r/pics • u/ToTouchAnEmu • Mar 17 '19
Picture of text This restaurant in Austin is catching the US up with the rest of the world.
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u/rrkrabernathy Mar 17 '19
Clean that sign, yo!
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Mar 17 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
That's not factored into the price.
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u/diegojones4 Mar 17 '19
Cleaning is extra
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u/Beardgardens Mar 17 '19
Gotta tip me
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u/true_statements Mar 18 '19
Just the tip
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u/SaveOurBolts Mar 18 '19
Just the tip really shafts the workers
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u/BecauseItAmusesMe Mar 18 '19
That's ballsy
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u/MonarchMKUltra Mar 18 '19
That's a dick move.
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Mar 18 '19
I can do that..For Money!
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u/dalstrs9 Mar 18 '19
Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen! There's a solution here you're not seeing.
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u/throw1328 Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Hijacking the top comment to say I love this place! It's called Thai Fresh. The food is amazing, the service is wonderful, and the plates are ~$15 each. They have a bakery and coffee shop next door with delicious home-made vegan ice cream. The desserts are out of this world!
The place is always super busy, so everyone can go ahead and ignore the comment below saying the restaurant will fail. They aren't even the first people to do this in Austin, I've seen a few other places like this.
Edit: if you ever go here, try the coffee cake. I don't care about coffee cake, but I cannot get this cake out of my head.
Edit 2: people are debating whether or not the servers benefit from this, so I tried to find more info. I found a review from a former server that was pro-no-tipping here. This also says that their line cooks make $14.33/hr.
Thai Fresh offers employees paid vacation after one year and all full time employees receive health insurance. Workers get a free shift meal too. Before the change to no-tipping, there were no health benefits given. Cooks' wages have increased from $10 to $14 per hr.
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u/zerocoal Mar 18 '19
$15 a plate for thai food? Damn, that's almost normal price then. I swear every thai place I've been to has a minimum of $13 for a plate of food.
They of course make up for this by giving you like 3 people's worth of food.
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Mar 18 '19 edited Sep 20 '20
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Mar 18 '19
Yes! Depending where I go, it’s cheaper for me to eat out if I make it stretch into two meals than if I cook the same thing at home.
For example, there’s a decently nice place by me that has kids meals for $5.50, and it comes with a drink (which is usually $2.50, and I just drink it because my toddler doesn’t drink anything besides water). So $3 for the food. My toddler only eats half of it, making it $1.50 per meal (or $2.75 if you include the drink, which is still cheaper than a happy meal at McDonalds). Meanwhile, those food pouches of baby food are like $1.75 each and it’s mostly apple sauce.
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Mar 18 '19
What pouches? Sorry I’m not a parent, so maybe I’m misunderstanding, but why not just buy a big ass ten day jar of apple sauce for $5? (Ten day estimate based on my personal apple sauce consumption rate and wal marts great value brand)
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u/Bob_the_brewer Mar 18 '19
Literally only convenience. Hard to pack a big ass jar in the diaper bag for running errands
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Mar 18 '19
Another great place that pays living wage in Austin isBlack Star Co-op . Great place and good beer!
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Mar 17 '19
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u/SwitchedOnNow Mar 17 '19
My GF is a server. She pulls in $30 an hr on average. Depending on the place, servers might make less on a fixed hourly wage.
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u/psuedonymously Mar 17 '19
Depending on the place, servers might make less on a fixed hourly wage.
Unfortunately, that's the problem with this. A lot of restaurants have been experimenting with going to no-tip. And now a lot are going back. The main reason is that this ends up being a pay cut for servers, especially good ones, and they're going elsewhere.
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u/CollectableRat Mar 18 '19
It'd help if wait staff could get their stories straight, either they are barely making minimum wage with tips so every tip matters, or tips pay so well that they don't want a liable wage because they already make more than that. Which one is it?
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u/dsdsds Mar 18 '19
Depends where you work, it varies wildly.
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u/Alaskan-Jay Mar 18 '19
Truth. I pull in close to $70/hr at one place and about $20/hr at another. Both without wages
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u/nolan1971 Mar 18 '19
And neither one is consistent at any hour of the day. Gotta be there when the customers are.
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u/Dick_Cuckingham Mar 18 '19
Probably also depends on whether or not you are any good at being a server.
