New York Restaurants Starting To Demand 30% Tip

hrm.. everything just went quiet in here after that.

Live in fear much?

That's because people are whining that they don't make what an McDonald's worker makes. Get a job at McDonald's and make 4x what you do now.

No fucking way man. Markup on food is at least 100%. Restaurants have great margins, drinks are even higher markup. How much does a glass of soda cost the owner? Probably 10 cents if they have a fountain, and they are charging you at least 1.50. That's 1500% markup on drinks,and alcohol is always at least a 300% markup. There is not restaurant in the world that operates on less then a 30 or 40 % margin.

Did Oprah SERIOUSLY tell her cult followers that saving money was as easy as not tipping? That is way messed up!

I love it when threads about tipping come up on the forums I read. It's such a great psychological study of how humans operate. You can tell a lot about people by how they treat people who work for them.

The idea of a tip is that it is supposed to be optional. "Gratuity." People have forgotten the meaning of this word.

It makes no sense that the employers are allowed to reduce wages and the staff have been trained to expect the customers to make up for that.

Waitstaff should be paid no less than minimum wage, gratuity should be optional. If that means that the restaurant feels like it has to raise its prices, so be it, but better make sure customers will still pay it. Oh, a cut to the bottom line? What a pity, but I don't own your restaurant, your bottom line is not supposed to be on an IV connected to my wallet.

Since this is an unpopular opinion, and since restaurant food is often unwashed and low quality, I don't eat in restaurants, I and my wife cook from scratch at home.

Whoever accepts a job as waitstaff for less than minimum wages before tips must be so desperate for any money to survive that they are not an employee, but a slave. We should not have slaves in first world countries.

actually food cost itself normally ranges from 3-10% of what the restaurant makes that night. I would be lying to say it didnt. However, keep in mind you also have to pay salaries, all the hourly workers (cooks, dishwashers preppers etc, plus the rent, the electric and water, cleaning supplies, and various services such as trash oil haul off etc. and for fixtures, utensils equipment plate ware etc. most restaurant dont expect to fully make back money invested for years.) but yes they operate on a pretty decent profit margin. my last restaurant was operating on a five year plan to become fully profitable (paying back full initial investment etc) and was one of the highest profit stores in the region.
and for all of you saying servers and other non hourly staff (host,bar,bussers,food runners, etc)should be paid living wage to start with, you realize the cost of your food would raise anywhere from 50-100% to cover that yes?

it was her number one tip for saving money when on vacation or travelling. after the massive uproar she later printed a paragraph apology in the middle of one of her magazines, mind you she said this on her show.

get a clue, dork....

If you want to see some hatred though, ask servers the groups of people they hate serving the most.

Times have changed...
Patrons and Service a like feel the grip of strain from the economy. This causes jipping from guests and unrest from servers.

(Although I agree, its not the guests responsibility. The rest of the world took this into account long ago and resolved the issue by simply Paying their servers...I Think Cali does...)

Their are many factors that many guests are unaware of...
Like other areas of a restaurant that causes bad service for a guest. yet the blame goes to their server.
In open kitchen restaurants its much easier for a guest to see a server run their asses off trying to make things right for the table. So guests are less often lashing out at or blaming their server. (Ie I bring this up because this leads to low or even NO tipping since the server always gets the brunt of blame; when often they kill themselves to make everything right only to have someone else bring it down; someone else who prob gets paid hourly.)
Often the servers make the right call and management forces them to do otherwise. Ive even seen managers blame their servers rather then admit their own faults...

There is even more to this restaurant slave scheme...
Guests often don't realize servers are forced to pay Bussers, QA's, Bar tenders and even sometimes hosts from their tips.) So lets say either on the restaurants fault or a bad guest that the check is $55. The server is already paying out of his pocket $3-4... So if no tip that begins to add up pretty badly for the server. Its a domino effect from there. Ur already at a loss the entire day because of that ONE guest.

Btw this entire problem was going to be fixed... But guess who shot it down...? Herman Cain... Before running for President guess what he did...

Their is just to many other things going wrong with this county to give attention to these kinds of things. So I guess some places are beginning to blame the patrons.
(Which is ridiculous tho)

I know mainstream places that don't enforce gratuity on large parties if they complain. Leaving a server out of their entire section and therefor any kind of income for 1-2 hours if that table refuses to pay. (And guess how much comes out of their pocket for that...)

Better yet during off seasons severs can be found making $20 an entire day because of having to tip out. And the Managers use them for manual labor (While only making 2.15+ an hour.)

If you were ever to put on those shoes btw... You would see how bad "Patrons" can be. If it were one or 2 bad ones a day np. But often its many...

And to say get another job is just to be clueless, ignorant, and out of touch in these times.

TY

..The if that happened there would be no restaurants for you to eat at...
Always easy to excuse something when your not wearing the shoes.

ah fellow server! i went over quite a bit of that one page back, but nice to see im not the only one mentioning it. Also dont forget to add in, that some places make us pay for food that gets comped (out of our pockets) dishes and such that break (out of our pocket) credit card fees (out of our pocket)plus we have to buy and maintain our own uniforms most the time,(some places will keep the serving coat or such for us) really upkeep for me typically never exceeded more than 120-200 bucks a month depending on tools uniforms dry cleaning and such we had to do.

