2008 Woodie Awards
Finding kindness with your server
lessons and ruminations on the historic art of tipping
Jesimin Berman
Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: Opinion
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Check, please! If I were a waitress, the customer's request for the check would be my favorite part of their dining experience. As an informed customer (courtesy of friends that were waitresses), I realize that the bulk of a server's pay is based on the amount of money they make from tips. The base pay for servers is incredibly low and varies by state; the following website, http://www.dol.gov/esa/programs/whd/state/tipped.htm, shows minimum wage for servers in states like Arizona, Colorado, Illinois and Utah as under $4.00 an hour. A tip between 15% and 20% seems a lot less optional when you see such low base pay.
After much soul-searching and reading different dining etiquette articles, I'll disagree with expert advice that says you don't have to tip bad service. Personally, I would feel guilty not leaving a tip even if the service was terrible.
Being a server is difficult. Knowing that you have to be constantly friendly and a great listener (qualities you can't even always count on in your friends or significant other) would get to me after a while. But these are some of the traits you need to get a tip these days.
So let's lower the bar just a smidge. As long as the food gets to me while it's still relatively hot, with a few appearances from the server to ask how the meal is, and a refill or two (even if it's not at the server's suggestion) and tip achieved.
Besides, all the little tip cheat-sheets and cell phone programs that help you figure out the tip coincides with the importance of leaving the server a tip. Should this revolutionary technology sit idle in one's purse, wallet, or pocket just because some standards of what's "good service" are too high?
Think of all the factors for which you can't hold your server accountable. In the likely event of a mistake with the customer's order, how are you to know if the server wrote it down wrong or if someone in the back misread the order.
Servers have bad days too. Please, we've all been in a restaurant and seen obnoxious customers at their best. It's important to say "please" and "thank you" to the people that bring the food, extra napkins, or anything else during the course of the meal.
After much soul-searching and reading different dining etiquette articles, I'll disagree with expert advice that says you don't have to tip bad service. Personally, I would feel guilty not leaving a tip even if the service was terrible.
Being a server is difficult. Knowing that you have to be constantly friendly and a great listener (qualities you can't even always count on in your friends or significant other) would get to me after a while. But these are some of the traits you need to get a tip these days.
So let's lower the bar just a smidge. As long as the food gets to me while it's still relatively hot, with a few appearances from the server to ask how the meal is, and a refill or two (even if it's not at the server's suggestion) and tip achieved.
Besides, all the little tip cheat-sheets and cell phone programs that help you figure out the tip coincides with the importance of leaving the server a tip. Should this revolutionary technology sit idle in one's purse, wallet, or pocket just because some standards of what's "good service" are too high?
Think of all the factors for which you can't hold your server accountable. In the likely event of a mistake with the customer's order, how are you to know if the server wrote it down wrong or if someone in the back misread the order.
Servers have bad days too. Please, we've all been in a restaurant and seen obnoxious customers at their best. It's important to say "please" and "thank you" to the people that bring the food, extra napkins, or anything else during the course of the meal.
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