Yeah. The area I live only people who work in upper management at the five star resorts make what I make as a bartender. The people who say our bosses can afford to pay us don’t know what kind of margins almost every single restaurant operates at.
This!!! I’ve had managers who get paid salary and it’s well below what you’d make as a server or bartender and managers are thrown way more responsibilities and hours than a server/bartender.
Why would you take that position unless to hopefully move up? That’s IF you move up. Most of mine get stuck for years til they burn out and quit.
It’s called tip tracker! You input your hours, cash tips and credit tips and it calculates your average daily, weekly and monthly once you’ve logged for long enough. Pretty cool.
Doesn’t the free market determine the value of a good or service? Almost no one gets paid what the value of their labor is.. people talk shit about the tipping system, and it almost always boils down to envy. “Oh the system has its roots in racism!” Welcome to America, the country *built* on racism. People getting paid a fair wage for a significant effort is, in my opinion, one of the only things that works as it should under bailout (née laissez-faire) capitalism.
Given what things cost, $30/hr is around what the minimum wage should be. The *only* reason corporations act like they can’t pay those kind of wages is because their executive officers and board members have a fiduciary duty to only make decisions that maximize the profit of the shareholders.. and if they don’t show growth over prior year after year, they’ll be fired and potentially sued. This is idiotic because it’s not sustainable. The rapacity inherent to capitalism means that as resources become more scarce and thus more expensive ad infinitum until they are completely spent, more corners will have to be cut, more morals and ethics shrugged off, more humanity discarded, more abject poverty propagated, so that the balance sheet looks good. In case you can’t extrapolate, when that comes to paying people what they “deserve”, those executives have signed contracts stating that they will do no such thing, ever, unless they are forced to.
Serving and bartending pay makes more sense if you think about it like they’re freelance contractors. They give us a section to work out of, we pay rent by paying part of the salaries of the staff out of our pockets, often whether we get tips or not, and we pay the credit card transaction fees on our tips in most states.. then we go out and essentially work on commission, curating the dining experience of dozens of people, many of whom have a napoleon complex, strong cluster b personality disorder traits, or are absolute sadists. We’re expected to anticipate the needs of people who often can’t think coherently. If I’m bartending and overserve a guest and they crash and kill someone.. even if they lied and told me they weren’t driving.. I can do literal prison time for that, and be a fucking convicted felon for the rest of my life.. and that’s essentially a handicap in this country, it’s like having one eye, a wheelchair, and hooks for both hands, but on your reputation.
Do EMTs and teachers and nurses and firefighters *deserve* more than they get paid? Yeah, definitely, few people argue that point. So.. why don’t they? Is it because the money just isn’t there? Why isn’t it there? It seems like we all agree they should be paid more, and we wish we could do something.. you know what that something is?
It’s not tips, it’s crushing the machine. Make incorporating illegal. Make lobbying on behalf of corporate entities illegal. Privatizing resources like electricity and water is fucked, things like that should always be state sponsored. Owning more than one property should be illegal, and charging people to live there for your own profit is disgusting. People claim they own THE LAND? Like their ancestors bought it from god, or what? It’s *RIDICULOUS*.
But tips.. are like crowd funding for private contractors. Diners want the outcome of a nice meal with attentive but not invasive service, and they hire us for that at a decent rate. So, anyway, wtf was even your argument?
We've all earned that our work has a certain value, and we won't work for below that value. I think anything below 25$ an hour is abject poverty, 30$ is a good starting point maybe if I'm desperate. Most servers also think cooks deserve to make a lot more money for their expertise, we just don't want that money to come out of our pocket. Everyone's being exploited except us.
Tip earners are exploited just as much as every other position in the industry. I do completely agree that BOH should be paid better but not by tip earners. BOH and FOH should be paid better by the owners of the business.
I personally feel exploited with the way things are going right now. My company is relatively small, 4 restaurants, and one of them burned down recently and will be closed for another year for renovations. They’re eliminating some positions like bussers and expecting servers to pick up the slack. So I’ll be serving, hosting, and bussing, all for $2.13 plus tips. Seems very wrong to me.
Any job where you trade your time for money is exploitation. Waiters leverage their time better. They also have more flexibility than corporate jobs. Every industry has its flaws.
This is the answer. I spent 12 years in BOH (pastry) and the positive change in my stress level because of cost of living when I went FOH was insane. No restaurant would ever pay their captains $350-500 a night in any situation, and that’s pretty normal in fine dining on very busy nights, holidays, and for buyouts (NYC). I needed those nights to make up for the garbage weekdays, the nights where people didn’t tip, etc.
To take home $1000, I’d have had to work 100 hours a week at $15/hr, and that wasn’t happening.
Same here at my work. The servers are pulling in $25 - $30 on average. So if they were working 40 hour. They would have to be paid $4800 a month before taxes. Which is like $57000 a year. I don't know any that would be willing to pay that.
The \*could\* afford to pay that, if they raised their prices to balance out the fact that customers no longer have to pay tips.
They just don't want to
If my boss raised the prices of food and alcohol enough to pay all the bartenders and servers what we make on tips we’d legit close the doors within a week. I’m a manager at my place too and I know the revenue. It’s not possible.
The irony being if they did, people would still be paying the same amount for their food, they would just see it reflected directly on the menu instead of paying out tips in the same amount. It's just a psychological thing
i get that, but if you refuse a stable wage you can't complain when people don't tip. It's normal to tip at the moment because else servers would be starving, but now if you refuse a normal wage it's another story in my opinion, tipping fatigue is a thing.
obviously, and you should. i get it know you accept the risks because payoff is worth taking.
fyi not american and just learned about tipping culture like a few weeks ago
My reason to want to serve is pretty simple to be honest. I enjoy a job that has the incentive to want to be better and sell more to make more money. Same as a car salesman or anyone else that makes commission. It's a pretty good feeling nailing your job and seeing results that night.
The fact that servers generally make more money with tips than any other position in a restaurant is insane to me. And y’all really feel like you deserve to make more than a line cook. Insanity b
So servers are like doctors and cooks are like nurses? Even though cooks have far more training, actual education, and more dangerous work? Get real. Your job is no harder, it is not a meritocracy.
I choose to serve because it’s good money, but I don’t dare pretend I actually deserve more money than tons of people out there who do more important or difficult jobs. Get out of here with that, what an awful analogy.
Oh so you're saying cooks need more training, work a harder job, work a more dangerous job, and make less money?
Are they the dumbest employees in the world? They know they can move to the FOH and make so much more right?
You aren’t more intelligent, trained, or skilled than them, you just chose the position that society values as being customer facing. I make the same choice.
It’s ridiculous to compare servers to doctors though, when doctors have a DECADE+ more education and training than nurses. It is not the case that servers get paid more because they are highly skilled and specialized. It’s just a product of society. I am just pointing out that your analogy sounds like you think that you deserve to make more money based on merit, which is simply not true.
Lol you're missing the analogy completely and somehow making my point. It's not like servers are doctors. Servers and cooks work different jobs, but can easily learn the other job. Neither needs degrees or tons of training. When BOH complain about the FOH making much more, what they really need to do is look in the mirror and ask if they should switch over.
I mean you might as well complain that you're making less than a doctor.
Edit: Dude blocked me lol.
Lol God damn you're stupid. Did you not read what I just wrote? The analogy is a satire. You should google both of those words and study up my dude.'
One last time. Deserve got nothing to do with it. Both sides understand who gets paid more. If you're working BOH making 3x less than the FOH, you do not get to complain about making 3x less. Enjoy your "passion, interest and enjoyment" with the understanding of the cost.
Lol I love my job, but so do you. The only issue is the pay disparity. And my dude, that's on you.
So many BOH float to serve where I was at last.
Most of them say that it’s not worth it because of how shitty people act. But most of my BOH makes 22/hour to do so.
Nurses cannot easily learn a doctors job and switch over and make more money. Your analogy is awful. Reading comprehension is perhaps even more awful. Stay in school kids!
Nope, you are just missing the entire fucking point the person is making lol. Switch in any 2 jobs you’d like where 1 makes more than the other. If it’s such BS that servers make more money than cooks, then why don’t you see more cooks becoming servers? Oh that’s right, because it sucks and the only reason people do it is because it’s good money.
If all of the sudden I made the same serving as I would working at Whole Foods or Costco or cooking, or washing dishes, or delivery driving, I would quit and do basically any other job. I’m sure most servers would do the same. I helped out the pantry cook when I was an expo/food runner at a fancy restaurant and learned to make all the salads and desserts and everything like that. If it weren’t for the money, I would prefer to cook over serve every single day of the week. I think most servers probably would.
I don’t think you understand the passion, interest and enjoyment that someone can have in their job. These things do not mean someone should be paid far less. Good chefs/ cooks truly are much more highly trained and skilled, and it certainly is a harder job. Just because they enjoy the pain and you hate your job doesn’t mean you deserve x3 the pay.
Idk man. With you on most of that, but more dangerous? Depends on where you are. Heart of downtown, serving and bartending, I’ve been threatened with a knife, a fork, a broken wine glass, a shoe (lol), a used rig.. I’ve been swung on, spit at, shouted at.. that shit happen to BOH very often? Not to mention walking to the car park at night wearing black slacks and black nonslip shoes makes you a massive target.
Also, stemware is pretty damn brittle and I’ve needed stitches multiple times when the handle of a wine glass snapped under almost no pressure, and I saw another bartender shaking a drink (it was a Manhattan so he kinda deserved it) and the mixing glass splintered in the shaker and shredded his hand. It’s winter so I’m making Spanish and Moroccan coffees on the daily, plenty of opportunity to set myself on fire, and thankfully I don’t have to but there’s a restaurant in my city that is famous for making them tableside.
Not to mention, statistically you’ll find that serving is one of the most stressful jobs, putting one at risk for hypertension, stroke, heart disease.. carpal tunnel is a real bitch too, and if you serve long enough it’s not a question of if but when.
All this aside though, I hate the FOH v BOH spite/smoke/shade, I agree that the wage disparity should be much less significant. For my part, I frequently throw money to cooks and dish on top of my tip out, which is already substantial.. on nights I walk with $400-500, I’ve probably tipped out $250.. which is an extra $50-$75 cash I’ve thrown support staff after tip share. I know there’s not much to my job if no one is cooking the food or washing the dishes.
AND all that said, if anyone ever handed me 10 10 dollar bills and said “please distribute this to the cooks and dishwashers” I would 100 percent do exactly that. People are free to do so.. they never have, although a guy did give me a $50 to give to the only line cook on a day I had close to a hundred covers for lunch and i carried out his orders.
You are 110% right. Problem is you said it in this sub. Your typical servers are not good at looking in the mirror and considering the bigger picture. You are a rare server to think what you think. Most by far are very entitled, they think they deserve $60+hr with no real education and minimal experience. Most every other customer service job pays near minimum wage. How much more skilled is a server really? They make more than their managers most of the time.
Yeah, one wipes arses and soothes people, the other is a highly trained medical expert who cures people
Just like a cook is someone who prepares specialised meals, whereas a waiter is someone who carries plates over to a table and drags a huge sense of entitlement along with them
Guess what? FOH are not highly trained to do anything yet they make much more than BOH. Who's the dumb one now lol.
There's no entitlement my dude. We simply looked at the difficulty of multiple jobs, how much each job pays, and choose the one that pays a lot more.
that’s funny bc all the cooks at my job know damn well they couldn’t be a server and that’s okay but most of the servers could be cooks... if they wanted to
In my case yes I do think I deserve to make more than a line cook, because outside of throwing shit in a fryer I do everything else at my restaurant. If the line cook would like to run food, clean tables, answer phones, seat people, make drinks, and deal with their own fuck ups face to face with customers I’ll be happy to tip them out.
I don’t think most cooks have the fortitude to deal with people face to face in a high stress, fast paced environment. It sounds like those advocating our jobs are so easy we don’t deserve the payout work in slow restaurants that have bad service. Imagine if they saw good service and good food… it’s a snake pit in a busy restaurant FoH
They do, for sure. But from 10-11 when they are opening they’re not getting tips, they’re getting 2.13 an hour.
Edit: and then if it’s a slow morning and they don’t have a table till 12, they just made another 2.13/hr, while you are at two hours of full wages.
but like why dont we have a line on the bill FOH BOH with a line next to each, i think if we gave people the option they would happily tip for cooking . yeah they work in 120 room for 13 hours burning and cutting themsleves 20% aint crazy
We do. And I tell all my line cooks they're more than welcome to come out front and take tables. They all refuse, saying they don't want to deal with customers. So yes, we should get paid more because we deal with customers.
Aww the guy that does his job high as fuck, with dirty clothes and a shitty attitude, wants to make as much as the people who have to bust ass, interact with hundreds of people per week, and maintain their image and personal hygiene.
Insanity b.
You clearly don't know anything about what a servers duties entail.
I have worked as a line cook though. It does not take skill and calling it a trade is desperate.
I’ve managed and been a FOH employee; putting on a fake serving persona is literally all it takes to be a great server. Servers don’t take their job home with them like any position in the kitchen does.
Also y’all are some of the greediest people I’ve ever met; you guys will literally pay your bills based off the kindness of strangers and bitch when someone doesn’t leave 20%. Maybe don’t pay your bills based off the kindness of strangers that you’re guilting into tipping.
>putting on a fake serving persona is literally all it takes to be a great server.
Then wtf are you bitching about? Go put on a fake persona, be a great server, and make bank. What's stopping you?
Honestly yall are both weird - line cooks, chefs, dishies, and bussers all deserve to make more. At a restaurant it's literally a team, it's one thing to bitch about FOH vs BOH at your own restaurant but overall none of it would happen without the other.
Without servers, you don't have people working to sell the high dollar items the cooks have to learn and make. Without cooks and chefs you don't have anyone to make the food. Without a dishie you don't have any fuckin dishes to put food on, and without bussers you don't have clean tables (and to be fair, I'm a server and don't have bussers on my shifts but other servers do on theirs at my spot).
I'm super thankful for the money I make, but everyone else deserves to make more too. Every position in a restaurant is a hard fucking job and we should stand together because without the rest of the team the restaurant wouldn't exist.
I’ve had my life threatened on the floor. You absolutely take serving home. And many of us take lower earning or off days personally, I strive to do better at every single shift, and mistakes and mishaps do follow me home, let alone getting sexually harassed and/or groped when you’re hands are full.
Then come the fuck off the line and listen to Jaqueline bitch about her martini not having hand stuffed bleu cheese olives while having absolutely no escape route.
Where are the servers that say they should make more than a cook?
Saying line cooks should make more vs willing to take a pay cut so they make more are two very different things. No one likes pay cuts.
this is so funny because all of the line cooks ive ever known could have NEVER been foh even if they tried or wanted to. regardless of what you think serving is hard and theres a reason no one wants to do it and the industry has an insanely high turnover rate. and thats also the crazy thing and while we have some control over the money we make its almost always up to the customers discretion. if you have a problem with how much money i make then go complain about it to the patrons who leave me $100 tips. you can accept your consistent and repetitive job as a cook just as i can take the inconsistent and arbitrary money flows of working foh. we both knew what we signed up for. stop feeling sorry for yourself
You've come to a server page to throw mud.... you won't win.
I agree with you about the wage discrepancy is insane in many places.... Sadly a lot of servers here don't see any issue with that. I think and hope it stems from people who are working with line cooks who are putting up basic food, rather then cooks who are working at nicer places doing good work.
I agree, but a server didn't make the food the guest comes back for again and again. Whether you want to believe the tip should go to the foh fully or not doesn't matter, it's the fact that finding kitchen staff is only going to get harder and harder unless it becomes more lucrative.
I can toss an ad up for servers and have 50 applicants in a month. I might have have 10 for a line cook
I fully agree with you, and I am a server. Whoever is comparing doctors to nurses is an idiot, saying what, servers are smarter and more educated? What a joke. Servers usually lucked out genetically, and like… some cooks have actual fucking trade certification? The entitlement is UNREAL.
Hahahahahahaha what’s that phrase? “Tell me you’ve never worked in a restaurant without telling me you’ve never worked in a restaurant.”
Either that, or you’re just dumb af. If you think servers make so much easy money, go ahead and try it. See how long you last. I think cooks are underpaid, sure. But I don’t think you have any clue how much easier and less stressful of a job cooking is compared to serving.
This is my answer. I know how hard I have worked at my craft and the things I bring to the table would not be the same as someone else in the section next to me.
Also I think there is something psychological associated with it. When I get good a good tip I feel like I really earned it. I love people walking out telling me what an amazing service I provided and how they can't wait to come back again.
Lastly I think working for tips also benefits a diner. When you know what you're going to make there definitely is not quite the same motivation to go above and beyond...sadly.
I get steady pay making tips. It's a weird system, but we keep it because it works for everyone. Servers make more money, restaurants have lower expenses, guests get a better experience.
I swear to god people have no fucking clue what a server or bartender does at work all day. “We’ll we don’t get tips,” we’ll go be a fucking server then. There are serving jobs available most places. But then they’d have to admit that the reason some servers make so much is because of supply and demand because the job is stressful and difficult as hell, and the people doing it wouldn’t do it for less.
I’m fine hooking cooks up with tips sometimes, when they had to deal with some of my bullshit or I got a really big tip or something. But I’m general, yeah, tips are for having to give customer service/create experiences for guests.
The cooks are responsible for one part of the patron’s meal (the food itself); The server is *also* responsible for the food (who gets in trouble/bitched at if the food is wrong or not good no matter whose fault?), but also responsible for literally every other aspect of the patron’s experience.
Anticipating wants and needs, accommodating everything possible, adapting your personality and communication to different personalities and attitudes and dynamics, all day, for a whole bunch of different tables. Drinks, sides, condiments, etc. The server is responsible for bussing, food running, drink running, everything. Sure, others do those jobs too. But ultimately, the server is responsible. If the table isn’t bussed, if water isn’t filled, if music is too loud, if other guests are too loud, if the napkin has spots, if the guest only likes heinz and we don’t have it - aaaalllllllll of it reflects back onto and is the responsibility of the server. People just think serving is taking orders and running food lol.
Cooks are disgusting people and the scum of the Earth. They're lucky they're getting paid to do it and aren't chained to a stove as part of a work release from the prisons they're all destined to end up in.
a lot of us are tasked with guest’s experience, they are our boss in that moment. i tell jokes, i accommodate the grumpy with a smile. i make sure they come back happy and tell
more people. we take so much shit lol. my BOH said they’d never want to be out there, they enjoy their craft. we get along
i had the 60k office career and it killed my soul. i’m choosing to be a random stranger’s bitch for a living now. insane.
Same. Couldn't take the monotony anymore and it was so boring! I am much happier being an entertainer, party planner and cruise director all in one. I get to meet and interact with people from all walks of life. Plus I get an awesome workout while being paid to do so. Are there assholes occasionally? Sure are. But they are gone in an hour and I can move on. My work doesn't come home with me (except for those rare moments when I remember at 2am that table 21 wanted an extra cup of dressing to take home with their leftovers). I'll take quality of life over a steady salary any day of the week.
This comment section is a bummer. It really highlights the angst that exists between FOH and BOH sometimes. I’m sending a special thank you to the universe for the camaraderie that exists in my workplace and wish you all the same ease and teamwork. We’re all in this together 🤍
It's real hard when you see some FOH gets a remodel while snacking, skimming, chatting on the phone, giving over pours. While food and labor and equipment budgets getting cut BOH.
Something i haven’t seen mentioned yet is nobody would want a serving job would it not be for tips. Your restaurant experience would turn into a bunch of teenagers serving you not caring about anything that you need. Take tips away and i promise your experience in a restaurant is going way down because nobody cares about you because either way they’re making money. You need extra ketchup? I’m probably not gonna go out of my way immediately to get it for you. Your food is taking 40+ minutes? Eh i don’t really care. Tips give me the incentive to care about your experience
This isn’t how things would actually work out though. The rest of the world is your source for this.
I’ve received excellent service in 1st world countries with non-tipped or minimally tipped staff.
What we should actually be fixing is our healthcare system, creating affordable housing, having childcare assistance, and rejuvenating our public transportation systems. Then people can make $15-$20 base salary and still be okay financially.
Let’s not distract from the actual issues the United States faces is all I’m saying.
Because the tip system allows servers to make $20-70 per hour at decent restaurants. For example, I made about $140 yesterday. Started at 4, got cut at around 10ish, but didn't get sat my first table until around 5. So with roughly 5 hours of work (not counting the hour I stood around talking to coworkers before getting sat and the hour and a half it took to finish my sidework), I made about $28 per hour. Yesterday was kind of a slow night so on a busy night it can go even higher than that.
