Reply to is a 20 percent tip your baseline or the highest possible achievement?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "is a 20 percent tip your baseline or the highest possible achievement?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]15% is cheap[/quote]

Really? Why? Example - last night, moderate priced restaurant, my wife, daughter, and I, $60 tab - $10 tip. We were sitting for less than an hour. What does the waitress have -  four tables at a time (I don't know)? That's a $40 an hour job tax free.[/quote]

1. Tips are not tax-free

2. Servers typically have to give a portion of their tips to bussers, bartenders, etc.

3. A server will not have a full section (all tables with customers) for all the hours they work.  For example: for a dinner shift on a Thursday night the server might start at 4pm, do pre-work for an hour (slicing lemons, refilling condiments, re-stocking glasses, etc), then have a half full section (let's say 2 tables) for the second hour, a full section (4 tables) for the next two hours, a half full section for another hour, and then spend an hour doing side-work and cleaning the section able tending to one last table.

Using the example of your restaurant and tip from last night, that's 9 tables = $90.  $10-$15 of that tipped out to others leaves $75-80.  The server worked 5 hours, making (let's say) $2.50/hr + tips, so roughly $90.  That's $18/hr, all of which is taxed.

That all assumes that 1) all tables turn over in an hour (they often don't), 2) your tips average 15% (they often don't when someone forgets to leave the credit card slip, or someone leaves a poor tip), and 3) that it's a reasonably busy evening (evenings early in the week are slower, and lunch shifts can be very slow depending on location) and the restaurant is appropriated staffed (you're not getting two few tables or being cut early because there are too many servers working), and 4) you're working a section in which people want to sit (they're not asking for tables in a different part of the restaurant) and your host/hostess is appropriately rotating the seating.

$18/hr certainly isn't bad for a decent night when everything goes right, but it's a far cry from the $40/hr (tax free, lol) you think your server is earning when you tip 15%.  When I worked as a server (while in grad school) at a typical chain restaurant (most bills probably in the $25-50 range), I'd leave with anywhere from $15-$100 in tips for shifts ranging from 4 hours to 10 hrs.  It was enough to pay my (cheap) rent, car insurance, etc., but left very little extra.  If I had been making $40/hr I would have done it for longer than 9 months!![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics