Just a couple notes to make as a waiter (before i left and switched off to current career) first off waiters only make 2.15 an hour, and we are taxed out of that, the government also puts taxes on 10% of everything we sell plus more if we make more than 10% tips when its declared at the end of the night. And heres a fun tidbit, when you dont leave a tip, you actually take money out of the waiters pockets. This is due to a lovely thing called tip out, anywhere from 4-10% of our sales has to be paid to the bussers, food runners, bar tenders, and hostess. so lets say its a bit higher end on the tipout, and you get a 100 dollar meal, we have to pay ten bucks out of that to the food runners, bussers, bartenders, hostesses etc. and then the government will also tax us expecting we made a minimum of ten dollars on that meal, (and of course on credit card tips they know exactly how much we made on the table so will tax us even more if we made more than ten percent, and even with a 0% tip they still believe we made at least 10% tip.
So that 100 dollar meal you had, just cost the waiter a good 13.50 to wait on you, and if you dont leave a tip we have to cover paying that out of own pockets. and thats paid out of a tally of our sales at the end of the night when we turn in reciepts, before we are allowed to leave we immediately have to turn in our tipout money (which comes out of credit card tips first so we cant really escape it) and any additional comes out of the cash we have on us. we also have to pay for the meal most of the time if you leave without paying.
now for bonus fun, we also still have to roll silverware, do sidework, run plates, run food(yes even though we have food runners at some restaurants) bus our tables (even if we have bussers because it wouldnt be fair that they bus all our tables) open up and close the restaurant. including hours without the restaurant being open setting up stuff and closing down with no customers or tips, typically an hour or two of our day unpaid, for 2.15 an hour.