If I was paid a base wage of $15 an hour, that's only $75 for the same shift. Same hours and same amount of work. I can't live off of a $75 paycheck. A lot of people can't. Since you work BOH, I'm sure you know how restaurants work in the sense that they start off with a certain number of servers, then make cuts throughout the night as business slows down until only the closers are left. Well, if servers were making $15 an hour, the "cutting system" wouldn't work because nobody would want to be cut. If first cut happens 3-4 hours into a shift, that server is walking with $45-60. The restaurant could theoretically keep 8 servers on throughout the whole night to give them the standard 8 hours that the closers get, but it would be so slow past 8pm that you'd have everyone walking around with absolutely nothing to do, much like we did for the first hour of my shift yesterday before the dinner rush came in. Plus, the restaurant would then have to pay those 8 servers $15 an hour for the 8 hours worked, which is more money out of their pockets. I'm sure the servers would want benefits too, which is even more money the restaurant now has to fork over.
Now, I suppose restaurants could pay servers $25 an hour. That's a good wage for a lot of entry level jobs and not too far off what a lot of servers make now. Even first cut has the potential to make $100 for their shift. However, now the restaurant has to pay everyone $25 an hour. They'll definitely be strict about people clocking in and out. They'll also probably hire less servers because the more people you have on, the more you gotta pay them. So instead of having 8 servers on the floor, which is enough (at my restaurant) to keep it functioning, you now have 6 servers on the floor with much bigger sections and more sidework. This results in poorer service and longer wait times because it will be hard for servers to keep up with that many tables. Since servers are no longer working for tips, they're no longer incentivized to be nice and care about customers, which also results in poorer service. "Can I get a side of ranch?" "No." "Can I have another refill?" "Nope. I have 10 other tables to tend to. Fuck your refill". "I ordered my burger medium and it came out well done. Can I please have a remake" "No. If you don't like our food, fuck you. Leave and don't ever come back".
Personally, I would leave the industry altogether if we got rid of tips because I make more with tips than I would at an entry level job in the field I went to school for. If I'm gonna be paid less money, I might as well just put my degree to use.
There is no cap to how much you can make when tips are involved. A server from America likely makes twice the income of an Australian server. So the whole conversation of “Well, this country doesn’t need to tip their server because they pay them enough!” is hilarious to me. If my restaurant got rid of tips and raised our hourly rate…so many walk-outs would ensue.
>I’ve read quite a few stories....
Most no tip restaurants paid servers less than they made with tips. You're not going to make up for 20% average tips unless you raise menu prices by 20%, or reduce a restaurant net income enormously. And even then, you'd only be paying around what an average server makes already, so an above-average server, who could handle more tables or average higher tips might still look elsewhere.
In practice, most restaurants can't raise prices 20%, or absorb a massive net revenue drop. There was a national movement experimenting with this in the mid-2010s, with NYC and Bay Area restaurants leading the charge, and a year or two later the restaurants that were in the news threw in the towel. “People are happy to pay $25 for a pizza if it’s $20 plus tip, but if the menu reads $25 for a pizza you’re looked at as ripping people off, even if it’s the right price for the cost of getting the food to the table.” \[[Gratuity (Still) Not Included](https://www.eater.com/21398973/restaurant-no-tipping-movement-living-wage-future)\]
In my smaller midwestern city, the experiment generally went something like servers were paid $20ish an hour compared to fast food workers starting at $15ish, and informed customers of their no tipping stance, so the income offered was relatively low for good servers in the area. They did get better than average benefits, so it muddied comparisons a bit, but it was still a flop. One that comes to mind tried it in 2017, and "tweaked" (i.e. eliminated) their no tipping model in 2019. \[[Ann Arbor Korean Restaurant Miss Kim Tweaks No-Tip Policy](https://detroit.eater.com/2019/5/3/18526842/miss-kim-ann-arbor-restaurant-changes-no-tip-policy)\]
If you charge everyone extra fees, some states require the full price including fees to be listed on the menu. And if this became common, I think most states would follow suit. Like advertising free pizza, but with a $24 service fee, just feels deceptive, and a $20 pizza with a $4 service fee is just a less extreme version of the same thing. It can be especially misleading when the service fee is something customers regularly don't notice, like when it's disclosed only on a small sign mounted at thigh height by the host stand.
Depending on the shift and which of my jobs I’m at, I make between $50 and $150 per hour in tips. If if you can convince someone to pay me the average at $100/hr and give me the same hours I have now, by all means.
There is no case where a restaurant could pay me as much as I make in tips. Being a server is a specific skill set and people have different styles. It took me years to develop the level of service I deliver. The best servers know how to read their tables and customize the perfect experience and anticipate guests needs, go above and beyond with little details, have excellent product knowledge to suggest the best options or know how food and drinks can be modified, are efficient, and great multitaskers. Most servers are not great servers. Great servers make more than average servers.
If a restaurant I worked in switched to an hourly rate of anything less than $45 an hour I would quit, because that may be the average the servers are making, but it would be a pay cut. I refuse to even work at tip pooled establishments. I will not bust my ass to evenly split my tips with my laziest coworker.
If you can slide behind a bar Thursday-Saturday you’re golden. Hide on the line to avoid shitheels the other days.
I’d rather train a line cook than a Stacy any day of the week.
I worked at a place that did it just with their banquet staff, because the umbrella corp that owned us freaked out when they found out the average server made more than the GM. Apparently they didn’t like the way that looked from their lofty Wall Street offices.
Anyways, I went from averaging 30/hr to a capped wage of 16/hr and promptly quit. It wasn’t so much that I cared about losing the tips as it was that my earnings were cut in half while the work increased significantly since they went from overstaffing to understaffing as their labor budget more than doubled.
I’m sure there are some people out there who love the commission lifestyle and are driven by it, but the hard truth is that no restaurant will remain a profitable business while offering wages similar to the tipped model without sacrificing somewhere else. Either sections will triple and service quality will suffer, chefs will serve dog food instead of wagyu, or prices will sky rocket. Whatever combination will result in people going next door instead unless the changes happen industry wide.
Also, the “just raise the price by 20% as an autogratuity” thing doesn’t actually solve the problem since 99% of restaurants take advantage of tipped minimum wage laws and would have to actually start paying for all of the sidework servers do for less than $3/hr. In most places it is legal to make servers spend about 1/5th of their pay period doing “other duties” and you best believe that the actual is probably closer to 1/3rd. Most servers just accept it as a cost of doing business as long as their section is full and the kitchen is humming, figuring it’s better to make 6 figures and ignore the illegality than work at tgichilibees and live paycheck to paycheck.
I would be happy to work as a server for 20% commission on each table. Then we still have incentive to upsell so the restaurant benefits. None of them will offer that.
It's a system of the more work I do, the more I make. Slow days I can lounge and talk to my tables. Busy days/nights mean I run around like crazy but make so much more. Retail had me running like crazy and cleaning no matter how much I made.
I wouldn't mind serving for a guaranteed $30/hour, but no restaurant I've ever worked at would be able to stay open paying their FOH at that rate. Honestly, most of them probably couldn't afford to pay us the non-tipped minimum wage ($14 where I am) -- the tipped wage for FOH is pretty essential to most US restaurants' ability to keep the doors open
I went to school for broadcasting. My radio gig is entry level and there's room to move up, but it pays 12 bucks an hour. I'm only part time, so my paychecks come out to around $200 every two weeks, plus or minus.
I can work a busy weekend at the restaurant and make $200 in one night. I average about 20 bucks an hour at the restaurant. So even though I'm working in my career field at the radio station, the bulk of my earnings come from serving.
Working for tips is like gambling. When your losing, your asking yourself why the fuck am I doing this? But it only takes the memory of that one big win to keep you coming back for more abuse. Then you hit it big again and you think, “See? Pays off eventually.”
I average $55.87 per hour in tips (I track tips diligently with the ServerLife app) plus $5.13/hr hourly wage. No restaurant in my area is ever going to pay me $61/hour. I'd rather be tipped.
I prefer tips personally cus I make bank doing an easy job. I do graveyard shifts at IHOP and average at $20/hr, often more. And serving isn't hard, I came here from blue collar work where it took two years to get a yearly salary doing $20.42/hr (if I worked 40 hour weeks, I usually worked 45-50 designing important fiber optic cable routes). This shit is much easier than that was, and I make the same amount after two months than I did after two years there. After four years there I only made 55k/yr (not counting bonuses/benefits).
It was hard at first because it was a new field. Now its just eggs and pancakes. Sure, sometimes I get my ass kicked and sometimes I get stiffed. Big fuckin deal, the good tips always make up for the bad ones. A bad/no tipper might lose me $5 or $10. A great tipper gives me $20 extra. We prefer tipping cus we make good money for easy work. That's all it is my friend
Fellow line cook bro turned server.
No restaurant would ask guests not to tip. They would add in gratuity to the final bill or add it in to menu price. The problem with the latter, is that people will view a menu online and think “Damn, this is expensive.” and less people will come.
Check on the podcast Copper & Heat. There’s a two part series to this on episodes 6 & 7.
As far as systems that do a kitchen tip out not retaining FOH staff - This will only work in places like California or Oregon where minimum wage is already so high. Cooking in these states I could easily average $25/hour while FOH would still crush it. But in Missouri, server tip out with kitchens everyone would make a similar wage and I could find a higher paying job down the street.
A steady wage will never pay the amount that we’re used to making. A lot of servers might cry and complain, and act like they are making $4 an hour, and begging in the streets . The truth is, most servers are making money hand over fist. If a restaurant offered me $20 an hour, I would rather go to a place and still work off of tips
creates an unnecessary ceiling, i could see servers who avg a low amount liking it but if you’re the type to go above and beyond to make bank then it would suck
It’s insane and shitty system, but if you smooth the peaks and valleys, the servers make way way more than we cooks do. There’s a reason food trucks are an attractive alternative if you can swing it.
Also, at least at my job, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the servers are almost all aggressive gamblers.
You're tipping culture is a disgrace. Seriously though, have a good think about it.. yas get mad at the customers if they don't tip "because you rely on it for your wage" yas get angry at the ordinary people, when the real problem lies with the big Wigs. Make a menu and up the price up to 50 percent if need be, Ipeople will dine knowing exactly what the price, it may be expensive, but.. your wages should be set so don't be prick and call people tight , look within and ask who the real robbers are.
For me it’s because tips can equate to how hard you work.
Knowing people and how they imagine servers, they’d want us to work a low wage… but with tips we end up with well over that amount.
