If you've ever been to nearly any restaurant in the United States (sans fast food restaurants), chances are, you know exactly what tipping is. What you might not know, however, is as much as people generally consider tipping to be more of a "luxury" for a server than something that is just common courtesy and common decency, it's really not "just a luxury" and should not "only be given for good service." But, before I get into too much of a rant about that, let me just make one thing very clear: under no circumstances is not tipping your server an acceptable thing to do. At all. Ever. I know that you might get frustrated and you might begin to feel like tipping is more of a privilege than a right, but from a server's perspective, let me break down to you why that just isn't fair to us, as much as it isn't to you.
1. Your server is human too.
Do you make mistakes? Do you have bad days? Do you get sick sometimes? Do you ever have those days when you just don't want to go to work? Do you ever have those days when it just seems like nothing is going right? Those days when you don't want to be around people, but still have to be? So, basically, given the fact that the answer to all of those questions should hopefully be yes (because if it's not, whether or not you're human is coming into question and then we have a bigger problem than bad tippers), then are you indeed a human being? Yes.
And guess what?! Your server is too. We make mistakes, and yes, I understand that you're paying into restaurants and you're expecting things to go as smoothly as possible, but trust me, so are we. When mistakes happen, they're usually far and few in between and we will do everything we can to make up for it, but yelling at us over it and threatening us with our tip doesn't exactly make us want to do that. We're only human, just as much as you are, and let's be real here: being human is damn hard sometimes.
2. You might not be blaming the "right" person.
Now, I'm going to preface this by saying by no means am I playing the blame game and I'm not trying to point fingers, because there is no "right person" to blame for anything that goes wrong. But when you begin to think of reasons as to why you're not going to tip your server, think of what every position in a restaurant could be and what their job description is, because chances are, that's not going to fall under what a server does. As much as we'd like to pretend we're Superman/Wonder Woman, we're really not. Unfortunately.
If your food is taking longer than you expected it to, chances are, that's not your server's fault. Sometimes, bigger parties come in, and those can backlog a kitchen like no other. Sometimes, there's just a lot of tables taken in the restaurant and orders are submitted as they come in, so there might just happen to be 10 to 15 orders in front of yours.
If the dishes or your table aren't as clean as you'd like them to be, it's also something that servers have little to no control over. By all means, we'll grab a host to wipe down your table again and we'll grab you a new set of freshly cleaned dishes from the dish tank, but neither of those things really immediately fall within our job description. If being seated is taking longer than you'd like, again, that's really no one's fault, as frustrating as it may be. We clean tables as fast as we can, but we won't and never will rush guests out of the restaurant to make seating you a speedier process. It's just the way going out to eat works unfortunately.
3. Two words: tip pooling.
If you've never been a server or if you've never known someone who worked in the food industry, you might not be all that familiar with what tip pooling is, and if you're not, that's totally okay! I'll break it down for you in the simplest terms that I can. Every night, a percentage of what a server's total sales were for a night (usually somewhere between two and seven percent) are calculated and taken from whatever overall tips the server happened to make that night. And, yes, it is calculated from overall sales and taken from the tips, and not just the tip sales taken from tips.
And of course, putting two and two together means that every bill that a server has in a given night counts into that amount of total sales. So, when you choose not to tip anything whatsoever (trust me, I'd rather have someone leave me a dollar or some loose change than nothing at all), that means that server literally just had to pay to wait on you instead of getting paid to do so. Sure, it evens out for the most part, and sure, it's really not that big of an impact in the long run, but when you're expecting to make money off of a table and instead end up losing it? Yeah, definitely not a great feeling.
4. Serving is not an easy job.
Yes, there are much more complex and difficult jobs out there in the world, but guess what? They're usually compensated accordingly. And before anyone tries to pull the whole card of "getting a real job" or "you knew what you were you getting yourself into," you're not wrong. I knew exactly what I was doing, but guess what? As a full time student, the job opportunities that I have aren't exactly the most widespread occurrence and couple that with a lack of experience in most major areas and the lack of a degree, and these kind of jobs (sans retail, another personal hell I have no intentions on going back to) are all I really have to choose from.
But, they're not easy jobs. I can't count how many times I've heard people saying "being a server can't be that hard, all you have to do is take orders and carry food." Trust me, I wish it was that easy, because honestly, that's just the bare bones of what servers have to do. Yes, we take orders and carry food. But, we're also doing this for multiple tables at a time, especially on a busier night. At my busiest, I've had six tables and I know of servers who have had nearly double that. So, when you're trying to keep track of what food goes to what table, what drinks each table had, how long it's been since you last checked on them, whether or not they were ready for their check, and a few dozen other questions that will inevitably run through your head at some point, it becomes significantly more difficult.
Now pair all of that with having to stand on your feet and be in a state of near constant motion for hours on end and it's definitely not as easy as it might seem. I'm not saying that it's an impossible job by any stretch of the imagination, because as previously stated, I know it's not the hardest job in the world. But trying to write it off as being easy and something that "literally anyone could do" is offensive and laughable.
5. Tips are literally what we survive off of.
Living in the United States means that we live in a country where it's been deemed acceptable to pay employees who work in industries where tipping and gratuities are not immediately included -- but still considered common place -- a wage that falls significantly under that of the national minimum wage. I'm fortunate enough to work in a state where the minimum wage for a tippable employee is about half of the standard minimum wage, but there are still plenty of other states where their minimum wage for tippable employees caps out about $2.50/hr maximum.
As a server, it also often considered our responsibility to break even, meaning that we're going to put our best foot forward and wear the best smile that we can to make that happen. But, when you choose not to tip, you significantly damper our chances of breaking even for that day, let alone making anything over. Some days, especially during the week when restaurants are generally slower, even breaking even to the state minimum wage proves difficult, so, regardless of how many hours put in, you're still not even making what the living wage would even be considered.
To top it all off, when it comes down to tax season and paying off taxes, nearly all of our income from what we're being paid directly per hour is taken away and claimed by the IRS. As such, that means that tips are literally what we end up surviving off of, because in the long run, we're not going to be able to call that money we make hourly ours for very long anyway. So, before you choose not to tip the next time you go out, just take all of these things into consideration. Even a 10% tip will be more appreciated than nothing at all, trust me.