If I were treated and paid as a slave and forced to beg to survive, I'd be filled with a lot of hate, too, especially for the rich people I would have to beg who would mistreat me and give me only pennies.

Perhaps a system based on requiring someone to beg is not good enough, not for the one forced to beg, not for the one faced with the begging bowl and coquettish smile.

No employer should be exempt from the minimum wage law. That is not an employer, but a slave driver.

legal minimum wage for a server is 2.15 in most places. the government expects us to make a minimum of 10% tips and taxes us based on our sales, and more if they see we did better than that, plus don't forget to add in tip out and other cost.

They make servers pay for credit card usage fees? That is beyond fucked up, that's illegal I'm pretty sure.

I do not mean this concept of "minimum wage for a server." Nobody survives on 2.15 an hour - ridiculous! In Canada, the minimum wage is approximately $10/hour. If a person works at such a job full time, they will only make $20K/year - the poverty line. No employee should ever get paid less than this.

Any business that cannot afford to pay its employees what would at least take them to the poverty time based on a full time schedule, is not a business that deserves to be in business.

heh, I mean poverty line, not poverty time.

THIS ^^^

Btw, Im glad I live in the midwest, Its take out all the way...

the government expect us to make a minimum percent of sales regardless, and to make a certain percent of tip, so in their minds it is livable wage. the 2.15 is a way to ensure they can tax us. most of us dont bother picking up pachecks for a month or two because altogether they may only add up to 50-70 dollars for a month and a half.

Here in San Francisco all service employees are paid the minimum wage of 10.85 an hour.

The east coast restaurants need to pay more than two or three dollars an hour. They are robbing the wait staff blind
with those way out dated wages.

Look at this graph. Look at how all the first world countries are in the "good" range...purple to blue... except one.


What other countries are "yellow" ? ...how about "green", which is better than yellow?

[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

i was out of the service field for a while when i was on west coast (yay 17.50 an hour plus large comissions) but i always said if i was to go back in i would do it on the west coast. (of course i went back in one last time of the east coast but oh well)

Thats pretty cruel. Why expect the public to support you when the Restaurant owners have it so good? I think its a corrupt industry...

I will say this. certain states are now starting to realize how unfair it can be for servers, and some states (fla for example) have minimum server wages of 4.65, and as of the past few weeks have enacted laws stating that hourly duties such as opening, closing, most sidework, rolling and cleaning and polishing silverware, running large stacks of plates etc, can no longer be done by a server clocked in as a server. this also includes duties of a sever such as closing servers having to leave their tables to check off the other servers side work and such (yep managers didnt even have to check all the work servers did, other servers had to do it and if it wasnt done would have to do it themselves.)

So imagine coming in as an opener. you are there for an hour or two paid at 2.15 an hour. you have no tables until the restaurant is open, in the meantime you clean out up to 20 racks of glass ware, polish them, set them out at the bar and other places, pull down over 100 chairs, set up patios, set up all the stations in the back, set out silverware clean out dish pits that are covered in grime and left over food and grease. for money that you honestly wont see after taxes. then throughout your shift you still run food, take care of any table that asks you to, do running sidework, and god help you if you run out of silver during you shift. all the while still bussing and resetting your tables and any table you can help out at. now after your shift is over, you still have duties. including polishing and rolling an average of 100 sets of silver. (polish 200 forks, 100 knives roll them up perfectly, make a certain number of mistakes you may have to start over again from scratch) once again for 2.15 an hour.

as a mid shift, you dont have to open but you have all the same resonsibilities during your shift, and at the end of your shift you have to start breaking down your assigned stations, which includes polishing out chrome stations, as well as other tasks that can take 30-minutes to an hour to complete, then the silverware, etc. all of which has to be checked out by a closer who you have to peel away from their tables and get them to sign off, which can take 20 minutes to get their attn easy. and if the stations and such you broke down restocked etc get messed up while waiting (they are still in use mind you) you have to redo them and get the closers attention again before they get messed up.

as a closer, once the final patron leaves, you can start closing. so even if you haven't had a table in over an hour, and its just one person sitting at the bar who wont leave an hour and a half after the restaurant is closed, you still have to sit there and wait, once again at 2.15 an hour. also while working your tables you get constant requests to go perform a check out on other servers work so they can go home. Now after the last patron leaves, you are normally responsible for putting up all the chairs, breaking down patios, cleaning out sweeping dining rooms fully breaking down the stations and getting everything ready for the following day. at which point you still have to be checked out by a manager and typically can expect not to go home for an hour after last customer has left the building. so any server can expect to be doing unpaid work for an hour up to 3 hours during their shift.

Then pretty soon you would have no business.

I'm a server. 20% is great, if I deserve it.

15% is great, when I know I don't.

Don't go lower than this, you screw the bussers and bar out of their cut. Complain about poor service if you have to, but do the right thing financially.

Also, if you have items removed from your bill, consider tipping on what you would've paid. Just because the manager comped your entree doesn't mean I shouldn't make rent.

Thank you.

Bunch of retards in here, forgot the meaning of 'tip'.
Dont get enough salary? Dont work there, lets see how long it takes for them to pay a real wage.

Blaming the customer shows all that is fucked up in this world.

wait till they implement martial law after the election. Most restaurants will close down.