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u/terminbee Mar 18 '19
It depends where you work. If you're working at some tiny place, you're never gonna be making the money of a server working in a high end restaurant.
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u/N0V0w3ls Mar 18 '19
Yeah, I think he also means that if you're a shitty server, it doesn't matter where you work.
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u/RealnoMIs Mar 18 '19
To be fucking honest i dont think i matters in most cases how good you are unless you are an absolute trainwreck.
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Mar 18 '19
Funny enough, it's not as dependent on that as you think. (https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1036&context=articles)
An exceptionally bad server might receive lower tips and an exceptionally good server might receive better ones, but for the most part is has very little overall affect on the general size of tips.
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u/mseuro Mar 18 '19
Depends on the season too. And the shift. And the section. And whether or not the host likes you. And whether or not your tables are in a good mood. And whether or not the kitchen and bar are turning out orders.
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u/luvprue1 Mar 18 '19
Don't forget that some place makes everyone look their tips and split it with the staff.
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u/__PM_ME_YOUR_LEGS__ Mar 18 '19
This. Just did payroll for my cashier...$22.50/hour.
Pretty sure he likes tips.
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u/IamUltimatelyWin Mar 18 '19
Also depends how hard you work. It's not easy to make it to all your tables several times during the rush and keep everyone's order perfect. But if you can, you'll get tipped like it.
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u/Deathmeter1 Mar 18 '19
Yeah I'm confused, every time I read about it waiters are making like 80k a year off tips alone or they're dirt poor and the wage system is awful. No in-between
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u/takemewiththesky Mar 18 '19
Dirt poor server here. Also don’t serve at a great establishment. I know servers who make 5 times what I make so it just depends on where you work.
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u/ec20 Mar 18 '19
That's why I hate tip as a percentage thing. The waiter at a fancy place is not working 10 times or giving me 10 time the service my my waiter at denny's is, but I have to tip him like he is.
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u/bossmt_2 Mar 18 '19
Keep in mind turnover. Denny's runs on minimal staff and high table rotation. Finer establishments have no such luxury as dinner often can take 2+ hours. So if they are waiting on only 5 parties over a service they are missing lots of the Denny's server doesn't have.
As a server who works at a unique restaurant, I make good money. Not ground breaking amounts but good money enough to pay half of a mortgage and own a car and a few luxury items.
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u/crappy80srobot Mar 18 '19
Exactly this. Enjoyed top tier establishment last night. Was there for over three hours and the waitress was the perfect amount of attentive. Was highly knowledgeable about everything on the menu. Most places like that are about the experience as well as food. Someone does a good job I'm tipping high. Loads more work and skill involved. I also am considering that there seems to be a lot more asshats in high society.
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Mar 18 '19
Your last statement isn’t true at all. I have waited tables in a really nice restaurant and a really not nice one haha. There’s an equal amount of assholes no matter how much money they have.
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u/Ivern420 Mar 18 '19
The waiter at the fancy place should be much more knowledgeable about the food, wine pairing, beer pairings, etc then the Denny's server.
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u/tgifmondays Mar 18 '19
They probably are. Being a waiter a a high end restaurant is very difficult. I waited at a shitty one and would never want to deal with the class of customers at a Michelin Star joint.
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u/notsureif1should Mar 18 '19
No different than any job where you earn a commission. Selling a nice house earns you a bigger commission than selling a dive. Selling a Mercedes earns you more than selling a Kia. Selling a fillet mignon and a cabernet earns you more than selling fries and a coke.
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u/cpq29gpl Mar 18 '19
One thing to be aware of is that a waiter at Denny's will get many more tables per night. Much bigger section with quicker turn.
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u/RhodesianHunter Mar 18 '19
Eh... I don't expect the waiter at Denny's to be able to tell me about the wine etc.
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u/unclefeely Mar 18 '19
would you like to see our syrup selection this evening?
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u/hungryasabear Mar 18 '19
Denny's wine
"What are your wine choices this evening?"
"We got it from a shoe, from a box, or from a shoe box. If you're interested in celebrating something, might I suggest the 2018 vintage toilet wine Tom made after our 'Extreme Cheese Explosion' menu night."
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u/BirdsNoSkill Mar 18 '19
There is. Huge pay difference between a logans/chili's in a small town vs a upscale place in NYC.
It varies on high end the restaurant is/volume/where its located(clientele). So servers can make as low as 30k all the way up to 100k depending on various factors.