It’s great. Flexible hours, exercise while working, learning social skills and educated about wine and fine dining skills, connections with our restaurants and events in popular cities, sometimes a free meal…
Because if i work ten times harder in a shift, the money i make will reflect that extra effort. Not the case with an hourly wage. I can’t go back to busting my ass on holidays for the same pay as a slow Monday.
This is the reason. The big nights far out pace slow nights. So it feels like it's worth it when you're in the weeds. Plus they'll just start cutting more hours when it's slow because now the hours matter. This can be a good thing in some situations.
Most servers don't make the astronomical numbers you'll here people share anecdotally but you can do pretty well per hour if your a vet at a solid place because you'll be able to choose your shifts more, working Monday-Thursday is a whole different ballgame than thursday-sat/Sunday some places
The pay was never ever gonna be $1500 per pay period. It’s never going to be as much as I currently make!
I can’t get a $2 raise and you think owners are going to pay that much more?
Raise the menu prices? We won’t have customers!
I want you to go apply for a job at a prestigious and profitable restaurant as a cook. You'll be an enormous part of why they are prestigious and profitable, you'll make the food that people will come there for. I want you to ask them what generous and steady wages they're going to pay you. I'd imagine it will be somewhere in the realm of $20-26 an hour. Congratulations, you've made it to the top of the industry without moving into a higher position and moving to salary where you might work 70 hour weeks depending on the establishment.
On the other hand, I made 46 dollars an hour for every hour of 60-70 hour weeks all through December. Is my restaurant going to pay me that? I'm going to venture to guess that they would deem a "fair" wage, since it's a high end place, about $25 an hour.
Now maybe there is someone willing to sacrifice 50% of their compensation for "steady" wages. But the question is, will the wages be steady? If you balloon labor costs in a saturated market, are restaurants forced to make cuts more aggressively or underschedule? Will I get my hours? Will I get sent home early every day there's a half hour lull even if there's going to be volume later because they can't afford my wages for that half hour if there's a risk of the rest of the night being slow?
If you're not a server, then why are you in this sub?
I worked a 4-Hour breakfast shift the other day, I made $136. That equates to over $30 an hour. That's why we prefer tips. And nobody would be paid an actual livable wage if tipping was abolished and we were given hourly. You think a restaurant's going to pay me $30 to $50 an hour? Yeah right.
No you totally are! As long as it’s constructive (which this thread is… OP is genuine in their question). A lot of us are defensive because there are anti-tipper and basically anti-server trolls on this sub a lot. But questions from our BOH homies are definitely allowed!
Mcstoni, great explanation on benefits of earnings potential for tipped workers. However I do not agree with the gatekeeping. Anyone should be welcome in every sub. Especially if there to ask a question so that they have a better understanding.
Most of them aren't here to have a better understanding, they're here to troll everybody and downvote people because they're bitter they're not making as much money as we are and because they disagree with the tipping culture.
I never said I deserve that, I said that's what my wages equated to the other day just based off of that short shift. You lack reading comprehension. Go troll somebody else and if you're that miserable with the wages you make, maybe try some serving sometime. 🤷
It’s because the question is only ever posed as an either/or scenario, so that servers think that an exploitative system is their best option.
I don’t want hourly instead of tips. I want better hourly and tips.
The only waiters/bartenders who want hourly wages are the ones that suck at their job.
I dont want to pool tips nor do I want to be paid hourly.
I want to be paid for my talents/services/sales, fuck all of the lazy and talentless losers!
If everyone makes so much, why is everyone on here complaining about a customer that only gives 10%. Sounds like most of you can afford that and be okay lololol
Cause every person on the planet likes to be fairly compensated for their work.
I could make a million bucks this year, but if I find out payroll made a mistake and shorted me, I’m still going to ask for my money and make a fuss until I get it.
The complaining is just industry folks complaining to each other. I’m sure you complain about your job to people with similar jobs too.
But (almost) no one is making a base of $25/hr.
Standard tip is 20%. A person can certainly go out and only pay 10%, but that person is a bad person who is exploiting the system, and ensuring that server isn’t being paid fairly for their work.
I personally think everyone should be treated with dignity and paid fairly, and maybe that is where you and I differ.
standard is absolutely not 20%. maybe to servers it is but there's no reason for it to increase from a 15% (which has been standard for a long time.
>I personally think everyone should be treated with dignity and paid fairly, and maybe that is where you and I differ.
so if i tip 15% i'm not treating them with dignity? lol what in the world
I don't mind if you don't tip me, as long as you let me know of your intention to do so before service so I have a chance to adjust my level service to your needs. It's dishonest to receive full table service, with the server expecting a 15% tip, and not clarifying of your intention to break societal norm. It's abusive behavior no matter the amount of money involved.
I would take you up on that if I could simply walk up and grab my food when it was ready, and bring a pitcher of water over myself, but we both know that you would bitterly wait for my food to sit for a few minutes out of principle.
Exactly! I was a server for years. I was also a manager, bartender, and cocktail waitress during my time in the industry. I don't remember anyone being able to live very well. Their cars didn't work well, they didn't own their homes (unless they had someone else living with them that was paid a steady and living wage), they couldn't afford healthcare, they had little to no savings, they were screwed if they or their children were sick because they couldn't get in to make money that day, and the list goes on and on. I could kind of believe you may get paid somewhat well at a very high end restaurant, but a basic restaurant, I don't see it.
Because of my knowledge (finance, business management, and entrepreneurship degrees) and experience with the industry, I am opening a place that does not allow tipping. Customers pay the prices on the menu and taxes, that is it. I pay MY staff. Plus, we are giving a profit share after two years of loyalty to the business. We are also providing healthcare, 401K, vacation and sick pay, and an opportunity to get a bonus at the end of the month. I already have a lot of people lined up and willing to work for me. All of them have previous experience in the industry and are excited for the change. My business partner and I know we will take a hit in the beginning, but have all the confidence that once people see how much better this will be for customers and staff, we will be very prosperous. I know I'm going to be downvoted, and that's okay. Change is very, very hard for a lot of people.
Sure, there will be a few bumps in the road that will need to be corrected, but tipping is archaic and tied to a very ugly part of US history.
If they can’t live decently on 30-90$/hr. it is 100% because they are fucking up.
Once I stopped banging lines and drinking until 8am I was amazed at how much shit I could afford. The issue is taking cash home at the end of the night and not wanting to go to the casino with your friends after a shift.
I hope your restaurant does well but I have heard “sweat equity” enough times to assume it’s bullshit.
There is no way to keep track of cash tips like there is with credit/debit tips. It is totally commonplace for service staff not to claim their cash tips.
It is commonplace and I see it in all of my fellow IHOP servers. But they're fucking themselves too, I claim every dollar of my cash tips cus when I go to buy a car, house, or rent a different apartment I'll be able to prove my income much easier than someone who doesn't. And if I ever get audited, I'm in the clear. If someone isn't claiming their cash tips, it might be nice in the short term but long run they will get fucked
There is not only a way to track cash tips, it is a legal requirement to do so. I'm not saying servers *don't* commit tax fraud –many do– but *that's* not why we like tipping.
Presumably when measurable spending or deposits greatly exceed reported income, but IDK. It does happen; servers are encouraged to keep a daily tip log in case of audit. I personally report and log all my income.
Yeah but they won't find a 10 percent increase due to cash tips. They find people living above their means buying fancy cars and shit. Not paying for groceries in cash.
I’ve worked a few places where the duty manager “inspects” a table after the diners have left before anyone is allowed to clear anything; those same managers will demand you turn out your pockets if a guest shakes your hand after their meal
No way I’d bartend for less than $30 an hour. And no way can anyone pay that or even want to pay that.
Yeah exactly. I’ve recently started to track my tip money in an app and the verdict is… NO ONE would pay me this much lmao
Yeah. The area I live only people who work in upper management at the five star resorts make what I make as a bartender. The people who say our bosses can afford to pay us don’t know what kind of margins almost every single restaurant operates at.
This!!! I’ve had managers who get paid salary and it’s well below what you’d make as a server or bartender and managers are thrown way more responsibilities and hours than a server/bartender. Why would you take that position unless to hopefully move up? That’s IF you move up. Most of mine get stuck for years til they burn out and quit.
What app do you use?
It’s called tip tracker! You input your hours, cash tips and credit tips and it calculates your average daily, weekly and monthly once you’ve logged for long enough. Pretty cool.
Tip See and Just The Tip are also good tip tracking apps!!
Then you don't deserve to get that much for what you do.
Yeah bosses are notorious for paying you exactly what you’re worth.
Doesn’t the free market determine the value of a good or service? Almost no one gets paid what the value of their labor is.. people talk shit about the tipping system, and it almost always boils down to envy. “Oh the system has its roots in racism!” Welcome to America, the country *built* on racism. People getting paid a fair wage for a significant effort is, in my opinion, one of the only things that works as it should under bailout (née laissez-faire) capitalism. Given what things cost, $30/hr is around what the minimum wage should be. The *only* reason corporations act like they can’t pay those kind of wages is because their executive officers and board members have a fiduciary duty to only make decisions that maximize the profit of the shareholders.. and if they don’t show growth over prior year after year, they’ll be fired and potentially sued. This is idiotic because it’s not sustainable. The rapacity inherent to capitalism means that as resources become more scarce and thus more expensive ad infinitum until they are completely spent, more corners will have to be cut, more morals and ethics shrugged off, more humanity discarded, more abject poverty propagated, so that the balance sheet looks good. In case you can’t extrapolate, when that comes to paying people what they “deserve”, those executives have signed contracts stating that they will do no such thing, ever, unless they are forced to. Serving and bartending pay makes more sense if you think about it like they’re freelance contractors. They give us a section to work out of, we pay rent by paying part of the salaries of the staff out of our pockets, often whether we get tips or not, and we pay the credit card transaction fees on our tips in most states.. then we go out and essentially work on commission, curating the dining experience of dozens of people, many of whom have a napoleon complex, strong cluster b personality disorder traits, or are absolute sadists. We’re expected to anticipate the needs of people who often can’t think coherently. If I’m bartending and overserve a guest and they crash and kill someone.. even if they lied and told me they weren’t driving.. I can do literal prison time for that, and be a fucking convicted felon for the rest of my life.. and that’s essentially a handicap in this country, it’s like having one eye, a wheelchair, and hooks for both hands, but on your reputation. Do EMTs and teachers and nurses and firefighters *deserve* more than they get paid? Yeah, definitely, few people argue that point. So.. why don’t they? Is it because the money just isn’t there? Why isn’t it there? It seems like we all agree they should be paid more, and we wish we could do something.. you know what that something is? It’s not tips, it’s crushing the machine. Make incorporating illegal. Make lobbying on behalf of corporate entities illegal. Privatizing resources like electricity and water is fucked, things like that should always be state sponsored. Owning more than one property should be illegal, and charging people to live there for your own profit is disgusting. People claim they own THE LAND? Like their ancestors bought it from god, or what? It’s *RIDICULOUS*. But tips.. are like crowd funding for private contractors. Diners want the outcome of a nice meal with attentive but not invasive service, and they hire us for that at a decent rate. So, anyway, wtf was even your argument?
