The Restaurant Chronicles:  Part Two – Tipping is Not a City in China

The first time I saw this expression, it was on a bumper sticker, and I was a little kid.  I had no idea what it meant because there was no reason for me to know what it meant.  I was a kid.  I didn’t have a job.  My life consisted of going to school, playing in the woods behind the farm, and getting my ass beat by my brother on a daily basis.  I didn’t know what it meant because I shouldn’t have known what it meant. Now, I knew what tips were because my family worked in the restaurant business, and we also ate out a fair amount of the time.  I watched my father leave tips after a meal, but—again—being a kid I had no way to make a conscious connection to how that tip was calculated.  Most of the time I didn’t even pay enough attention to count in my head the amount of money he was leaving on the table.  Why?  Because I was a kid.  There was no reason for me to know, or care, about tips, what they were or why they were even a thing—much less their impact on another human being’s life.  My job was to pick my nose without other people noticing.

Unfortunately, too many people in this country—adult people—still behave toward tips the way I did when I was seven years old.  They don’t think about the proper calculation of a tip.  They don’t concern themselves over how that tip makes or breaks a server’s ability to pay their bills.  Too often, they don’t tip at all, for any number of excuses that they deem justifiable.  These people are a scourge on society.

Shitty tippers come in all forms.  They can be rich, working class or poor.  They can be from any nation or ethnic background.  They can be religious, agnostic or atheist.  They have the full spectrum of skin colors.  They can be total assholes from the second you greet them, or they can smile and be polite and respectful and still fuck you over when the bill gets paid.  Which is, of course, the dilemma facing any server who deals with a customer for the first time:  they have no idea with whom they’re dealing so they have to treat every new customer as if they are actually useful members of society and will tip appropriately.

“But,” I hear you say, “isn’t that the whole point?  Shouldn’t servers always provide great service to every customer?”  No, dammit, that isn’t the point and that’s not how any of this works.  By and large, shitty tippers aren’t sporadic in their shitty tipping behavior.  They’re entirely consistent when it comes to fucking over servers, no matter what their justification.  THAT is the point.  Of course, once a shitty tipper has exposed themselves as such, any server with a degree of self-respect will not provide top-notch service to that customer the next time they have the displeasure of dealing with that person.  Understand this, right here and now:  the free market goes both ways.  If a server is expected to provide excellent service in order to receive a good tip (a premise with which I do not disagree), then it is incumbent upon the customer to actually provide that good tip.  If the customer screws over the server, then the customer should not expect to receive the same level of service from that server ever again.  Why?  Because a server is a very busy person, and they have only so much available time and mental bandwidth to commit to the people they’re serving.  If a server has four tables (a pretty standard arrangement before the pandemic), and one of those tables is a known quantity of being good tippers, two tables are unknown, and the last table contains shitty tippers, then that server will absolutely put more time and effort into pleasing the good tippers and the unknowns because they already know they’re going to get screwed by the shitty tippers, so there is zero point in continuing to bang their head against that particular wall.

Let’s review, very quickly, the matter of why tips exist in the restaurant business in the first place (No, I am not going to address tipping taxi drivers, hotel housekeepers, hairdressers or golf caddies.  This is “The Restaurant Chronicles”, not a sociological treatise on tipping writ large.).  As I said in Part One, most servers in the US get paid less than the federal standard minimum wage, which is where the tips come in.  Customers are expected to make up that difference.  Like it or not, that’s the system we have, so your “protest” stiffing is total bullshit.  Grow up, and tip like a human being.  The federal standard tipped minimum wage is $2.13 per hour which is still being used in 16 states.  Of the other 34 states which have increased their tipped minimum wages since 1991, only five have a tipped minimum wage in excess of $10 per hour.  For those who are bad at math, a $10 floor wage only amounts to a total annual pre-tax income of $20,800.  So, yeah, you still need to tip these people.  In fact, if the “minimum wage” had been allowed to adjust based on worker productivity, it would currently sit at around $26 per hour; so even if you live in Minnesota or Alaska, you still need to pony up just to get a server to the bare bones floor of living with some degree of dignity.  I’m not getting into inflation adjusted minimum wage or living wage, because those are moving targets which would transform my little rant into an hours-long screed.  Suffice it to say that current levels of the tipped minimum wage in all but California, Washington and Oregon are total bullshit (but if you live in those three states, tip your servers anyway because they’re still only making around $26,000 per year, pre-tax, and those states are fucking expensive places in which to live).

