A controversial topic, this. It comes up on every restaurant blog: tips and the people who leave them, tips and the people who work for them, tips and the people who don't leave them. Most of you know how I feel about the subject - I'd prefer to do as we did at KVI, and add a "service charge" to the bill which would go toward paying the dining room staff an hourly wage. I loved it, the customers loved it, and the young people who worked there loved it. However, it was this last part that forced us to do differently here at BT - we were unable to attract seriously professional servers because of the sporadic way we distributed that service charge; we should have done it differently, but, live and learn and now we are back to being a tipping restaurant. That being said, at least we are pooling tips here - also not always a very popular choice for the staff, but it seems to be working okay here. Pooling - for those of you who may not know - means that at the end of the shift, all of the tips that the staff made are put together, the bussers are given their portion (usually 15% of the gross), and the rest is divided evenly by the crew who worked that meal. This works well in a place like ours where the stations - how the dining room tables are divied up - are a little uneven in popularity: people love the booths and so these are seated steadily all night, while the "back row" seems to be considered "Siberia" by the guests, and therefore not too well used unless it's really busy. This can mean that the waiter who has "station 1" - with the ever-popular booths - will be a lot busier that the one scheduled in the back, which is seated last and often not much more than once. With pooling, this makes no difference - tips are shared evenly and no one is penalized because they are in a slow station. They help each other and if one person is busy, someone else might pick up a table in their station and no one minds or feels like they're losing out. Pooling is okay by me, if I have to have tipping.
Something else some of you may not realize: the servers make $3.08 an hour, half of the minimum wage. How can that be? Because they are supposed to be making their pay through the tips left them by the customers they serve. By law, they must earn at least minimum wage with the tips they receive; if they don't, then the business has to make up the difference. And of course we could pay them more than $3.08, but I don't know too many who do - except in states like California where the unions create an entirely different atmosphere in the restaurant business. Once they declare the tips they've made and the taxes are paid, the servers often get no paycheck from the business where they work. Some places take advantage of this "free" labor and make the dining room staff do the work of prep cooks and house keepers - maintaining the salad station or cleaning the bathrooms perhaps. (On a personal note, I once worked for a restaurant owner like this - and when I was on bathroom cleaning duty, I would walk into the rest room, stand there for a few minutes, turn the water on, turn the water off, flush the toilets and walk out again. I was not going to clean the bathroom for the going rate of $2.14 or whatever it was back then in the '80s.) At BT, the servers get the things ready they need for service - the butters, creamers, sugars and such. Prior to dinner service they sweep the dining room floor - at lunch the daytime porter does this. After service they take care of their equipment - wash the trays, set the dining room for the next meal, wipe down the tables, and so on. The point of all this is that if they get a less than desirable tip from a table/customer - and it doesn't happen often, don't get me wrong - it is a major interruption in their income. You - the customer - pay them. It's not a perfect system, but it's the one we have and obviously it's not too bad or we wouldn't have anyone working here! but it means that the wait staff is at the mercy of the customer for their income, sometimes irregardless of the quality of their service.
In conclusion - to my rant here - let me just say that if you ever suffer from less than stellar, professional service at Brooks Tavern, let me know. Sometimes 15% worthy treatment does not occur - and if it does not, I am the first to agree that you shouldn't leave that much. But I need to know what went wrong and why you were unhappy, otherwise we can never improve upon your experience. Just leaving a lousy tip serves no purpose; often it simply makes the customer appear "cheap", without a proper "message" being received by the waiter in question. If nothing else, write a note on the credit card slip, saying why you are only leaving $10 on a $100 check. We want you to be happy and we can only do this if we know when and why you aren't! And in the same vein, if you are really pleased with your service experience, consider leaving more than the standard 15% (always before tax, of course). You can only imagine what a super tip does to a waiter's night - both financially and mentally. They take a lot of pride in what they do and when one of their customers acknowledges this effort, it means a lot - even just a few dollars over the straight 15% can make a difference to your hard-working waiter's self-esteem, and to their pocket book.
Something else some of you may not realize: the servers make $3.08 an hour, half of the minimum wage. How can that be? Because they are supposed to be making their pay through the tips left them by the customers they serve. By law, they must earn at least minimum wage with the tips they receive; if they don't, then the business has to make up the difference. And of course we could pay them more than $3.08, but I don't know too many who do - except in states like California where the unions create an entirely different atmosphere in the restaurant business. Once they declare the tips they've made and the taxes are paid, the servers often get no paycheck from the business where they work. Some places take advantage of this "free" labor and make the dining room staff do the work of prep cooks and house keepers - maintaining the salad station or cleaning the bathrooms perhaps. (On a personal note, I once worked for a restaurant owner like this - and when I was on bathroom cleaning duty, I would walk into the rest room, stand there for a few minutes, turn the water on, turn the water off, flush the toilets and walk out again. I was not going to clean the bathroom for the going rate of $2.14 or whatever it was back then in the '80s.) At BT, the servers get the things ready they need for service - the butters, creamers, sugars and such. Prior to dinner service they sweep the dining room floor - at lunch the daytime porter does this. After service they take care of their equipment - wash the trays, set the dining room for the next meal, wipe down the tables, and so on. The point of all this is that if they get a less than desirable tip from a table/customer - and it doesn't happen often, don't get me wrong - it is a major interruption in their income. You - the customer - pay them. It's not a perfect system, but it's the one we have and obviously it's not too bad or we wouldn't have anyone working here! but it means that the wait staff is at the mercy of the customer for their income, sometimes irregardless of the quality of their service.
In conclusion - to my rant here - let me just say that if you ever suffer from less than stellar, professional service at Brooks Tavern, let me know. Sometimes 15% worthy treatment does not occur - and if it does not, I am the first to agree that you shouldn't leave that much. But I need to know what went wrong and why you were unhappy, otherwise we can never improve upon your experience. Just leaving a lousy tip serves no purpose; often it simply makes the customer appear "cheap", without a proper "message" being received by the waiter in question. If nothing else, write a note on the credit card slip, saying why you are only leaving $10 on a $100 check. We want you to be happy and we can only do this if we know when and why you aren't! And in the same vein, if you are really pleased with your service experience, consider leaving more than the standard 15% (always before tax, of course). You can only imagine what a super tip does to a waiter's night - both financially and mentally. They take a lot of pride in what they do and when one of their customers acknowledges this effort, it means a lot - even just a few dollars over the straight 15% can make a difference to your hard-working waiter's self-esteem, and to their pocket book.
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