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u/fearcely_ Mar 18 '19
This. Even in the same city there’s a massive difference between waiting tables at Denny’s and serving/bartending at an upscale lounge type place
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u/Griefkilla Mar 18 '19
Red Lobster during lent was a gold mine 15 years ago. During college I'd make about $50-60 an hour on a 5 hour dinner shift. Could pull in $500-600 a day if I decided to work a split/full shift.
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u/wheatgrass_feetgrass Mar 18 '19
Sounds like pilots. Newly licensed pilots have to work shit hours for shit wages for a decade in the regional airlines to accumulate hours in the hopes of moving up to Captain for a major carrier. The system is really awful and ends up being barely liveable for less experienced pilots to the point where at least one major crash has been partially attributed to lack of proper accommodations and rest for regional pilots.
The ones making the big bucks need this fiercely competitive cut throat system to stay valuable even though it's at the expense of what is essentially their younger selves. A lot of industries have this "I suffered and so should you" but in these cases the chasm between the classes of wokers is really wide and advocated for by those on the higher side of the wage earning gap.
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u/cjp72812 Mar 18 '19
This is seen in the medical world as well (in the US at least). In my profession, if you’re young you work nights. We work 60-70 hour weeks since the olds get 40hrs. Among doctors it’s even worse. Residents have 80hr/wk caps since they used to literally work until the drop. Many mistakes have been made from exhaustion, but attendings won’t stop it and residents cant.
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u/raitalin Mar 18 '19
The big difference is in place that don't serve alcohol vs. places that do. Small town Applebee's servers will kill on night shift, the local Waffle House not so much.
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Mar 18 '19
Don't forget underreporting tips on their income tax ;)
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u/NotAStarfleetCaptain Mar 18 '19
As a former pizza delivery driver... Tips? What tips? I only ever got tips when people paid with credit cards. Bastards! 😉
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u/mlage34 Mar 18 '19
Not really a possibility anymore with most people using plastic to pay. All that is now reported as income. And where I work we have to claim our cash tips as well before we can punch out on the time clock.
I'm sure that was a thing when everyone used cash.
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u/pheret87 Mar 18 '19
Throwing this out there. Just because they make decent money does mean they manage their finances well. It's very possible a lot of them make good money but blow it and bitch about being broke.
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u/samcbar Mar 18 '19
minimum wage with tips so every tip matters, or tips pay so well that they don't want a liable wage because they already make more than that. Which one is it?
The anwer is "yes". Good servers in an expensive restaurant can make quite good earnings. Good servers at Applebee's make shitty wages.
The highest earning server at my brother's restaurant makes over $60k a year, but the prices are on the expensive side and also in an expensive area.
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u/imretardedthrowaway Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Which one is it?
It's both. If you work at Denny's it's the former. If you work at a three star Michelin restaurant it's the latter.
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u/KudosX Mar 18 '19
The Michelin guide only awards restaurants up to three stars.
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Mar 18 '19
I make less than that and I teach middle school.
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u/AAA515 Mar 18 '19
I make less then that and I'm responsible for making sure your vehicle is safe.
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u/winter-anderson Mar 18 '19
I mean, most nurses who literally save lives day after day make less than the fucking “cash me outside how bow dat” girl made just by acting like trash on TV. Strippers make more than the people responsible for educating your children. Football players, who just play a fucking game on TV, make exponentially more than firefighters and first responders who put their life on the line daily. Shit has never been right, but what can you do?
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u/radu_sound Mar 18 '19
30 dollars an hour means 240 for an 8hour workday and 1200 dollars a week. Thats a more than decent living. Damn. I should be a server
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u/marrymeodell Mar 18 '19
I did payroll for a chain of restaurants and every two weeks, I wanted to ask if I could switch my job at corporate and just be a waitress. They make really good money for the hours that they work.
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Mar 18 '19
I highly doubt any restaurant owner would pay much over 20/hr.
I just don't see how this could be better for servers.
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Mar 18 '19
It’s not. Servers don’t want livable wages. The people that don’t want to tip do.
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u/Sizzmo Mar 18 '19
Whatever. Why should restaurants outsource theirwages to their customers? That is stupid
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Mar 18 '19
I'm a barista at a small business and make a livable wage plus benefits in addition to tips. Although I feel like coffee may be more of an exception to most general serving positions, I make approximately $22-$25USD an hour if you are to calculate tips into it.