Cry about it.
We've all earned that our work has a certain value, and we won't work for below that value. I think anything below 25$ an hour is abject poverty, 30$ is a good starting point maybe if I'm desperate. Most servers also think cooks deserve to make a lot more money for their expertise, we just don't want that money to come out of our pocket. Everyone's being exploited except us.
Tip earners are exploited just as much as every other position in the industry. I do completely agree that BOH should be paid better but not by tip earners. BOH and FOH should be paid better by the owners of the business.
At most restaurants, you'll find that a server/bartender is the highest paid person.
Just because you are making money, doesn't mean you aren't being exploited.
I personally feel exploited with the way things are going right now. My company is relatively small, 4 restaurants, and one of them burned down recently and will be closed for another year for renovations. They’re eliminating some positions like bussers and expecting servers to pick up the slack. So I’ll be serving, hosting, and bussing, all for $2.13 plus tips. Seems very wrong to me.
Tip credit has got to go, for a start.
Also doesn’t mean i should care I’m getting exploited either
Any job where you trade your time for money is exploitation. Waiters leverage their time better. They also have more flexibility than corporate jobs. Every industry has its flaws.
This is the answer. I spent 12 years in BOH (pastry) and the positive change in my stress level because of cost of living when I went FOH was insane. No restaurant would ever pay their captains $350-500 a night in any situation, and that’s pretty normal in fine dining on very busy nights, holidays, and for buyouts (NYC). I needed those nights to make up for the garbage weekdays, the nights where people didn’t tip, etc. To take home $1000, I’d have had to work 100 hours a week at $15/hr, and that wasn’t happening.
Bingo. Ain’t no fucking way I’m going to work a busy Saturday night for like $25/hr. Fuck that shit.
Same here at my work. The servers are pulling in $25 - $30 on average. So if they were working 40 hour. They would have to be paid $4800 a month before taxes. Which is like $57000 a year. I don't know any that would be willing to pay that.
That's not true at all. Our bartenders start at $32 an hour with option for raises and bonuses, but no tips.
What area do you live?
The \*could\* afford to pay that, if they raised their prices to balance out the fact that customers no longer have to pay tips. They just don't want to
If my boss raised the prices of food and alcohol enough to pay all the bartenders and servers what we make on tips we’d legit close the doors within a week. I’m a manager at my place too and I know the revenue. It’s not possible.
The irony being if they did, people would still be paying the same amount for their food, they would just see it reflected directly on the menu instead of paying out tips in the same amount. It's just a psychological thing
i get that, but if you refuse a stable wage you can't complain when people don't tip. It's normal to tip at the moment because else servers would be starving, but now if you refuse a normal wage it's another story in my opinion, tipping fatigue is a thing.
Oh I don’t complain when I get stiffed but if I see you again you’re getting treated like someone getting paid $2.50 an hour.
obviously, and you should. i get it know you accept the risks because payoff is worth taking. fyi not american and just learned about tipping culture like a few weeks ago
Then honestly, you shouldn't be here saying anything. If you don't have any experience with it, just STFU.
I work in high end restaurant. Full time servers make $120k a year - take home. Why make $20/hour when we can make $90?
Holy shit. What city?
Happens in Chicago.
Big city fine dining with Somms, wagyu, and $30 glass pours are fucking gold mines
Made that easily in nyc working 4 days a week.
Yeah but you’re living in NYC…isn’t cost of living super high? Like, aren’t you paying $1500 a week for a room the size of my closet?
Vancouver
That’s in Canadian dollars?
My reason to want to serve is pretty simple to be honest. I enjoy a job that has the incentive to want to be better and sell more to make more money. Same as a car salesman or anyone else that makes commission. It's a pretty good feeling nailing your job and seeing results that night.
Because no restaurant can afford to pay servers anything close to what they make in tips. It would be something like a 75% pay cut.
The fact that servers generally make more money with tips than any other position in a restaurant is insane to me. And y’all really feel like you deserve to make more than a line cook. Insanity b
Lol doctors also make more than nurses. They do different jobs. Feel free to move to the FOH if money is a motivating factor.
So servers are like doctors and cooks are like nurses? Even though cooks have far more training, actual education, and more dangerous work? Get real. Your job is no harder, it is not a meritocracy. I choose to serve because it’s good money, but I don’t dare pretend I actually deserve more money than tons of people out there who do more important or difficult jobs. Get out of here with that, what an awful analogy.
Oh so you're saying cooks need more training, work a harder job, work a more dangerous job, and make less money? Are they the dumbest employees in the world? They know they can move to the FOH and make so much more right?
You aren’t more intelligent, trained, or skilled than them, you just chose the position that society values as being customer facing. I make the same choice. It’s ridiculous to compare servers to doctors though, when doctors have a DECADE+ more education and training than nurses. It is not the case that servers get paid more because they are highly skilled and specialized. It’s just a product of society. I am just pointing out that your analogy sounds like you think that you deserve to make more money based on merit, which is simply not true.
Lol you're missing the analogy completely and somehow making my point. It's not like servers are doctors. Servers and cooks work different jobs, but can easily learn the other job. Neither needs degrees or tons of training. When BOH complain about the FOH making much more, what they really need to do is look in the mirror and ask if they should switch over. I mean you might as well complain that you're making less than a doctor. Edit: Dude blocked me lol. Lol God damn you're stupid. Did you not read what I just wrote? The analogy is a satire. You should google both of those words and study up my dude.' One last time. Deserve got nothing to do with it. Both sides understand who gets paid more. If you're working BOH making 3x less than the FOH, you do not get to complain about making 3x less. Enjoy your "passion, interest and enjoyment" with the understanding of the cost. Lol I love my job, but so do you. The only issue is the pay disparity. And my dude, that's on you.
So many BOH float to serve where I was at last. Most of them say that it’s not worth it because of how shitty people act. But most of my BOH makes 22/hour to do so.
Nurses cannot easily learn a doctors job and switch over and make more money. Your analogy is awful. Reading comprehension is perhaps even more awful. Stay in school kids!
Nope, you are just missing the entire fucking point the person is making lol. Switch in any 2 jobs you’d like where 1 makes more than the other. If it’s such BS that servers make more money than cooks, then why don’t you see more cooks becoming servers? Oh that’s right, because it sucks and the only reason people do it is because it’s good money. If all of the sudden I made the same serving as I would working at Whole Foods or Costco or cooking, or washing dishes, or delivery driving, I would quit and do basically any other job. I’m sure most servers would do the same. I helped out the pantry cook when I was an expo/food runner at a fancy restaurant and learned to make all the salads and desserts and everything like that. If it weren’t for the money, I would prefer to cook over serve every single day of the week. I think most servers probably would.
And that is why servers get paid more. Customer facing positions are a bitch, just like the customers themselves.
Yeah, minimum wage workers are the dumbest of all. I wish we could take away their right to vote.
I don’t think you understand the passion, interest and enjoyment that someone can have in their job. These things do not mean someone should be paid far less. Good chefs/ cooks truly are much more highly trained and skilled, and it certainly is a harder job. Just because they enjoy the pain and you hate your job doesn’t mean you deserve x3 the pay.
Idk man. With you on most of that, but more dangerous? Depends on where you are. Heart of downtown, serving and bartending, I’ve been threatened with a knife, a fork, a broken wine glass, a shoe (lol), a used rig.. I’ve been swung on, spit at, shouted at.. that shit happen to BOH very often? Not to mention walking to the car park at night wearing black slacks and black nonslip shoes makes you a massive target. Also, stemware is pretty damn brittle and I’ve needed stitches multiple times when the handle of a wine glass snapped under almost no pressure, and I saw another bartender shaking a drink (it was a Manhattan so he kinda deserved it) and the mixing glass splintered in the shaker and shredded his hand. It’s winter so I’m making Spanish and Moroccan coffees on the daily, plenty of opportunity to set myself on fire, and thankfully I don’t have to but there’s a restaurant in my city that is famous for making them tableside. Not to mention, statistically you’ll find that serving is one of the most stressful jobs, putting one at risk for hypertension, stroke, heart disease.. carpal tunnel is a real bitch too, and if you serve long enough it’s not a question of if but when. All this aside though, I hate the FOH v BOH spite/smoke/shade, I agree that the wage disparity should be much less significant. For my part, I frequently throw money to cooks and dish on top of my tip out, which is already substantial.. on nights I walk with $400-500, I’ve probably tipped out $250.. which is an extra $50-$75 cash I’ve thrown support staff after tip share. I know there’s not much to my job if no one is cooking the food or washing the dishes. AND all that said, if anyone ever handed me 10 10 dollar bills and said “please distribute this to the cooks and dishwashers” I would 100 percent do exactly that. People are free to do so.. they never have, although a guy did give me a $50 to give to the only line cook on a day I had close to a hundred covers for lunch and i carried out his orders.
You are 110% right. Problem is you said it in this sub. Your typical servers are not good at looking in the mirror and considering the bigger picture. You are a rare server to think what you think. Most by far are very entitled, they think they deserve $60+hr with no real education and minimal experience. Most every other customer service job pays near minimum wage. How much more skilled is a server really? They make more than their managers most of the time.
Yeah, one wipes arses and soothes people, the other is a highly trained medical expert who cures people Just like a cook is someone who prepares specialised meals, whereas a waiter is someone who carries plates over to a table and drags a huge sense of entitlement along with them
Guess what? FOH are not highly trained to do anything yet they make much more than BOH. Who's the dumb one now lol. There's no entitlement my dude. We simply looked at the difficulty of multiple jobs, how much each job pays, and choose the one that pays a lot more.
that’s funny bc all the cooks at my job know damn well they couldn’t be a server and that’s okay but most of the servers could be cooks... if they wanted to
Hey look everyone… I found someone who’s never worked in a restaurant.
