My current profession is as a server, and has been for the last three years. I wouldn’t go so far as saying I particularly like serving, but I enjoy the flexible scheduling and the short hours. I greatly enjoy having cash at the end of each shift and having an instant source of income rather than waiting every two weeks for a pay check. I enjoy working in a relaxed environment with people that are mostly close to me in age and shared cultural experiences. Also, my job is pretty fun; I serve a lot of interesting people and genuinely appreciate many of my guests. However, it really grinds my gears when I work hard to give people excellent service and facilitate an all-around pleasant dining experience, only to be virtually ignored and then tipped less than 10 percent, or even flat out stiffed.
Serving is a popular job among college students, since the hours allow for plenty of class and study time, and one can still make enough money to pay the bills. Serving is a popular job period; students, non-students, single mothers, married mothers, young people, older folks, those looking to make just a little extra cash, and people who just can’t find a job doing anything else. There are literally millions of servers out there and we all suffer the same plight: working hard for next to nothing. Tipping is a nationwide societal norm, almost every single American, I am sure, knows servers do not get paid hourly. We make our money from tips, and that is why we expect to get tipped. I realize poor service does not always warrant a decent tip and some restaurants pay their serving staff hourly and tipping is not expected, like coffee shops and “fast” food places. We all know what kind of restaurants we should tip nicely at and which ones we don’t necessarily need to tip at, it is common sense, and I like to think we all have some level of common sense.
I wish I could stop the people that simply do not tip at the door and ask them, “Why? What was the reason you thought to come in to my place of business, take up over an hour of my time, have me run back and forth; refilling your iced tea 12 times and bringing you ungodly amounts of ranch dressing and rolls, making sure you have everything you need to have an exceptional dining experience, yet you feel that my service does not deserve a tip? Not even five dollars… WHY?” But if I did this, I would most likely lose my job, and as we all know, ain’t nobody got time for that. Serving is not the most ideal profession; we are on our feet for several hours, we work when we’re sick, we don’t get paid vacations, we get blamed for mistakes made by the kitchen, we’re treated as if we are invisible half the time, and there isn’t a lot of prestige carried with the job title. But those more than generous, or just reasonable tips, are what make it all worth it; tips reflect our service, giving us a sense of pride in our work, and tips pay our bills. As a server, I do not burn myself carrying hot plates, break a sweat running from the kitchen to the dining room several times so you never go without soda, or be virtually ignored by the table all night, just for fun. Those are all elements that serving entails, and that’s just the brink of all the ambiguous duties and relentless responsibilities a good server is defined by. Serving is not as easy as people tend to think; staying positive proves to be a challenge when each tip received is a whopping five dollars, despite the total amount of the bill, and tables continuously camp, or each guest turns out to be ruder than the last. Positivity is a trademark of a good server, so as the guest, you can help us keep our spirits up by being a polite patron.
So the next time you go out to eat in a decent, sit-down restaurant, try to act responsive to your server and occasionally smile back. Servers are not inanimate objects, nor an object of ridicule. In fact, servers are not objects at all, they are people too, complete with thoughts and feelings. And when the check comes, think, “Did my server make my meal enjoyable? Did they work hard to make sure I had everything I needed, including my fifteen extra sides of ranch?” If so, put a little effort into the tip, since the server certainly put a lot of effort into your dining experience. And seriously, if you can’t afford to tip, don’t go out to eat! Spread the word to your friends: serving is not a hobby, it’s a job, and the payout comes from tips. I know $2.13/hour seems like a lot, but it really isn’t folks, it really isn’t.