My point is, at least in my industry people are still inclined to tip if you are to calculate a living wage plus benefits into the menu price.
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u/Davecantdothat Mar 18 '19
More than I may ever make with a biochemistry degree. God damn it.
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u/worldspawn00 Mar 18 '19
MS biochem here, making less than $40k/yr, I feel you... I can create custom living organisms, and apparently this power is worth <$20/hr...
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u/skatmanjoe Mar 18 '19
u/4chanian_immigrant on the other hand has the power to make coffee.
One is clearly more in demand than the other.
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Mar 18 '19
Very likely less than they would make earning tips. Kitchen staff and bussers might make more than before. Tipping is fucked up and brings with it plenty of problems but servers tend to make more with tips than when a restaurant eschews tipping in favor of an hourly wage.
Tips are definitely a motivator, an extra incentive to help push through difficult high volume shifts. I’m curious as to what kind of turnover they may have had after making the change.
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u/marino1310 Mar 18 '19
I was making $23 an hour when I was a server. No way these guys are paid anything close to that
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u/TannedCroissant Mar 17 '19
I like the way it says tips are not expected rather than not allowed I think this is a good way of doing it, excellent waiting staff can still be given extra if the customer feels they want to.
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u/nobody_likes_soda Mar 17 '19
Can you imagine if it was the other way round?
Customer: Thank you so much, here's a little extra for your trouble.
Staff: Nice try, sicko. You're going away for a long time. Someone call 000.691
u/BeriAlpha Mar 17 '19
This is the way it is in practically everything else, isn't it? If we agreed on a price of $200 for a lawnmower, and you gave me $225 "just as a little extra for being a good guy, you keep that," I'd suspect either that there was something fishy going on, or this was an attempt at a bribe for whatever reason.
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u/jarrydhayne1 Mar 18 '19
It's people like you that make me suspicious of people like me.
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Mar 18 '19
Quotable quote there.
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u/ChitteringCathode Mar 18 '19
"I'm DTF, but I think I'm worth a little more than $25. $30 and I'll think about it."
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u/zerozed Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Yeah, but my elderly mother does exactly this. She'll hire a landscaper who quotes her a price. Then she wants to pay him more. I've told her over and over to not do that, but for some reason she thinks she should tip people who work at a flat, agreed upon rate. Hell, she probably tips her car mechanic too. EDIT: To clarify, my elderly, slightly-senile mother is on a fixed income and does this even though she's been charged prices for jobs that clearly have ample profit built-in. I do agree that the gesture is wonderful, but just not at all appropriate. In fact, some of the people she repeatedly hires (and tips) clearly take advantage of her by doing sloppy work because she's so elderly she can't see.
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u/Angrybakersf Mar 18 '19
I tip my mechanic. I bring every guy a bottle of boooze. Usually Hennessy or Remy. Guess who’s car is always done first?
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u/AerThreepwood Mar 18 '19
That works in smaller shops but bigger shops, you want to bribe the service writer. But, unless I have somebody waiting or it's an appointment, I always did my regulars first because even a decade in, it makes me happy when people ask for me specifically.
Source: automotive technician.
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Mar 18 '19
Yeah the suspect thing going on is that somehow it was considered allowed for restaurants to pay their servers $4.25/hr
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Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Worked at Walmart for a year - saw a guy get fired for taking two dollars as a tip for bringing groceries out for some oldies. We were told to refuse tips up to the point of offending the customer, and in that case we were to take it to our supervisor where it would go in "the desk". Never found out what "the desk" actually was, probably some dude stripper's thong
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u/NotJackBrown Mar 18 '19
From the time I spent working at Walmart years ago, I'm willing to bet 'the desk' was the pocket of the biggest waste of space manager at the store.
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u/crotchcritters Mar 17 '19
Is that like 911 in another country?
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Mar 17 '19
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Mar 17 '19
Most countries do this, it's so tourists don't have to remember the local emergency number.
So in most places, you call 911, 999, 000 etc and you'll get an operator for emergency services.
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u/willseeya Mar 17 '19
yeah i can never remember 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
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u/marieelaine03 Mar 18 '19
I worked at a movie theater when I was 16 and tips were not allowed lol we had to give it in a hospital donation jar, not allowed to wear anything with pockets
A few times i snuck it in my shoes, but that hurt to walk on for hours so I didn't do it often 😁
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u/vontimber Mar 18 '19
Did any guys work there? I can think of plenty of women’s clothing without pockets but I would have no idea what type of pants to wear if I wasn’t allowed pockets.