---

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at how shitty tipping plays out in real life.  As I stated previously, I started in kitchens, and eventually moved to the front-of-house jobs by the time I was in my early 20’s.  The switch from a standard paycheck to making my living solely from tips was quite a culture shock for me.  Instead of having a fairly regular amount of money that I could count on each week, I had to pay very close attention to my daily financial situation, which meant that I had to set an average target for how much money I needed to pull in tips each time I worked.  At one point in time, that average was $40.  I knew that Tuesday evenings wouldn’t pay as well as Friday evenings so if I made $20 on Tuesday, I needed to pull in $60 on Friday in order to make it even out.  Mind you, this was based on the absolute barest minimum I needed to get by, back in the 1990’s.

When I first started serving tables, I bought into the whole lie that management taught me, which was that “going beyond the customer’s expectations” would invariably result in a good tip; and that my “raise was on the table”—all I had to do in order to make more money was to upsell the shit out of people, “wow” them with fantastic service, and I’d have it made.  Well, my starry-eyed naiveté crashed hard into the reality that is the sizable populace of shitty tippers in this country.  At my first serving job I became so good at selling desserts, that eventually I would set up a dessert tray and sell the entire dining room with my presentation.  It made my coworkers very happy because they didn’t have to work as hard.  It only had a minimal impact on my tip percentages.  At my second serving job, I did all kinds of things to blow my customers away.  One time I had a lady who wanted a particular soft drink that we didn’t carry.  So, I walked half a block down to the nearest convenience store and bought her that soft drink with my own money.  She tipped 10% which, after deducting the money I spent on her fucking soda, really came down to about 5%.  I was friendly, outgoing, fast and treated everyone as though all they needed was a great service experience to open their eyes to the warm fuzzy feeling that is tipping their server 20%.  Instead, I got an average tip rate of 11%, which means I got stiffed and dollared-to-death way more often than was ever justified.  Eventually, after probably a year or so, the scales fell from my eyes and I vowed that people would only receive great service from me after they had proven themselves worthy of that service.  So, I defaulted to adequate service upon first contact with new customers—I was polite and prompt and helpful when it came to recommendations—but I absolutely did not go out of my way.  If they tipped well, then they would get the royal treatment from me during any subsequent times when I had the pleasure of serving them.  If the tips were adequate, the service remained adequate.  If the tips sucked, then the service sucked.  I was done pushing myself to the limit for a bunch of assholes who either didn’t care or who actually got off on screwing servers over.  Free market fundamentalists just love to talk about how an unregulated free market is the most efficient type of economy, because there aren’t any of those pesky laws or regulations to get in the way.  Well, guess what?  The way I approached serving customers was absolutely the most efficient economic model for myself, and other servers, because we weren’t wasting time and energy on some Milton Friedman wannabe, when instead we could make more money paying better attention to people who understand that you truly get what you pay for.

While we’re on the subject, let’s talk percentages.  Once upon a time, a veeerrrrrrry long time ago, the socially acceptable standard tip was 10%.  Then the 1980’s came along and it was well understood that tipping the same measly 10% for the past 60 years, when the cost of living had definitely not stayed the same, was no longer acceptable, so it was bumped to 15%.  In the 1990’s it was 18%.  Now it’s 20%.  I want to be clear here and point out that this is for the barest minimum of acceptable service.  If you go out to eat pretty much anywhere except McDonald’s, you had damned well better be dropping a 20% tip if the server prevented you from starving to death, filled your drinks at a reasonable pace, and didn’t tell you to go fuck yourself when you asked for clean silverware because there was a hard water spot on the fork.  Anything beyond that level of service requires a tip above 20%–more like 25-30%.  Don’t like it?  Don’t fucking eat out.  Also, do NOT penalize the server if the kitchen screwed up by taking too long to get your dish prepared, or didn’t make it to your insane Sally Albright specifications, or the bartender didn’t make your drink strong enough, or the room was too cold, or the room was too hot, or literally any other thing that did not fall under your server’s direct control.  Also, that 20% includes any parts of the meal that were comped—yes, even if the entire meal was comped.  You don’t get to freeload—ever. 

