A little sexism never hurt anyone (in this business, anyway)

On principle, advocates of gender equality should never go out to eat. Throughout the liberal arts educational process, the agenda of social justice plays a huge role; we’re taught that we shouldn’t discriminate, and that everyone should be treated equally.

As a server, if you don’t take advantage of those differences, you’re a moron.



If you have nothing that makes you interesting, you’re not going to make much money. If you take charge of the things that make you unique, you’ll find your bank account increasing. Even the relatively common characteristic of just being attractive enough can earn you lots of money.

If you’re a male, imagine going out to eat and having a good-looking waitress not only take your food order, but also acts like she’s interested in you. It may be a ruse, it may not--what matters is that when coupled with good service, you’re a variable in an equation that should amount to a rent check.

When that’s what it comes down to, you’d be a fool not to undo an extra button on your uniform, or what I do when I get a group of old ladies--simplify my humor and flirt my ass off.



This isn’t to say that I don’t try hard to earn my living with the other patrons. However if you seat me with a few old ladies I can instantly become an instant expert on canasta and daytime television.

Take what happens to someone I know on a regular basis.

This particular waitress gets large parties every so often, and they will often tip her immensely on top of service charges without fail. She does it by doing what I affectionately refer to as “Working it.”

When she gets groups of businessmen, she immediately finds the host of the party and begins to treat him like she was just hit with cupid’s arrow. On one occasion, she even warmed up to a lonely guy at someone else’s table and he ended up giving her twenty bucks as he left for “making his night.”

I guess in my business, you’ve just gotta work with what you’re given. I’m still learning that part.

Valentine's Day - A Dynamic of Love

Valentine’s day means something entirely different to a service industry employee than it does to a person who has never waited tables. It’s for that reason specifically that I’ve never had a successful relationship with a non-waitress.

The woman I’m seeing now is a server, and we sat down together and had a conversation about Valentine’s day. We both decided with little debate that we were not the type of people to celebrate the festivities of the occasion. In a heartbeat, we unanimously made a decision that would make most women throw a violent tantrum.

We both wanted to work instead.

This is how the average person sees Valentine’s Day;



This is how a seasoned waiter sees Valentine’s Day;



It’s really very simple; There are precious few holidays where you can show up to work for a full shift and leave afterwards with an entire month’s rent in your pocket. Let’s analyze all of the reasons why this happens;

Reason #1 - The restaurant is busy.

The fact that it’s a holiday means that people want to celebrate it. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule (Flag Day, Labor Day, Kwanzaa), but Valentine’s Day is one of the major reasons that people take each other out to eat. There are countless couples that come in, and they all need people to do very basic things to give them what would normally be an unacceptably mediocre dinner--they are enjoying each other’s company, and could very well not give a damn if you actually served them a plate of kangaroo testicles in lieu of an actual dinner.

Reason #2 - The first date dynamic.

Let me illustrate this one;



For many people, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to take someone out and not be alone. For these people, the rules of rational expenditure tend to fall to the wayside. They will buy things like expensive wine, dangerous flowers with sharp points on the stem, and Justin Beiber concert tickets. For a server, this mindset makes it much easier to ring up higher check totals.

Reason #3 - Good tips are a guarantee.

At the end of each couple’s dinner, the server’s tip is generally given with regard to the sliding scale of ‘How much I want to impress my date.’
The very least you might be given is around fifteen percent, but at that rate, the man paying the bill could care less if he were on a date with a bearded manatee. Furthermore, he’s probably not even expecting a post-date hand job.
At the other end of the tipping scale, I’ve observed gross over-tipping to the tune of 50-75% of the check total. The kind of guy who tips this well is on a date with a girl whom he is convinced makes Kim Kardashian look like an accordion-playing hobo. He’s hoping to somehow involve incense and candles into his post-date sexual encounter, and his friends will eventually grow tired of hearing about how great his date went.

Knowing all of this, I was pumped to go to work on Valentine’s Day. I even called ahead to see how many reservations there were at the restaurant I work for. This is what my boss told me;

Boss; “Devon, you’re not on the schedule.”
Me; “There must be some mistake.”
Boss; “Nope. We have a full floor, and you’re not on it.”

I reacted accordingly.



I hadn’t had a Valentine's Day off in four years. I didn’t know what to do with it.

So I went out to eat.

Water: The Kiss of Death

When you're serving someone dinner and beverages, there are certain things that you tend to look for. You ask questions that probe deeply into the patron's psyche (Where are you from? What do you do that brings you here? Are you celebrating something? What do you tend to drink with dinner?).

These questions are perfect for figuring out how to help a restaurant guest have a fantastic experience. However, there are some things that are subtly reaffirmed to you that the people you are taking care of are not only determined to NOT have a good time, but also are not intending to leave you a tip.

Clue #1-






When everyone at the table wants water, it's a sure bet that they're cheap. If they won't spend two bucks on an iced tea, they probably won't feel the need to tip you an extra couple bucks for amazing service.

Clue #2 -



In general, race and ethnicity factor heavily in the restaurant environment. The sad rule of thumb is that if any guest you're serving has an identifiable ethnicity (or one you aren't sure of), it's a good bet you're not going to get a significant tip.

Knowing this, it's easy to say "If I ever go to another country, I will find out beforehand how I am supposed to tip at restaurants! Toodley Moodley!"

In China, there is no industry standard for tipping; all waiters and waitresses are paid a flat rate. In the United Kingdom, ten percent is expected, and a twelve percent service charge is used for large parties. In France, fifteen percent is factored in no matter how many people or what you order. At one point in Japan, accepting tips was considered dishonorable and tipping disrespectful.