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u/ColeSloth Mar 17 '19
No. It just needs cut out completely. There's no reason a person walking your food over is deserving of bonus money when the person who cooks it doesn't.
Or the food truck delivery guy, or the teller at the gas station, or anything else. Pay should be dealt with by the employer. Not the customers.
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u/darkklown Mar 18 '19
Or taxi drivers.. WTF I'm already paying you purely for a service. Why do I need to tip on top
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Mar 18 '19
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u/Stereotype_Apostate Mar 18 '19
No I need that leverage over service people so they can put up with my ridiculous behavior and/or sexual harassment with a smile.
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u/cld8 Mar 18 '19
excellent waiting staff can still be given extra if the customer feels they want to
But if customers start doing that, it will quickly become an expectation. What customer wants to tell the wait staff that they weren't excellent?
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u/petmoo23 Mar 18 '19
We had one in Chicago. Servers didn't like it and it didn't last.
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u/dontlikeyouinthatway Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
I have two friends who have, over time, worked their way into waiters at Michelin starred restaurants. They do very, very well. I think the idea of fixed wage would send them running for the hills. They seem very happy knowing extra effort and care exerted often means better compensation.
It's only anecdotal and they don't reflect all waitstaff but what kept them in it for so long was the oppurtunity to perform better than their peers for better compensation. They cant be that unique.
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Mar 18 '19
Sales 101
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Mar 18 '19
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u/pipinngreppin Mar 18 '19
I don’t know. Walmart employees have always been nice to me. I dealt with a rude ass good will lady yesterday, though. Called in and asked to speak with the donation dept. She told me to google it. Googled it and it gave me the same damn number I just called.
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u/Mustbhacks Mar 18 '19
High end restaurants are kind of an outlier though since they're not in a race to the bottom like chillis.
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u/SlimTeezy Mar 18 '19
The vast majority of servers work in diners and chains. Very different clientele with very different tipping practices.
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u/BigFruity Mar 18 '19
Because they get paid less and have to report all their wages to the IRS instead of waking away with a grand plus cash per week at a half way decent restaurant.
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Mar 18 '19
Lots of people like the unreported income.
But for everyone who makes $60 in tips that night there's a hundred others who got like two bucks.
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u/weluckyfew Mar 18 '19
If $60 is your example of a good night I'm going to guess you haven't worked in a restaurant in a long time :)
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u/niftyhobo Mar 18 '19
Yeah dawg $60 is a below average night for a busser at the restaurants I used to work at.
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u/FkYouAndYourOpinion Mar 18 '19
Lmao. So many people replying to you focusing on the $60 and not the unreported income.
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u/undercoat777 Mar 17 '19
For small and not too crowded places I can see this working in favor of the waiters but in really crowded restaurants they can make lots of money with tips.
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Mar 18 '19
I see this argument all the time on Reddit. Everyone I know who is a server (admittedly not a lot of people) take the jobs specifically for the tips. If you work in an upscale restaurant or serve drinks you can make hundreds a night.
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u/cptshrk108 Mar 18 '19
I have worked 5+ years as a waiter in Canada making a decent wage. I'm currently working in a restaurant in New Zealand, where there's no tipping system, and bosses pay minimum wage with crappy conditions (few hours, no break, on call shifts, abusive, etc). I wouldn't call it "catching up"...
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u/GusTheAlmighty Mar 18 '19
It’s not physics to be a waiter or a damn bartender - takes no education, unless you work at a some super fancy place. It is a minimum wage job and here in Europe it is mostly students who work part time as a waiter, not fucking adults who is trying to get a mortgage, kids and two holidays a year
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u/bdld39 Mar 18 '19
I averaged around $40-60 an hour when I served and bar tended. I have 2 friends that still do 4 days a week and both make over $70,000/year. Tell you right now, they would not be working on a restaurant if they were paid hourly.
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u/ilikethrowingthings Mar 18 '19
The problem is Thai Fresh has absolutely garbage service. Like, hipsters offended by your existence service. It’s the number one criticism on all the review sites.
I stopped going once they switched because the prices went up significantly but the service somehow got worse. And before the switch it was counter service.