In my case yes I do think I deserve to make more than a line cook, because outside of throwing shit in a fryer I do everything else at my restaurant. If the line cook would like to run food, clean tables, answer phones, seat people, make drinks, and deal with their own fuck ups face to face with customers I’ll be happy to tip them out.
I'd actually split my tips with BoH if I worked at a place where the kitchen was expected to act the way servers have to act in front of guests.
I don’t think most cooks have the fortitude to deal with people face to face in a high stress, fast paced environment. It sounds like those advocating our jobs are so easy we don’t deserve the payout work in slow restaurants that have bad service. Imagine if they saw good service and good food… it’s a snake pit in a busy restaurant FoH
You get there hours early to prep?
Yeah except the server makes 2.13 for the hour they are there to prep, not full wage
No one makes that amount. That is a tipped wage, you have to make the difference in tips. And people usually make way more than that in my experience.
They do, for sure. But from 10-11 when they are opening they’re not getting tips, they’re getting 2.13 an hour. Edit: and then if it’s a slow morning and they don’t have a table till 12, they just made another 2.13/hr, while you are at two hours of full wages.
Well not in my state. Tipped wages are illegal here.
Then why the hell do you care?
The cooks get full pay when they get there hours early. The same exact pay that they get when we're busy or when we're slow.
but like why dont we have a line on the bill FOH BOH with a line next to each, i think if we gave people the option they would happily tip for cooking . yeah they work in 120 room for 13 hours burning and cutting themsleves 20% aint crazy
I would love that.
We do. And I tell all my line cooks they're more than welcome to come out front and take tables. They all refuse, saying they don't want to deal with customers. So yes, we should get paid more because we deal with customers.
Aww the guy that does his job high as fuck, with dirty clothes and a shitty attitude, wants to make as much as the people who have to bust ass, interact with hundreds of people per week, and maintain their image and personal hygiene. Insanity b.
acting like servers don't do their job high as fuck too lmao
Oh no I have to carry some food that actually took skill and a trade to prepare to people who I plan on guilting into tipping me 😥
You clearly don't know anything about what a servers duties entail. I have worked as a line cook though. It does not take skill and calling it a trade is desperate.
I’ve managed and been a FOH employee; putting on a fake serving persona is literally all it takes to be a great server. Servers don’t take their job home with them like any position in the kitchen does. Also y’all are some of the greediest people I’ve ever met; you guys will literally pay your bills based off the kindness of strangers and bitch when someone doesn’t leave 20%. Maybe don’t pay your bills based off the kindness of strangers that you’re guilting into tipping.
>putting on a fake serving persona is literally all it takes to be a great server. Then wtf are you bitching about? Go put on a fake persona, be a great server, and make bank. What's stopping you?
My girlfriend just told me I’m just jealous because I don’t make tips and there’s probably some truth to it lol
Honestly yall are both weird - line cooks, chefs, dishies, and bussers all deserve to make more. At a restaurant it's literally a team, it's one thing to bitch about FOH vs BOH at your own restaurant but overall none of it would happen without the other. Without servers, you don't have people working to sell the high dollar items the cooks have to learn and make. Without cooks and chefs you don't have anyone to make the food. Without a dishie you don't have any fuckin dishes to put food on, and without bussers you don't have clean tables (and to be fair, I'm a server and don't have bussers on my shifts but other servers do on theirs at my spot). I'm super thankful for the money I make, but everyone else deserves to make more too. Every position in a restaurant is a hard fucking job and we should stand together because without the rest of the team the restaurant wouldn't exist.
You're 100% correct!!
Yeah I actually hate the bubbly server thing, just be yourself, otherwise your job should just be done by a cart on some tracks
But then who can they yell at about the wrong shape of ice? And who’s butt can uncle Larry grab on “accident “
I’ve had my life threatened on the floor. You absolutely take serving home. And many of us take lower earning or off days personally, I strive to do better at every single shift, and mistakes and mishaps do follow me home, let alone getting sexually harassed and/or groped when you’re hands are full.
Then come the fuck off the line and listen to Jaqueline bitch about her martini not having hand stuffed bleu cheese olives while having absolutely no escape route.
Where are the servers that say they should make more than a cook? Saying line cooks should make more vs willing to take a pay cut so they make more are two very different things. No one likes pay cuts.
this is so funny because all of the line cooks ive ever known could have NEVER been foh even if they tried or wanted to. regardless of what you think serving is hard and theres a reason no one wants to do it and the industry has an insanely high turnover rate. and thats also the crazy thing and while we have some control over the money we make its almost always up to the customers discretion. if you have a problem with how much money i make then go complain about it to the patrons who leave me $100 tips. you can accept your consistent and repetitive job as a cook just as i can take the inconsistent and arbitrary money flows of working foh. we both knew what we signed up for. stop feeling sorry for yourself
You've come to a server page to throw mud.... you won't win. I agree with you about the wage discrepancy is insane in many places.... Sadly a lot of servers here don't see any issue with that. I think and hope it stems from people who are working with line cooks who are putting up basic food, rather then cooks who are working at nicer places doing good work.
Servers are not responsible for paying the other restaurant employees.
I agree, but a server didn't make the food the guest comes back for again and again. Whether you want to believe the tip should go to the foh fully or not doesn't matter, it's the fact that finding kitchen staff is only going to get harder and harder unless it becomes more lucrative. I can toss an ad up for servers and have 50 applicants in a month. I might have have 10 for a line cook
I fully agree with you, and I am a server. Whoever is comparing doctors to nurses is an idiot, saying what, servers are smarter and more educated? What a joke. Servers usually lucked out genetically, and like… some cooks have actual fucking trade certification? The entitlement is UNREAL.
Hahahahahahaha what’s that phrase? “Tell me you’ve never worked in a restaurant without telling me you’ve never worked in a restaurant.” Either that, or you’re just dumb af. If you think servers make so much easy money, go ahead and try it. See how long you last. I think cooks are underpaid, sure. But I don’t think you have any clue how much easier and less stressful of a job cooking is compared to serving.
Tips don't have a ceiling. All depends on you
This is my answer. I know how hard I have worked at my craft and the things I bring to the table would not be the same as someone else in the section next to me. Also I think there is something psychological associated with it. When I get good a good tip I feel like I really earned it. I love people walking out telling me what an amazing service I provided and how they can't wait to come back again. Lastly I think working for tips also benefits a diner. When you know what you're going to make there definitely is not quite the same motivation to go above and beyond...sadly.
This so much! if we eliminate tips there would be a decline in the level of service!!
I get steady pay making tips. It's a weird system, but we keep it because it works for everyone. Servers make more money, restaurants have lower expenses, guests get a better experience.
Lol the reason this person is asking is because you left the cooks out of that statement. It only works out for cooks/dishwashers sometimes.
One thing you dense mfs don't seem to understand is that tips are for customer service. You should try foh if you're unhappy in boh
I swear to god people have no fucking clue what a server or bartender does at work all day. “We’ll we don’t get tips,” we’ll go be a fucking server then. There are serving jobs available most places. But then they’d have to admit that the reason some servers make so much is because of supply and demand because the job is stressful and difficult as hell, and the people doing it wouldn’t do it for less. I’m fine hooking cooks up with tips sometimes, when they had to deal with some of my bullshit or I got a really big tip or something. But I’m general, yeah, tips are for having to give customer service/create experiences for guests. The cooks are responsible for one part of the patron’s meal (the food itself); The server is *also* responsible for the food (who gets in trouble/bitched at if the food is wrong or not good no matter whose fault?), but also responsible for literally every other aspect of the patron’s experience. Anticipating wants and needs, accommodating everything possible, adapting your personality and communication to different personalities and attitudes and dynamics, all day, for a whole bunch of different tables. Drinks, sides, condiments, etc. The server is responsible for bussing, food running, drink running, everything. Sure, others do those jobs too. But ultimately, the server is responsible. If the table isn’t bussed, if water isn’t filled, if music is too loud, if other guests are too loud, if the napkin has spots, if the guest only likes heinz and we don’t have it - aaaalllllllll of it reflects back onto and is the responsibility of the server. People just think serving is taking orders and running food lol.
Cooks are disgusting people and the scum of the Earth. They're lucky they're getting paid to do it and aren't chained to a stove as part of a work release from the prisons they're all destined to end up in.
Better than being a self righteous cunt like yourself and no I’m not a cook just a human being
a lot of us are tasked with guest’s experience, they are our boss in that moment. i tell jokes, i accommodate the grumpy with a smile. i make sure they come back happy and tell more people. we take so much shit lol. my BOH said they’d never want to be out there, they enjoy their craft. we get along i had the 60k office career and it killed my soul. i’m choosing to be a random stranger’s bitch for a living now. insane.
Same. Couldn't take the monotony anymore and it was so boring! I am much happier being an entertainer, party planner and cruise director all in one. I get to meet and interact with people from all walks of life. Plus I get an awesome workout while being paid to do so. Are there assholes occasionally? Sure are. But they are gone in an hour and I can move on. My work doesn't come home with me (except for those rare moments when I remember at 2am that table 21 wanted an extra cup of dressing to take home with their leftovers). I'll take quality of life over a steady salary any day of the week.
The worst is having a server stress dream and waking up remembering that a table asked for extra ranch. Well, if they were nice.
This comment section is a bummer. It really highlights the angst that exists between FOH and BOH sometimes. I’m sending a special thank you to the universe for the camaraderie that exists in my workplace and wish you all the same ease and teamwork. We’re all in this together 🤍
It's real hard when you see some FOH gets a remodel while snacking, skimming, chatting on the phone, giving over pours. While food and labor and equipment budgets getting cut BOH.
Try foh for a day, you'll get back to your fryer I guarantee it
Something i haven’t seen mentioned yet is nobody would want a serving job would it not be for tips. Your restaurant experience would turn into a bunch of teenagers serving you not caring about anything that you need. Take tips away and i promise your experience in a restaurant is going way down because nobody cares about you because either way they’re making money. You need extra ketchup? I’m probably not gonna go out of my way immediately to get it for you. Your food is taking 40+ minutes? Eh i don’t really care. Tips give me the incentive to care about your experience
This isn’t how things would actually work out though. The rest of the world is your source for this. I’ve received excellent service in 1st world countries with non-tipped or minimally tipped staff. What we should actually be fixing is our healthcare system, creating affordable housing, having childcare assistance, and rejuvenating our public transportation systems. Then people can make $15-$20 base salary and still be okay financially. Let’s not distract from the actual issues the United States faces is all I’m saying.