It was always curious to me why often times French visitors would not leave extra money for the server. If the person's English wasn't good enough, I'd use what French I speak to explain the difference. I found it helped in most cases, got me yelled at in broken English in others.

Barring that, why can't foreigners do the same research when they come to visit?

Clue #3 -







If you get a person that can't be happy, give up. I have taken care of people with utter perfection in my execution and then found out that the person had approached a manager without my knowledge to complain about the entire meal. I've had a person tell me once that the lobster they ordered smelled "too much like the ocean."

It's best to not let it get to you.

There are other smaller hints and clues that you're dead on arrival (groups of high school students, people asking for rolls instead of ordering something, etc.), but these are the surest I've found. Post your own in the comments!

The Power of Tipping Generously

An odd thing occurred to me today as I went to mail my taxes in and grab a bite to eat on the corner. I walked into the pizza shop and ordered a BLT. When it came time to pay, the man behind the counter insisted I just take it. For free.

When I insisted on handing him the full fare for the delicious bacon-laden lunch, he leaned in and spoke to me in his European accent. He said;

"A few weeks back, our delivery driver dropped off an order to your house. When he didn't have enough change, you told him to keep it. Our driver recognized you when you walked in."

I saw over in the corner that same guy who earlier in the week, graciously accepted $20 bucks on a $12 dollar delivery order. He came over, gave me a quick nod, and said "I always pay back my debts."

Moved as anything, I left the store, BLT and chips in hand. As with anything, generosity is always appreciated if not reciprocated. Conversely, there's nothing you can ever gain by being overtly cheap.

As a waiter, whenever someone tips me generously, I remember that person. I look forward to serving that person again, and would do everything I could to get whatever free or coveted items to his or her table without getting into too much trouble with the management. Often times, I'd risk it anyway.

I forget what journalist wrote that short piece a few years back about his journey to New York City with a stack of twenty dollar bills. He tried to see how far he could get by slipping twenties into the hands of the right people. He was let into exclusive luncheons, ferried around to awesome places, and generally well-liked by whomever he paid.

The important thing I realized about this whole situation was not that the money itself was significant. Of course, the money is appreciated. But in retrospect, the subtraction doesn't quite work out. I left the guy eight bucks when he delivered to my house, but the cost of the sub and chips was more than that upon my return. His net gain was in the negative, but he recognized me for my generosity and future business.

My friend and I recently staked a claim on our new hangout spot, a classy restaurant/pool hall/karaoke venue. The first couple times we went, I doubt we were distinguishable from the other bros in the place. My friend and I both tipped generously each time we went, and by the third time we went, we were treated like regulars, given free beer, and generally made to feel more welcome than the average person. The man in charge gave us free tastes of exclusive and obscure tap beverages, four pints for the price of three, things of that nature.

It speaks to most things about life in general, but if you help others when times are good for you, you can often count on others when you're up the creek and down the waterfall.

The Industry Standard

If I had to describe the way the industry standard in the US denotes tipping, I would say it is "inconclusive." I would then say "hand me a bunch of dandelions, because Ray Bradbury taught me how to make myself drunk with these. Also I'm poor."

What I'm trying to say is that the methodologies of tipping in the United States mean just as much to the layperson as the fundamental intricacies of "time travel," or "health insurance."

Take last night, for instance. I had a huge group of men (and one or two margarita-drinking-NOT-men) celebrating a birthday party. By "celebrating," I of course meant, "ignoring the person responsible for their libations."



After ringing up a significant check, I counted the money and was left with less than 6% of what I brought them.

This was upsetting, but most servers (pussies like myself) aren't comfortable with approaching a poor tipper to ask what the problem was. This is acceptable only if you have big enough balls to bring it up in the most passive-aggressive way humanly conceivable.

For example;



I was lucky enough to have a fellow worker looking out for me, casually mentioning that his buddy only got a few bucks for an hour's worth of serving beers and tactfully ignoring poorly-constructed penis jokes.

I was approached shortly afterward by a drunken fellow, apparently the Deanna Troi of the group, who handed me a few more dollars and apologized for the drunken misdemeanors of his rowdy and under-cognizant friends.

I was relieved that someone nearby had a true grasp of the scenario, but stunned at the notion that people who have never been formalized in the fine arts of tipping or basic mathematics consistently find that they have aged twenty-one years on this earth with no knowledge of the industry standard.

Yet, it happens all the time.

It's the subtle relationship we share which determines who of us make rent and whom do not.

Racism and Overstaffing; A Recipe for Success!

On any given Monday, you typically don't see too many restaurants full to capacity. That luxury is only seen on weekends. This is common knowledge, and one doesn't have to be qualified in management or restaurant mechanics to arrive at this conclusion. The restaurant at which I am employed had over eleven people working a Monday night dinner. Let's just let that sink in for a moment.

Finally, after two and a half hours of pretending to punch in orders at a terminal (but instead playing Texas Hold 'Em on my cell phone), I was given a table of three Asian people, a young male student who was evidently taking his non-English speaking parents out for dinner.

If there's something that creates a stereotype, it's when certain people consistently do the same thing over and over completely independently of each other.

In this case, they ordered lobster...which is what all Asians who visit this particular restaurant do.

After a lobster between the three of them and God knows how many tap water refills, I dropped the check.

On the credit card device at the table, the options for gratuity are twenty, eighteen, and fifteen percent. Because of the fact that I assumed I wouldn't be tipped well, I left them the machine on this screen, but because of the grace of God and Murphy's Law (not to mention the tenacity of people who refuse to tip well), I was left under ten percent of the total.

Because this was my only table of the evening (and because of the fact that I had to tip out the support staff), I left my shift this evening with less than five dollars.

I would have made more money today if I had been making Air Jordan sneakers in a warehouse in Indonesia.

Such is the business I've committed my life to.