Also, fun fact:  in almost every single restaurant which employs tipped servers, those servers do not take home all of their tips.  They have to “tip-out” to other workers who helped them along the way—and unlike the server, their tip-out percentages are non-negotiable and are usually calculated by the point-of-sale system, based on the server’s total sales, when they cash out for the night.  Now, if the server had a good night, and had mostly productive members of society who knew how to tip appropriately, then everybody wins.   But, if the busser didn’t clean the tables worth a damn, or the bartender took all goddamned night to get the drinks ready, or the kitchen (yes, some places require kitchen tip-outs) fucked up the food, or the food runner dropped the food in the customer’s lap, that server still has to tip them out whatever is the calculated rate at that particular restaurant.  The total tip-out typically results in the server paying anywhere from 10-30 percent of their total tips for the shift.  So, when you tip 15% and pat yourself on the back for being such an enlightened human being, not only did you short the server the 5% you should have paid them to begin with, but their real “take-home” tip is now closer to 12%.  To be absolutely clear here:  while the server’s tips are dependent upon the whims of random people, the amount of money those servers have to tip to other people is paid at a fixed rate.  I’ve known more than one server who walked out at the end of a shift with barely enough money to put gas in their car to get home, because they had the bad luck to serve a bunch of degenerates but still had to pay out a significant portion of their tips to other people who don’t have to worry about such things.

So, once more with feeling:  the rock bottom tip percentage is 20% unless the server deliberately stabbed you in the eye with your fork after you demanded their phone number in exchange for a “good tip.”  Even then, if there was any justice in the world, that server would get a parade instead of a day in court.

---

There’s a special place in hell for the people who think that as long as they’re polite and personable that they can get away with being shitty tippers.  Newsflash, assholes:  your smiling face doesn’t pay a server’s bills.  When it comes down to it, most servers would rather deal with someone who is a total asshole, but who tips appropriately, than someone who is sweet and nice and tips 15% or less.  Case in point:  I worked with a lady (we’ll call her Tracy) who was a great server.  She always had a smile on her face, offered exceptional service and got along with almost everyone.  Her nemeses were a married couple who came in every week like clockwork.  She served them every time they came in because they liked her so much that they would request her table.  They were the nicest people One could hope to meet.  They also left her a dollar.  Every.   Single.  Time.  At one point Tracy tried to get the host to fill up her section—even to the point of being willing to be double or triple sat (which means, getting two or three tables in rapid succession which tends to fuck up a server’s ability to time things out properly for the customers) just so she could avoid these two dipshits.  Instead, these people would say they were willing to wait until a table opened up and would be in the bar in the meantime.  She couldn’t get away from them, no matter what she tried.  Now, I want to state for the record that Tracy was not only a great server, but she was one of those really rare human beings who would almost never say a bad word about anyone.  But, she grew to fucking loathe these people.  I would watch her whole demeanor shift from Dr. Jekyll to Mrs. Hyde the minute this couple would arrive in her section.  The problem for her—aside from the fact that she was essentially working for free while serving them—was that she couldn’t ever complain about them to anyone who mattered.  She couldn’t complain to the managers because they didn’t give a shit.  She certainly couldn’t say anything to the couple because they would complain to the manager who would immediately fire Tracy.  So, she just had to suck it up.  Week after week.  Month after month.  They tormented her with smiles and laughter and interest in her life, while they would repeatedly leave her a fucking dollar for a $60 meal.  It almost drove her mad.