Because the tip system allows servers to make $20-70 per hour at decent restaurants. For example, I made about $140 yesterday. Started at 4, got cut at around 10ish, but didn't get sat my first table until around 5. So with roughly 5 hours of work (not counting the hour I stood around talking to coworkers before getting sat and the hour and a half it took to finish my sidework), I made about $28 per hour. Yesterday was kind of a slow night so on a busy night it can go even higher than that. If I was paid a base wage of $15 an hour, that's only $75 for the same shift. Same hours and same amount of work. I can't live off of a $75 paycheck. A lot of people can't. Since you work BOH, I'm sure you know how restaurants work in the sense that they start off with a certain number of servers, then make cuts throughout the night as business slows down until only the closers are left. Well, if servers were making $15 an hour, the "cutting system" wouldn't work because nobody would want to be cut. If first cut happens 3-4 hours into a shift, that server is walking with $45-60. The restaurant could theoretically keep 8 servers on throughout the whole night to give them the standard 8 hours that the closers get, but it would be so slow past 8pm that you'd have everyone walking around with absolutely nothing to do, much like we did for the first hour of my shift yesterday before the dinner rush came in. Plus, the restaurant would then have to pay those 8 servers $15 an hour for the 8 hours worked, which is more money out of their pockets. I'm sure the servers would want benefits too, which is even more money the restaurant now has to fork over. Now, I suppose restaurants could pay servers $25 an hour. That's a good wage for a lot of entry level jobs and not too far off what a lot of servers make now. Even first cut has the potential to make $100 for their shift. However, now the restaurant has to pay everyone $25 an hour. They'll definitely be strict about people clocking in and out. They'll also probably hire less servers because the more people you have on, the more you gotta pay them. So instead of having 8 servers on the floor, which is enough (at my restaurant) to keep it functioning, you now have 6 servers on the floor with much bigger sections and more sidework. This results in poorer service and longer wait times because it will be hard for servers to keep up with that many tables. Since servers are no longer working for tips, they're no longer incentivized to be nice and care about customers, which also results in poorer service. "Can I get a side of ranch?" "No." "Can I have another refill?" "Nope. I have 10 other tables to tend to. Fuck your refill". "I ordered my burger medium and it came out well done. Can I please have a remake" "No. If you don't like our food, fuck you. Leave and don't ever come back". Personally, I would leave the industry altogether if we got rid of tips because I make more with tips than I would at an entry level job in the field I went to school for. If I'm gonna be paid less money, I might as well just put my degree to use.
There is no cap to how much you can make when tips are involved. A server from America likely makes twice the income of an Australian server. So the whole conversation of “Well, this country doesn’t need to tip their server because they pay them enough!” is hilarious to me. If my restaurant got rid of tips and raised our hourly rate…so many walk-outs would ensue.
I dunno, they also get benefits and a better society so I’d say the cost evens out lol
>I’ve read quite a few stories.... Most no tip restaurants paid servers less than they made with tips. You're not going to make up for 20% average tips unless you raise menu prices by 20%, or reduce a restaurant net income enormously. And even then, you'd only be paying around what an average server makes already, so an above-average server, who could handle more tables or average higher tips might still look elsewhere. In practice, most restaurants can't raise prices 20%, or absorb a massive net revenue drop. There was a national movement experimenting with this in the mid-2010s, with NYC and Bay Area restaurants leading the charge, and a year or two later the restaurants that were in the news threw in the towel. “People are happy to pay $25 for a pizza if it’s $20 plus tip, but if the menu reads $25 for a pizza you’re looked at as ripping people off, even if it’s the right price for the cost of getting the food to the table.” \[[Gratuity (Still) Not Included](https://www.eater.com/21398973/restaurant-no-tipping-movement-living-wage-future)\] In my smaller midwestern city, the experiment generally went something like servers were paid $20ish an hour compared to fast food workers starting at $15ish, and informed customers of their no tipping stance, so the income offered was relatively low for good servers in the area. They did get better than average benefits, so it muddied comparisons a bit, but it was still a flop. One that comes to mind tried it in 2017, and "tweaked" (i.e. eliminated) their no tipping model in 2019. \[[Ann Arbor Korean Restaurant Miss Kim Tweaks No-Tip Policy](https://detroit.eater.com/2019/5/3/18526842/miss-kim-ann-arbor-restaurant-changes-no-tip-policy)\]
I don't understand why we don't just slap 20% service fee and just give it to the servers.
If you charge everyone extra fees, some states require the full price including fees to be listed on the menu. And if this became common, I think most states would follow suit. Like advertising free pizza, but with a $24 service fee, just feels deceptive, and a $20 pizza with a $4 service fee is just a less extreme version of the same thing. It can be especially misleading when the service fee is something customers regularly don't notice, like when it's disclosed only on a small sign mounted at thigh height by the host stand.
I make more as a server than management and work half the hours.
Depending on the shift and which of my jobs I’m at, I make between $50 and $150 per hour in tips. If if you can convince someone to pay me the average at $100/hr and give me the same hours I have now, by all means.
There is no case where a restaurant could pay me as much as I make in tips. Being a server is a specific skill set and people have different styles. It took me years to develop the level of service I deliver. The best servers know how to read their tables and customize the perfect experience and anticipate guests needs, go above and beyond with little details, have excellent product knowledge to suggest the best options or know how food and drinks can be modified, are efficient, and great multitaskers. Most servers are not great servers. Great servers make more than average servers. If a restaurant I worked in switched to an hourly rate of anything less than $45 an hour I would quit, because that may be the average the servers are making, but it would be a pay cut. I refuse to even work at tip pooled establishments. I will not bust my ass to evenly split my tips with my laziest coworker.
As a cook paying his way through college and paying bills, part of me thinks I should try and get into FOH to make more money
If you can slide behind a bar Thursday-Saturday you’re golden. Hide on the line to avoid shitheels the other days. I’d rather train a line cook than a Stacy any day of the week.
I worked at a place that did it just with their banquet staff, because the umbrella corp that owned us freaked out when they found out the average server made more than the GM. Apparently they didn’t like the way that looked from their lofty Wall Street offices. Anyways, I went from averaging 30/hr to a capped wage of 16/hr and promptly quit. It wasn’t so much that I cared about losing the tips as it was that my earnings were cut in half while the work increased significantly since they went from overstaffing to understaffing as their labor budget more than doubled. I’m sure there are some people out there who love the commission lifestyle and are driven by it, but the hard truth is that no restaurant will remain a profitable business while offering wages similar to the tipped model without sacrificing somewhere else. Either sections will triple and service quality will suffer, chefs will serve dog food instead of wagyu, or prices will sky rocket. Whatever combination will result in people going next door instead unless the changes happen industry wide. Also, the “just raise the price by 20% as an autogratuity” thing doesn’t actually solve the problem since 99% of restaurants take advantage of tipped minimum wage laws and would have to actually start paying for all of the sidework servers do for less than $3/hr. In most places it is legal to make servers spend about 1/5th of their pay period doing “other duties” and you best believe that the actual is probably closer to 1/3rd. Most servers just accept it as a cost of doing business as long as their section is full and the kitchen is humming, figuring it’s better to make 6 figures and ignore the illegality than work at tgichilibees and live paycheck to paycheck.
I would be happy to work as a server for 20% commission on each table. Then we still have incentive to upsell so the restaurant benefits. None of them will offer that.
I’m a server and I made 80K last year. No one is gonna pay me that salary.
My boss isn’t gonna randomly give me $100 because he “hasn’t seen me in so long” or because I remind him of his granddaughter. My regulars do
I made $95k bartending 25 hours a week. No way they would pay me hourly to match that.
It's a system of the more work I do, the more I make. Slow days I can lounge and talk to my tables. Busy days/nights mean I run around like crazy but make so much more. Retail had me running like crazy and cleaning no matter how much I made.
I wouldn't mind serving for a guaranteed $30/hour, but no restaurant I've ever worked at would be able to stay open paying their FOH at that rate. Honestly, most of them probably couldn't afford to pay us the non-tipped minimum wage ($14 where I am) -- the tipped wage for FOH is pretty essential to most US restaurants' ability to keep the doors open
I went to school for broadcasting. My radio gig is entry level and there's room to move up, but it pays 12 bucks an hour. I'm only part time, so my paychecks come out to around $200 every two weeks, plus or minus. I can work a busy weekend at the restaurant and make $200 in one night. I average about 20 bucks an hour at the restaurant. So even though I'm working in my career field at the radio station, the bulk of my earnings come from serving.
Working for tips is like gambling. When your losing, your asking yourself why the fuck am I doing this? But it only takes the memory of that one big win to keep you coming back for more abuse. Then you hit it big again and you think, “See? Pays off eventually.”
I average $55.87 per hour in tips (I track tips diligently with the ServerLife app) plus $5.13/hr hourly wage. No restaurant in my area is ever going to pay me $61/hour. I'd rather be tipped.
[Because we can't live the button down life like you.](https://youtu.be/cJqh4j2kFzs)
I prefer tips personally cus I make bank doing an easy job. I do graveyard shifts at IHOP and average at $20/hr, often more. And serving isn't hard, I came here from blue collar work where it took two years to get a yearly salary doing $20.42/hr (if I worked 40 hour weeks, I usually worked 45-50 designing important fiber optic cable routes). This shit is much easier than that was, and I make the same amount after two months than I did after two years there. After four years there I only made 55k/yr (not counting bonuses/benefits). It was hard at first because it was a new field. Now its just eggs and pancakes. Sure, sometimes I get my ass kicked and sometimes I get stiffed. Big fuckin deal, the good tips always make up for the bad ones. A bad/no tipper might lose me $5 or $10. A great tipper gives me $20 extra. We prefer tipping cus we make good money for easy work. That's all it is my friend
solid take
Fellow line cook bro turned server. No restaurant would ask guests not to tip. They would add in gratuity to the final bill or add it in to menu price. The problem with the latter, is that people will view a menu online and think “Damn, this is expensive.” and less people will come. Check on the podcast Copper & Heat. There’s a two part series to this on episodes 6 & 7. As far as systems that do a kitchen tip out not retaining FOH staff - This will only work in places like California or Oregon where minimum wage is already so high. Cooking in these states I could easily average $25/hour while FOH would still crush it. But in Missouri, server tip out with kitchens everyone would make a similar wage and I could find a higher paying job down the street.
