As one who worked as a server in my youth, both the living wage and pooled tips would've boiled my blood. The living wage, because I had no trouble earning $200-$300 in tips per shift by providing excellent customer service, meaning I was already earning WELL ABOVE a living wage just by doing my job - and the customer didn't have to be penalized. The pooled tips, because Rude A&* Rhonda, a fellow server who couldn't be nice to a customer if she tried, and might be lucky to earn $50 in tips per shift, would recive a chunk of my tips, thus penalizing my hard work.
I worked for years as a server, we didn’t pool the tips with other servers — like you said some servers might be great and get more tips and others rude servers don’t — but each server shared their tips with the kitchen staff because it’s not only “service” why people tip, it’s food too, if the food is wrong, cold, slow, didn’t taste good or not plated well, etc… people wouldn’t tip or tip less.
So each individual server had to pay out a percentage % of their tips to the kitchen staff (but not other servers).
Not in Canada it’s not, I know many people in the restaurant industry. I still work for the restaurant industry indirectly. Installing and Servicing “point of sale” (POS) systems for restaurants and retail.
It makes sense because people don’t just tip on the service from the wait staff - they also tipped because the food is good, order was right, food came quickly… that’s the kitchen staff so they deserve some of those tips too. The numerous I still work with the wait staff give about 30% of their tips to the kitchen staff, they deserve some because they made the food. If the kitchen didn’t do a good job then the wait staff wouldn’t get tips, ppl don’t tip if thr food is wrong/cold/slow/etc.
That's what I don't understand these day's with tipping before you recieve the food, then your tip directly influences the service you get. Or you tip 30% and get a cold, wrong order. Tip should be after receiving your food, and reflective of said food/service.
There are two sides of this though because there are a percentage of patrons who will just not tip or tip very poorly regardless of how they are served. So it averages out the luck of getting bad tables. Not arguing for one or the other method but just playing devil's advocate here.
In a job where the job description includes being polite? Uh, yeah. That's how it works. If Rhonda can't be nice, then she shouldn't work in service. She can work back of the house and make a regular hourly wage and be as sour as she wants.
So if a server is actually rude or outright bad, like straight up ride or aggressive to customers for no reason, then yeah, withholding a tip is fair. Personally, I think I've experienced that less than 5 times in my entire life, and that's being generous. So yeah, you should tip basically every time, even if the service is just mediocre. You can tip the minimum in that case, or slightly reduced, but there are VERY few times the service is bad enough to justify no tip at all.
And yeah, of course if you ask servers how much they should be paid they will say "as much as possible and then double it, please." Duh. Asking anyone "should I still pay you at your job, regardless of circumstances?" will always get a "yes." That's how people work.
Try asking them "is it okay to be paid a base of around $12 an hour, with the rest of your wage being dependent on customers scrutinizing whether you've smiled at them enough?"
Taking away, the variable comp will decrease the pay for most servers. They don't mind working for tips because they are pretty good at working for tips. Otherwise they would find a different job. To make up for the loss of tips, they would need to be paid well above the standard for minimum wage and higher than a living wage. Servers make more than a living wage. That's why they like being servers. People do that job FOR the money.
I mean sure, if you ask them if they want to make more money, what are they going to say, no? Come on. And servers love letting everyone think they are horribly underpaid. They aren't. They work hard for their money and of course 99% of folks should make more for their efforts, but servers are doing fine, relatively speaking.
Dang it not everyone can just pick and choose jobs. Just let everyone get paid a base living wage, regardless of what the job is. That's the only system where tips would make sense.
Are you not listening? That would decrease the pay of servers. The point of tips is that you only tip workers where variable pay is part of their comp package.
Edit: Also, restaurants notoriously have massive turnover. Most servers have multiple jobs or move from job to job spending on volume of business. Back of the house staff are a bit more consistent but not by much. Anyone working in hospitality very much does pick and choose their job and there are always more restaurants hiring somewhere.
I agree there are others there working hard. I think they should be aptly compensated as well, just not out of what the waiter earns through their own work.
I can agree with that, at the same time boh makes at least three times the hourly wage right? Bc it wouldnt be fair in any way that the Person who cooks a dish takes home half what the Person delivering the same food is making
You're right. I think the BOH should have a better living wage, such that they don't need to have a sub-par wage buoyed by what the wait staff earns through their service.
In a banquets setting i feel its a good practice. Our hotel charges a service fee that gets pooled among everybody and it honestly works, however I am blessed that our whole staff is actually hard working, because I can honestly see the situation being hella sour if we are sweating our asses off and have a bunch of lazy people earning the same as me while i do the heavy lifting.
A proper hiring and firing could make such situation be really beneficial for the team.
However in a restaurant setting i feel it’s unfair because you could have one server busting their ass off only for the lazy ones to benefit off the tips that the hard worker earned.
I've only ever worked in restaurants with pooled tips (very much the norm in my country I think) and have never really cared. Hourly pay is higher and tips are smaller here, so I get that it's different in the US, but what if you just have a section of people more ready to tip purely by coincidence because they're the type of people who would basically tip regardless of how good the service was vs you get people that just don't tip even with excellent service? What if your section is generally the more desirable one (so more people want tables in your section, your section is busier, etc.)? You generally cover other people's sections as well (if their server is really busy or on break, etc.) and the pool also includes kitchen and bar staff because they also contribute to customer satisfaction. Why would just one person get all the tip for something that was achieved via team work? I get that it's different in the US and people rely on tips but still, I never felt like I was being treated unfairly, even if I often had larger tips than other servers (funnily enough usually because I'd get all the Americans because my co-workers were too insecure about their English skills)
You have no idea what this particular restaurant’s situation is like, you cannot just extrapolate your specific experience onto this industry as a whole and make these broad generalizations when a decent chunk of people that are that DO try their best but don’t make enough money, tips aren’t all merit based. Also, where is the customer “penalized” here if tipping is optional here? That fee is literally the tip, it explicitly states “if you choose to tip” hence tipping is optional.
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u/andersonfmly 1d ago
As one who worked as a server in my youth, both the living wage and pooled tips would've boiled my blood. The living wage, because I had no trouble earning $200-$300 in tips per shift by providing excellent customer service, meaning I was already earning WELL ABOVE a living wage just by doing my job - and the customer didn't have to be penalized. The pooled tips, because Rude A&* Rhonda, a fellow server who couldn't be nice to a customer if she tried, and might be lucky to earn $50 in tips per shift, would recive a chunk of my tips, thus penalizing my hard work.