One day, Tracy came into work and she was much brighter than usual.  She practically floated on air.  She was absolutely beside herself with joy.  I asked her what had her feeling so good and she practically gushed with excitement while telling me what had happened on her day off the day before.  She was walking into a store, in her regular clothes, when her arch enemies spotted her as they were driving by looking for a parking spot.  They rolled down a window and called out to her, “Hey Tracy!”  In that instant, Tracy knew this was her only chance.  She wasn’t at work, she wasn’t wearing her work clothes, and she suddenly realized that she had no reason to fear losing her job.  She turned around, flipped them the bird, and yelled “THANKS FOR THE TIP!”  Of course, they were scandalized by this, but there was nothing they could do about it, and they never returned to that restaurant again.  Tracy was finally free.

The same circle of hell is also reserved for church people who stiff servers by leaving behind what looks like a $100 bill tucked halfway under a napkin.  When the server pulls it out, they see that the other half is a religious tract which says “Disappointed?  You won’t be with Jesus.”  Now, speaking as a religious person, this makes me absolutely fucking crazy.  Far and away, the one shift that most servers dread more than any other is the Sunday morning/afternoon shift, because it’s full of church people who—generally speaking—are shitty, shitty, shitty tippers.  They also tend to come in huge groups which are exhausting to deal with because they all want separate checks.  If that server happens to work in a restaurant that doesn’t have an automatic gratuity policy for groups of 6 or more, then that server knows they’re getting fucked, but there’s nothing they can do about it.  This is particularly bad in the South, which is overrun with all kinds of right wing, psychopathic churches, who seem to think that Jesus taught that we should throw the poor in jail, send immigrants back to their home countries, and steal from people who labor for them.  There was, however, one notable exception which I had the pleasure of witnessing.  It was on a Wednesday evening (in the South, Wednesdays are also big church days for some reason), and a coworker of mine (we’ll call him Jeff) came to me to complain about the large party of church people that just got assigned to him.  He was working in a part of the dining room which was designed to accommodate very large parties, and this group was something like 20 or 25 people.  Out of curiosity, I took a peek into the room…and spotted the rector of the Episcopal church that I attended.  I ducked out and said to Jeff, “look, I know these people, so if you get any shit out of them let me know and I’ll pull the priest aside for a little chat.”  Jeff thanked me, took a deep breath, and went into the breach to go take their beverage orders. 

He comes back to me about 10 minutes later and asks me, “what church is this where you know these people?”

“It’s the local Episcopal church.  Why?”

“They’re all ordering booze!  I couldn’t believe it!”

“Jeff, do you know what the difference is between an Episcopalian and a Southern Baptist?”

“No…”

“The Episcopalian will say ‘hello’ to you at the liquor store.”

Jeff laughed and told me he had a good feeling about this party.  Jeff was also kind of goofy.  He was the bass player in a local punk band, so I figured he could handle himself.  To his, and my, great relief, the group was very easy to deal with and—while they did ask for separate checks—they all tipped appropriately.  Afterward, Jeff told me he’d said to them that he would be their server any time they decided to come by again.

Speaking of large parties, they’re tough in the best of circumstances, especially if you’re serving them alone.  With all the additional people—all at once—you’re jumping all the time.  Getting drinks, running food, dodging kids, and trying to be heard over the din.  It becomes ever so much worse when you’re serving a large party when the restaurant doesn’t have an automatic gratuity policy.  Typically, “autograts” are applied to parties of 6 or 8 or more, as recognition for all of the extra work required and for the unfortunate fact that large parties generally don’t tip worth a dry fuck.  The aforementioned problem of separate checks is a significant factor here.  If you’re part of a large party and the total bill is $500, but your separate check comes to $25, that lower number has a psychological effect upon your willingness to tip appropriately.  In these conditions, the normal 20% tip (or $5) would not be enough, because it doesn’t account for all of that extra running around that the server had to do for a party in which you are included.  But, because you only see $25, then you’re much more likely to tip less than you should.  It’s called anchoring theory, which is a behavioral economics term, and has been shown in pretty much every context to hold true.  So, autograts are designed to counter that cognitive bias.  When a restaurant has an autograt policy, servers are guaranteed an appropriate minimum tip for the party, even if the checks are split up.  What’s more, at least a few people in a party will recognize the additional work required to serve that party and will tip an extra amount on top of the autograt, which will compensate for the extra work load.  The other factor impacting tipping behavior among people in large parties is the bystander effect.  While typically applied in emergency situations, the bystander effect is also very much at play when tipping within a large party.  People will generally think to themselves, “well, I’m sure other people will kick in extra money, so I don’t have to tip so much.”  In other words, if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible.  Autograts are good, and right and anyone who complains about them is a guaranteed shitty tipper in any other context.

