip. Nothing. And it broke my heart. This young girl just trying to do her job. A job that relies on tips. It’s the reason whenever I go to a restaurant I try to tip the best I can. For people like my dad. For the people that really need it. For the people that are just that: people. So just remember that next time you go out to eat and are thinking about not tipping your server.