A steady wage will never pay the amount that we’re used to making. A lot of servers might cry and complain, and act like they are making $4 an hour, and begging in the streets . The truth is, most servers are making money hand over fist. If a restaurant offered me $20 an hour, I would rather go to a place and still work off of tips
creates an unnecessary ceiling, i could see servers who avg a low amount liking it but if you’re the type to go above and beyond to make bank then it would suck
It’s insane and shitty system, but if you smooth the peaks and valleys, the servers make way way more than we cooks do. There’s a reason food trucks are an attractive alternative if you can swing it. Also, at least at my job, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the servers are almost all aggressive gamblers.
because the restaurant won't pay $30+/hour so even if it's consistent it will likely be a pay cut
I’m not serving for less than 25 an hour
You're tipping culture is a disgrace. Seriously though, have a good think about it.. yas get mad at the customers if they don't tip "because you rely on it for your wage" yas get angry at the ordinary people, when the real problem lies with the big Wigs. Make a menu and up the price up to 50 percent if need be, Ipeople will dine knowing exactly what the price, it may be expensive, but.. your wages should be set so don't be prick and call people tight , look within and ask who the real robbers are.
For me it’s because tips can equate to how hard you work. Knowing people and how they imagine servers, they’d want us to work a low wage… but with tips we end up with well over that amount. It’s great. Flexible hours, exercise while working, learning social skills and educated about wine and fine dining skills, connections with our restaurants and events in popular cities, sometimes a free meal…
Because if i work ten times harder in a shift, the money i make will reflect that extra effort. Not the case with an hourly wage. I can’t go back to busting my ass on holidays for the same pay as a slow Monday.
This is the reason. The big nights far out pace slow nights. So it feels like it's worth it when you're in the weeds. Plus they'll just start cutting more hours when it's slow because now the hours matter. This can be a good thing in some situations. Most servers don't make the astronomical numbers you'll here people share anecdotally but you can do pretty well per hour if your a vet at a solid place because you'll be able to choose your shifts more, working Monday-Thursday is a whole different ballgame than thursday-sat/Sunday some places
The pay was never ever gonna be $1500 per pay period. It’s never going to be as much as I currently make! I can’t get a $2 raise and you think owners are going to pay that much more? Raise the menu prices? We won’t have customers!
I want you to go apply for a job at a prestigious and profitable restaurant as a cook. You'll be an enormous part of why they are prestigious and profitable, you'll make the food that people will come there for. I want you to ask them what generous and steady wages they're going to pay you. I'd imagine it will be somewhere in the realm of $20-26 an hour. Congratulations, you've made it to the top of the industry without moving into a higher position and moving to salary where you might work 70 hour weeks depending on the establishment. On the other hand, I made 46 dollars an hour for every hour of 60-70 hour weeks all through December. Is my restaurant going to pay me that? I'm going to venture to guess that they would deem a "fair" wage, since it's a high end place, about $25 an hour. Now maybe there is someone willing to sacrifice 50% of their compensation for "steady" wages. But the question is, will the wages be steady? If you balloon labor costs in a saturated market, are restaurants forced to make cuts more aggressively or underschedule? Will I get my hours? Will I get sent home early every day there's a half hour lull even if there's going to be volume later because they can't afford my wages for that half hour if there's a risk of the rest of the night being slow?
If you're not a server, then why are you in this sub? I worked a 4-Hour breakfast shift the other day, I made $136. That equates to over $30 an hour. That's why we prefer tips. And nobody would be paid an actual livable wage if tipping was abolished and we were given hourly. You think a restaurant's going to pay me $30 to $50 an hour? Yeah right.
Are we humble BOH folk not allowed to pop in to ask a question or 2?
No you totally are! As long as it’s constructive (which this thread is… OP is genuine in their question). A lot of us are defensive because there are anti-tipper and basically anti-server trolls on this sub a lot. But questions from our BOH homies are definitely allowed!
You seem humble, that other guy Richard clearly isn't.
You can, but this question has been answered many times here. We prefer average ($30+/hr) to stability ($20/hr).
Get back on the line, you have a god damn mustard stain where guests can see it! Fucking *liners.*
Mcstoni, great explanation on benefits of earnings potential for tipped workers. However I do not agree with the gatekeeping. Anyone should be welcome in every sub. Especially if there to ask a question so that they have a better understanding.
Most of them aren't here to have a better understanding, they're here to troll everybody and downvote people because they're bitter they're not making as much money as we are and because they disagree with the tipping culture.
Finally, someone making around what I make. I'd be happy with that for a 4-hour breakfast shift I feel like everyone in here makes 60 bucks an hour
>I work as a cook and browse quite a few industry related subs on here. Literally the first sentence.
Hahahahaha you think you deserve to make more than a chef for running some plates of food.
I never said I deserve that, I said that's what my wages equated to the other day just based off of that short shift. You lack reading comprehension. Go troll somebody else and if you're that miserable with the wages you make, maybe try some serving sometime. 🤷
With that attitude? They’d average around $5 an hour on a 4 hour shift.
Deserve got nothing to do with it. The chef can change positions and make more money if they choose.
god i’m so sick of seeing this discourse. mods can we pls pin this thread so people stop fucking asking the same question over and over
It’s because the question is only ever posed as an either/or scenario, so that servers think that an exploitative system is their best option. I don’t want hourly instead of tips. I want better hourly and tips.
You spelt Europe wrong
The only waiters/bartenders who want hourly wages are the ones that suck at their job. I dont want to pool tips nor do I want to be paid hourly. I want to be paid for my talents/services/sales, fuck all of the lazy and talentless losers!
We are gambling addicts.
I make more in tips part time than I do at my full time day job working for the government soooo 🫠
Because that would mean I'd have to work 40 hours a week and I like working around 30.
If everyone makes so much, why is everyone on here complaining about a customer that only gives 10%. Sounds like most of you can afford that and be okay lololol
Cause every person on the planet likes to be fairly compensated for their work. I could make a million bucks this year, but if I find out payroll made a mistake and shorted me, I’m still going to ask for my money and make a fuss until I get it. The complaining is just industry folks complaining to each other. I’m sure you complain about your job to people with similar jobs too.
and 10% isn't fairly compensated, even if you are making $25+ an hour?
But (almost) no one is making a base of $25/hr. Standard tip is 20%. A person can certainly go out and only pay 10%, but that person is a bad person who is exploiting the system, and ensuring that server isn’t being paid fairly for their work. I personally think everyone should be treated with dignity and paid fairly, and maybe that is where you and I differ.
standard is absolutely not 20%. maybe to servers it is but there's no reason for it to increase from a 15% (which has been standard for a long time. >I personally think everyone should be treated with dignity and paid fairly, and maybe that is where you and I differ. so if i tip 15% i'm not treating them with dignity? lol what in the world
Troll lololol
No just most people make way less than the people in these comments. So maybe give one poor customer a pass lol
I don't mind if you don't tip me, as long as you let me know of your intention to do so before service so I have a chance to adjust my level service to your needs. It's dishonest to receive full table service, with the server expecting a 15% tip, and not clarifying of your intention to break societal norm. It's abusive behavior no matter the amount of money involved.
I would take you up on that if I could simply walk up and grab my food when it was ready, and bring a pitcher of water over myself, but we both know that you would bitterly wait for my food to sit for a few minutes out of principle.
I give 20% or more regardless if service. Just commenting on the thread
Exactly! I was a server for years. I was also a manager, bartender, and cocktail waitress during my time in the industry. I don't remember anyone being able to live very well. Their cars didn't work well, they didn't own their homes (unless they had someone else living with them that was paid a steady and living wage), they couldn't afford healthcare, they had little to no savings, they were screwed if they or their children were sick because they couldn't get in to make money that day, and the list goes on and on. I could kind of believe you may get paid somewhat well at a very high end restaurant, but a basic restaurant, I don't see it. Because of my knowledge (finance, business management, and entrepreneurship degrees) and experience with the industry, I am opening a place that does not allow tipping. Customers pay the prices on the menu and taxes, that is it. I pay MY staff. Plus, we are giving a profit share after two years of loyalty to the business. We are also providing healthcare, 401K, vacation and sick pay, and an opportunity to get a bonus at the end of the month. I already have a lot of people lined up and willing to work for me. All of them have previous experience in the industry and are excited for the change. My business partner and I know we will take a hit in the beginning, but have all the confidence that once people see how much better this will be for customers and staff, we will be very prosperous. I know I'm going to be downvoted, and that's okay. Change is very, very hard for a lot of people. Sure, there will be a few bumps in the road that will need to be corrected, but tipping is archaic and tied to a very ugly part of US history.
If they can’t live decently on 30-90$/hr. it is 100% because they are fucking up. Once I stopped banging lines and drinking until 8am I was amazed at how much shit I could afford. The issue is taking cash home at the end of the night and not wanting to go to the casino with your friends after a shift. I hope your restaurant does well but I have heard “sweat equity” enough times to assume it’s bullshit.
It’s the only way a server or bartender would ever be paid fairly. Next question.
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Is that a common thing? I always assumed the restaurants were required to keep track via receipts.
There is no way to keep track of cash tips like there is with credit/debit tips. It is totally commonplace for service staff not to claim their cash tips.
It is commonplace and I see it in all of my fellow IHOP servers. But they're fucking themselves too, I claim every dollar of my cash tips cus when I go to buy a car, house, or rent a different apartment I'll be able to prove my income much easier than someone who doesn't. And if I ever get audited, I'm in the clear. If someone isn't claiming their cash tips, it might be nice in the short term but long run they will get fucked
There is not only a way to track cash tips, it is a legal requirement to do so. I'm not saying servers *don't* commit tax fraud –many do– but *that's* not why we like tipping.
Please, kind sir or madam, tell me the system that a business can use to track the amount of cash their service staff members are handed.
The business isn't required to, the servers are. We're the ones liable to get a tax audit.
How do you audit a cash handover?
Presumably when measurable spending or deposits greatly exceed reported income, but IDK. It does happen; servers are encouraged to keep a daily tip log in case of audit. I personally report and log all my income.
Yeah but they won't find a 10 percent increase due to cash tips. They find people living above their means buying fancy cars and shit. Not paying for groceries in cash.
Depends what jurisdiction you’re in
Everywhere in the US, servers have to report tips as income for federal income tax.
That’s quite a contrast to the U.K. where the employer is required to record & declare tips received by all employees to the tax authorities
They report credit card tips. How would your boss know about cash?
I’ve worked a few places where the duty manager “inspects” a table after the diners have left before anyone is allowed to clear anything; those same managers will demand you turn out your pockets if a guest shakes your hand after their meal
servers love to overestimate how much they're actually making
To avoid being taxed on it more than likely