When a restaurant doesn’t have an autograt policy, it causes problems—and not just for the server.  I worked at one place which had refused for years to institute the policy.  They were afraid customers would revolt and stop eating there—which was a tacit admission that the company was perfectly happy fucking over their employees just to spare some assholes the indignity of paying someone for their labor.  Anyway, this restaurant always made a point of seeking out a server who would be willing to take a party when one arrived at the door.  This was done, primarily, because the layout of the dining room allowed for most sections to be rearranged for parties, but also because some servers were better at serving parties than others and management didn’t want to assign the parties arbitrarily.  Well, after enough servers got screwed over by large parties (more than a few of them got totally stiffed due to the bystander effect), then the servers started to engage in some passive-aggressive protest.  Whenever a large party would arrive, all of the servers would disappear off the floor.  Some would lock themselves in the bathroom.  Some would go outside and hide behind the dumpster.  Some would sit in their cars.  The result would be that the managers would be left to handle the entire floor for an undefined period of time until they could also arrange for the party to get sat (the servers were willing to deal with the lottery system if it meant getting their point across).  When the managers started bitching to the servers about this, the servers’ response was simple:  “institute an autograt policy, or this will never end.”  Now, if there was just one or two servers who were doing this, you can bet your ass they would have been fired on the spot.  But, it was the entire shift—which contained ¾ of the total server staff employed by the restaurant—so the managers couldn’t afford to shitcan everyone.  This was a chain restaurant, which at first looked like the protest was going to be a lost cause.  But, it seems that the word had spread to other locations to the point where a significant portion of locations were dealing with the same problem.  Eventually, corporate relented and instituted a sort of half-assed autograt policy.  They would apply a gratuity to parties of 8 or more—but would absolutely remove the autograt if anyone in the party complained.  Fortunately for the servers, the complaints weren’t frequent enough to risk blowing half of their shift on a party that wouldn’t tip; and eventually the customers just got used to it and had quit complaining for the most part.

---

While we’re on the subject, we should talk about the fact that, in most restaurants (and certainly every single chain restaurant), when it comes to a disagreement between a customer and a server, the server will always lose.  It doesn’t matter if the customer is a raving lunatic who set fire to the table after sexually harassing the server and shitting on the floor.  The very second that server loses their cool and says anything other than “thank you, sir, may I have another”, they will be looking for another job.  What makes this even worse is that customers are aware of this, and many of them use it to their full advantage.  I worked with a guy (we’ll call him Vince) who had the misfortune of serving a family full of assholes.  The father was a prick who was rude every time he spoke to Vince, the mother was high maintenance, and the kids were entitled little shits.  This was the type of table that had a habit of “running” a server.  This is what happens when someone asks for something from the server (I need a refill on my drink), and when the server asks if anyone needs anything else, the table says they don’t.  Then, when the server arrives with the one thing that was asked for, suddenly someone else now has a new request (I want more sugar for my coffee).  The server asks if anyone needs anything else, the table says no, the server comes back with the other thing, then another person makes a new request, lather, rinse repeat.  Running has an impact on a server’s entire section because as long as one table is monopolizing their time, they have less time to devote to serving their other tables, which results in worse tips, even from generally reasonable people.  Vince’s tips from two other tables in his section suffered because of the running from these hillbillies so he was already irritated. 