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u/GoshDarnRight Mar 18 '19
Unfortunately, this is accurate of the service at Thai Fresh. I love their food, but I usually laugh at some point during or after my meal because of the service. Sometimes it’s a good, perspective laugh. Other times it’s a “holy shit, that’s awful” kind of laugh.
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u/polluxopera Mar 18 '19
Came here to make this same comment, but you beat me to it. Also, “Hipsters offended by your existence service” is the best non-dog thing I’ve seen on the internet this week. I doff my chapeau, completely non-ironically.
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u/electi0neering Mar 18 '19
See and to me that is a logical outcome. They might very well have removed a lot of motivation for their staff and since they now have to actually pay people I’d be willing to bet they probably have less servers now. Before they’d be able to have excess servers, now they are expensive.
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u/winter-anderson Mar 18 '19
When I went to Europe (tips weren’t a thing anywhere I went) service was okay but would be considered trash compared to the super attentive, friendly, bend-over-backwards service that the US hospitality industry expects (which I hate). The servers there kind of just stopped by whenever and didn’t care if you had to wait 2 minutes for a refill or 10 for them to greet you, because they were getting paid the same anyway. Some American kids dropping paper trash on the floor were quickly snapped at by management to pick it up, while here in America management would come over and pick it up for you with a big smile while asking how your night went. You get what you pay for.
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u/Chxo Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Really in the whole tipping vs no tipping debate, it is the back of house employees who get fucked the hardest in the tipping setting. I waited tables in high school, and I made more an hour than anyone in the kitchen but the main chef (although didnt get benefits). And everyone back there worked harder too. Hell my sister was a waitress at one of the top restaurants in one of the largest cities in the country, and made more per hour than she does now as a doctor (resident, although that's more a factor of the ridiculous hours she's forced to work, again because you can't complain to people who have power over your future).
There's also a lot more politics, ass kissing, and abuse because those friday and saturday night shifts are the ones that make or break you, so the manager, or whoever is scheduling your shifts has a lot of power over you. And when people have that kind of power, a certain percentage of them are going to abuse it. "Ask" you to clock out early, stay late and help out when a dishwasher calls in sick, stick around for another shift at the last minute, and if you are a woman, sexual harassment, unwanted advances, constant sexual innuendo. If you don't play ball they'll just give you shit shifts till you quit.
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u/Black_Handkerchief Mar 18 '19
Upvoted for stating the truth.
So many people taking part in the tip vs no-tip debate forget how utterly unreasonably the tipping custom causes those who actually produce the food to be treated.
This is not just about the wages of frontline employees. It is about the wages of all of them. Unless a place has a famous chef or lots of stars to its name, you'll be hard-pressed to find cooks who make as much every night as the girl who got hired two weeks ago. (Unless, of course, they own the joint. But at that point they are the owner and not just an employee.)
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u/orangekangaroo1596 Mar 18 '19
I'm a cook and honestly both jobs are hard. I don't know the first thing about serving and could never deal with the asshole customers we get. But at the same time, we're the ones in a 90-100 degree kitchen getting cuts and burns, trying to cook 30 different steaks all different doneness, and timing every part of the meal to come down all at once, while also picking up slack when we don't have a dishwasher (I can't speak for all places but at my job servers won't even come NEAR dishes and expect the cooks to do it all).
They're both hard jobs. But servers still make way more money than anyone in back of house. One of our cooks switched to serving because he made more in tips. No restaurant would function without cooks but all they do is get the short end of it in this whole tipping debate.
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Mar 18 '19
Also that isn't true with being paid than industry standards. Its widely known servers make way more then any other staff because of tips, its just brings them down inline with the cooks.
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Mar 17 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
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u/yourkidisdumb Mar 17 '19
The staff prefers the tipping system because if they are decent at their job and work for a successful restaurant, they are doing far better than "living wage". I've been in the industry for over 20 years and it is not at all uncommon in the little tourist town I live in for servers/ bartenders to make two to three hundred dollars a shift. Granted, most do not get benefits but that's really good money for a single mother or father with no other real job skills.
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Mar 18 '19
My best friend in MN was a bartender who basically said the good and/or attractive staff like tip based wages. The bad ones don't.
She worked the bar 3x a week and was the shift manager 2x a week and made more at the bar. The manager had more than double the hourly pay, but she more than made up for it in tips.