When the runners finally paid their bill and left, Vince noticed that they had left a dollar on the table (it is typical, by the way, for shitty tippers to not show their hand until they can get away without the server having a chance to see the terrible tip before they go).  I saw the look on his face when he saw that he’d been stiffed by these people (No, a dollar is not a “tip” unless your bill is a grand total of $4.00.  A dollar is just stiffing someone in a way that allows you to say you still left a tip.).  Then, he noticed that they had parked right outside the window from their table and were just getting in their car…and I could see that his was the face of someone who was going out in a blaze of glory.  He pushed past me, ran outside and up to their car just as they were pulling out, stuck the dollar bill under the windshield wiper and flipped them off.

Once again, if there was any justice in this world, Vince would have been thrown a party, but instead, Dear Old Dad pulled back in, asked for the manager, complained about how he had been sorely mistreated, and Vince got fired immediately—after, of course, the manager apologized profusely and comped their whole fucking meal.  So, not only do people like this know that they are untouchable in most restaurants, but they are also rewarded for their sociopathic behavior.  The main problem, of course, is that in chain restaurants there is always someone to which you have to answer.  If the dining room manager had said, “you know what?  You’re a piece of shit who is never allowed to dine here again until you can learn how to behave decently and tip appropriately,” then the general manager would have fired the server and the dining room manager.  If the general manager had told the customer to piss off, then the district manager would have fired him, and so on and so forth.  Customers know this—particularly the assholes—so they act with impunity.  On rare occasions, within independently owned restaurants, a manager (or, more likely, an owner) will stand up to a customer, but that customer generally has to be way over the top.  A bad tip, or a little friendly sexual harassment, typically won’t be enough.  Everybody is aware of this:  customers, managers, and especially servers.

This is typically the point where some clueless, and typically right-wing, dipshit will say, “well, if you don’t like it, go out and get another job.”  Well, I think that two years and counting of Covid-19 has thoroughly tested that idiotic notion and found it wanting.  Instead of some Randian utopia, where everyone is somehow working high powered jobs and making the world run more efficiently, restaurants have been limiting hours and closing because they can’t find enough people willing to work these shitty jobs to keep the places open.  That’s how the real world works.  So, maybe, instead of spewing more bullshit about how you feel justified in treating servers like shit because you’re somehow encouraging them to go get a better job, you can just stop being an asshole, and pay your goddamned tip. 

---

Here’s one for the people who are thinking to themselves right now, “well, I don’t do any of those things because I am a good tipper.  Those bad tippers are real assholes.”  But, these particular people also make a point of taking up space for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more after they’ve finished the meal and paid the bill.  These people are known as “campers” and they are just as bad—if not worse—than the shitty tippers mentioned above.  Why?  Because a server’s ability to make a living depends not only upon the tips they receive from individual tables, but also from the total number of tables they get during a shift.  If a table decides they’re going to sit around all fucking night, then they are immediately eliminating at least 25% of a server’s income for as long as they stay there.  “Oh, but I paid for my meal and I’m tipping 20%, so I’m entitled to sit here for as long as I want.”  No, you are fucking not.  If you want to camp out in a server’s section, then you need to adjust your tip to compensate for all of the time that you are preventing the server from being able to make money off of that table.  A good rule of thumb is dropping an extra $5 for every 15 minutes beyond the point at which your meal was over and you should have left.  If you want to sit there all goddamned night, then you’d better be prepared to drop a lot of money because you are literally destroying that server’s ability to make a living.  I can promise you that, while you’re gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, or just shooting the shit, or playing a marathon session of MtG, that server is also continuing to check in on you, filling your water glasses, and otherwise performing a service for which you are no longer paying.  I once watched a server get so screwed by a pair of campers that it literally got her fired.  These people came in around mid-shift, and then never left.  Even when the place was closing and she needed to clean her section and go home, they just sat there, obliviously being the selfish assholes that they were.  She couldn’t leave until her section was cleaned (because the manager sure as shit wasn’t going to do it for her) and she couldn’t do that until they left (and, this was a corporate restaurant, so the manager sure as shit wasn’t about to tell them to take a hike either).  Eventually, when the section next to hers was cleaned and that server left, she asked—very politely—if they wouldn’t mind moving over to one of the clean tables so she could clean her section.  Well!  That was just Too Much To Ask, so they complained to the manager, who—you guessed it—fired her on the spot.  This was a good server.  She was solid, didn’t complain much, and got along with most people.  But, these fucking campers got her fired for the unpardonable sin of—not asking them to leave—but to just move one table over so she could clean her section and try to get to bed before 2:00 am.  Fuck those people.  I hope they died in a fire.