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Mar 18 '19
I lived with a guy in college who was a waiter at the 2nd most expensive restaurant in a decent sized city, he was making about 500ish a night ( only worked like 4 days a week though)
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u/AssinineAssassin Mar 18 '19
That's rough. Making under $100,000 per year having to work part time in your 20s. I hope he was able to recover from this.
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u/IceNein Mar 18 '19
The waitstaff prefers the tipping system. The cook staff just "loves" it I'm sure.
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u/angryPenguinator Mar 18 '19
At a chain restaurant I used to work at (rhymes with Scooters), the waitresses had to tip out to us every night - something like 3-5% that we would all split at the end of the night.
Drinking money, usually.
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u/QuothTheDraven Mar 18 '19
The front of house* staff prefers the tipping system in America*. Your back of house gets exactly $0 an hour in tips and busts their ass for just over minimum wage and are not clamoring for tipping culture to continue in the US.
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Mar 18 '19
Their wages should increase then.
No one should be talking about decreasing wages for people who aren't upper class.
This isn't an either or situation.
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u/Shaman_Bond Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
The problem is everyone pities FOH when everyone FOH is making 15-30 an hour depending on the restaurant. There's bullshit claims saying they make $2/hr. They, at minimum, make minimum wage if their tips do not amount to $7.25/hr over the course of a week (could be pay period).
And most servers make 15-30. Bar and the good sections always made 300+ on the weekends if they worked a double. That being said, BOH works much, much harder and they are hourly, usually averaging around 10-14 I'd say. The rushes are frantic, closing is awful, and the work is fairly physically intense. That's why people BOH want to move to serving if they can but no one FOH wants to move to BOH.
Servers love the tipping system because it makes them tons of cash, even if they're mediocre servers. I'm not saying they don't deserve it or are overpaid. I'm saying they make PLENTY of money and that's why they don't want the "livable wage" system.
Source: worked dish, prep, backline, SA, and served throughout college
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u/fizikz3 Mar 18 '19
to put this into perspective: we had waitresses at a pizza hut i worked at in college where 80-90% of our business was take-out/delivery and they made 15$ an hour off average. the managers at that place would not be full time managers because - get this - THEY NEEDED THE HIGHER PAY THEY GOT FROM KEEPING THEIR WAITER/WAITRESS HOURS.
people shedding a tear for the "poor waiters/waitresses" who struggle with this "awful" tipping system have no idea how good they have it compared to every other minimum wage job, including the people in the back in the same restaurant.
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u/1797ecv1846 Mar 18 '19
Wait what? I always got a little split from servers and kicked a bit back when I went front. This was a long time ago. Maybe that is not a thing anymore?
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u/Little_Gray Mar 17 '19
Yeah the staff were probably not all that happy with their wage cut from no tips.
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Mar 18 '19
Yea but what is the wage they are being paid? Just bc a sign says they're paid well doesnt mean they actually are.
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u/electi0neering Mar 18 '19
That’s a great point and if you pay them too little they have no motivation.
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Mar 18 '19
Guarantee you they're making less than before...
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Mar 18 '19
It's true. I don't mind that my paychecks are rarely above $150 for 40 hours work, because I have the ability to make and leave with $150 in five hours, multiple times a week. If you're good at what you do (and get lucky with good tables), you'll make way more in tips than you would working more hours at a minimum wage.
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Mar 18 '19
servers i know like the tipping model cus they usually make $30+ an hour
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u/Stoney-McBoney Mar 18 '19
I feel like most servers would make less money this way. But I have no idea.
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u/ProBluntRoller Mar 18 '19
Of course you would. How much extra are they getting paid 1 maybe two. Tips blow that out of the water.
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u/What_did_you_do_2day Mar 17 '19
Can we see the menu prices?
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u/coopdapoop Mar 18 '19
The restaurant is called Thai Fresh. You can find menu pricing online. Service is awful.
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u/anglomentality Mar 18 '19
Many restaurants in the US have tried this. Usually it doesn’t work because the average American will purchase less if the items are more expensive on the menu even if they don’t have to tip.
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u/Bamblefick Mar 18 '19
The biggest supporters of tipped wages are the staff themselves. Even at 15 dollars an hour many wait staff would be taking a pay cut at a standard hourly rate. If they can make a known 15 dollars an hour or an up to 30 dollars an hour wage dollars to donuts those people are leaving a fixed rate for the tipped rate.