It’s bad enough that servers have to put up with these types of indignities from customers and managers.  But, servers also have to watch out for the owners, too.  Those owners can be either corporate or private, engaging in various and sundry forms of wage theft, or they can just straight up steal a server’s tips.  Enter the case of Ryan Brandt, a server in Bentonville, AR (corporate headquarters of that bastion of corporate greed, Wal-Mart), who was lucky enough to be one of a number of servers for a party that tipped…wait for it…$4,400.  Seems this is a group called The $100 Dinner Club, the members of which agree to each tip $100 at one of their events when eating out.  So, getting this party is, quite literally, hitting the lottery.  Now, the key here, is that Ms Brandt, and the other servers working the party, had no idea that’s what these people were going to do until at some point near the end of the meal when the announcement was made.  This means the servers had to have already provided great service to them and weren’t going out of their way because they knew what was coming.  As an aside, I will say that we need to have more $100 Dinner Clubs, in every town in this country.  Anyway, before the leaders of this group put their plan into action, they first called the owners to make sure that it wouldn’t cause any problems with the restaurant’s tipping policy (which, honestly, is a total joke because most restaurant “tipping policies” consist of “we don’t give a shit about our servers at all, so you can stiff them all night as far as we’re concerned.”) and the owners gave them the green light.  It was only after the party left that the owners told Brandt and the other servers that they wouldn’t be allowed to keep all of the money but instead had to split it with other people on staff who weren’t ever previously included in nightly tip-outs, such as kitchen staff.  Now, the only reason why we know about this little bit of bullshit is because Brandt reached out to the $100 Dinner Club people to let them know that their money didn’t go where they had intended it.  So, these customers demanded that the owners return the money they stole so it could be given to the servers who were the intended recipients of the money.  The owners did that…and then fired Brandt for exposing their theft.

From that point, the whole mess hit the media which is when the owners suddenly decided to lie about having been previously contacted about the tipping policy.  How do I know they are lying?  Two reasons:  the first is that they’re the only ones with a motive for doing so—especially after their restaurant got spammed with a ton of 1 star reviews.  The second reason is that you always know when the owner of a restaurant is lying about how they treat their servers—when their lips are moving.

Anyway, fortunately for Brandt, the $100 Dinner Club didn’t leave her twisting in the wind and instead set up a crowdfunding page to help her make ends meet until she could find another job—which she was able to do in short order.  The moral of this particular story is that even good tippers can be thwarted by the people for which the servers are working.  So, if you hear that the restaurant you frequent has a reputation for stealing from its workers, then stop eating there.  Your crème brûlée fetish isn’t worth a server’s livelihood, and if a restaurant needs to steal from its workers in order to survive, then that restaurant doesn’t deserve to survive.

Ever since I left the restaurant business, I made a point of always remembering where I came from, which it turns out is a fairly common mindset among former servers.  I’ve heard from more than one server over the years that they can always tell when they’re waiting on someone who used to work in the business:  they are polite, they aren’t demanding, they know how to act like human beings instead of a horde of raiding Vikings, and they know how to fucking tip.  Guess what else?  I always get top notch service from servers who have had me as a customer before—because they know damned well that they will get paid for it, which is how it should be.  Servers have very long memories for excellent tippers as well as shitty tippers.  So, if you’re a shitty tipper—or you’re just a clueless asshole who can’t seem to understand why so many servers are so bad at their jobs even though they get a dollar from you every time—then keep that in mind.  As I’ve said before:  you get what you pay for.