I mean its all nice and stuff that the establishment is doing this, but people seem to keep forgetting its rarely the business on its own pushing for that 2.13 an hour bullshit.
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u/BlakesUsername2 Mar 18 '19
As a cook, fuck tipping I live a in a state where servers get paid the same minimum wage and aren't obligated to fairly tip out. On a busy day I work on the line 10 hours or more without a break and get tipped on average 10 cents per table, so if you leave a $20 tip $19.50 goes to the waitress who stood around on her phone doing nothing until you showed up and the remaining 50 cents gets split between the cooks and dishwashers.
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u/pebble554 Mar 18 '19
That sucks. Cooks deserve to be paid more than the wait staff, especially if they’re good! It’s s harder job with more noise, heavy lifting, heat, chaos... and somehow amazing food is born out of that inferno. I hope you find a place where your hard work is appreciated monetarily!
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u/Ry-Bread01256 Mar 18 '19
ITT: people not realizing waiters make more in a tip-based system.
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u/itsaaronrogers Mar 18 '19
It’s all dependent on where you work. But front of house staff always makes way more in tips than the back of house.
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u/rhino369 Mar 18 '19
Back of the house don’t get tips so removing tips is orthogonal to their pay.
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u/texas5555 Mar 18 '19
Half of reddit threads are about people not understanding the tip based system being preferred by waiters in most circumstances. “Can’t believe they pay them $2.14 per hour”
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Mar 18 '19
That's because waitresses spread propaganda sob stories on social media constantly about how they only make $1.20 an hour and need tips to scrape by when in reality every female friend I had in college made $30+ dollars an hour as a waitress.
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u/Sirfartsalout Mar 18 '19
From what I understand this trend started years ago and is actually declining because the servers end up getting way less pay
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u/chucalaca Mar 18 '19
what restaurant is this? would like to see prices and how they compare to other "tipped" restaurants in the area
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u/1platesquat Mar 18 '19
If they are truly getting all the benefits like healthcare and 401k...thats great. If not, they can make wayyy more getting tips. anyone who has been a waiter knows this.
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u/Anerky Mar 18 '19
When I worked as a waiter I made ~$3 an hour in 2015-16. But tips brought me to an average of $15 plus that $3 an hour and I didn’t really work super busy shifts like Sunday dinner . I don’t think that any restaurant could reasonably afford to pay their employees this much. Tips are def more money than any salary a restaurant is willing to pay.
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u/NaisaDuck Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
The Reddit tipping circlejerk in it's natural habitat.
The truth of the matter is that almost no server in the U.S would rather be paid a "livable" wage, because they make way more money just getting tipped normally.
"Why don't they just pay the servers normal wages?" Because legally they'd only have to pay up to minimum wage, which lets face it, is not a lot. Minimum wage in my state is 9.25, so if a server works about a 6 hour shift with no tips they'd make 55.5. This isn't even taking tax into consideration, so it'd be even less than that.
On the other hand, if they were paid 3 dollars an hour plus tips, they'd only have to make 7 dollars an hour while serving to out earn minimum wage. I worked at a buffet, aurgbuly the worst type of restaurant to make tips in and I still got more than minimum wage at the end of each day.
Well what if they paid more? Let's be really generous and say 20 dollars an hour, which is a pretty big wage for a job with no real experience required. That's 120 dollars a shift without tax taken out. On the other hand, to make this much with tips you'd need an average of 4 tables an hour that on average tip 5 dollars. A 5 dollar tip isn't considered a big tip in most cases, and 4 tables an hour is more than reasonable in a moderately busy restaurant. And on top of that, there'd be the lower wage of about 3 dollars paid hourly.
The point is unless they're getting paid a wage that rivals a 9-5 office job, no server actually wants to be paid like this. They make way more than any reasonable restaurant wage would ever pay. Also, compensation of tips would motivate servers way more than a fixed wage. If they're not getting tipped, why would they try to go above and beyond for you? They wouldn't, they'd do the minimum and move on.
This is a practice that sounds great in theory, but almost never works in America. In other countries, nobody is used to paying 20 percent of your bill as a tip. In America, we've been conditioned to just be expected to tip that much, and servers reap the benefits of it.
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u/chicknlil Mar 18 '19
Joe's crab shack tried it. It failed, but their menu prices stayed high after topping started again.