I'm sure I'll be down voted to hell. Downvote away!
Isn't this sub about work reform and fair play? Don't we want to see each other do well in spite of our jobs? Why does the concept of tipping your server make people so angry? The federal minimum wage for a tipped server is $2.13 an hour. We didn't make the rules. We don't want to be paid 2-3 dollars an hour. We're not the ones who set up the system. We just do what everyone else does: try our best to feed our families and pay our bills.
I've been in the food service industry for 6 years. Allow me tell you why we deserve to make the money we make.
1 – Serving is deeply labor intensive and hard on your body. I'm 23 and I have sciatica, recurring lower back pain, and both of my feet are sensitive to the point where if I stand up too quickly at the wrong angle I'll be doubled over in pain. I don't know a single person in the industry – server, cook, or otherwise – that doesn't have some degree of health problems as a direct result of their job. That's not even counting the mental ones!
2 – Customers often lose sight of the fact that they are not our only – or even first – priority. The largest amount of tables I've ever had to serve at once was 20. At 4 people per table, that's 80 people I had to literally run from one end of the restaurant to serve at the same time. How often do you ever have to multitask in such a way that you're caring for 80 people at once for hours at a time? As illegal as it is, there are no such things as breaks for restaurant workers. You don't get more the minute you're able to steal in the bathroom. Half the reason I started smoking was so I could actually have 2 minutes to breathe 8 hours into a 12 hours shift.
3 – Our tips aren't just for us. If there's a bartender, and there's liquor on your bill, we have to tip the bartender. If there's a busser or a food runner, they're getting tipped. Some restaurants are even having their waitstaff start to tip out the kitchens, too. “Our” tips are never really ours. For example, I tip my bartender 5 percent of all liquor sales and the kitchen/food runners get 2 percent of all food sales.
4 – Restaurants are short-staffed. It's not a surprise. Who wants to be a server when people constantly shit on us for just doing our jobs? Not to mention, we're short-staffed, so more of us have to work upwards of 12 hours a day. If you go out for lunch or dinner, odds are your server has been at the restaurant since an hour before it even opened. We also have hours of work to do behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly.
To the people who say we don't deserve to make even 20/hr: why? Everyday in a restaurant is a prayer of blood, sweat, and tears. 20% tipping is the norm because we slowly grind our bodies and minds down with every shift we work. 20% is the norm because most of us make $2.13 an hour. 20% is the norm because you are literally waited on, and service with a smile is one of the hardest things to provide when you've been working for 10 hours, your body is screaming in pain, you're half-asleep from exhaustion, and then Kevin looks down on you and practically spits in your face because he feels superior despite the fact that he couldn't do our job to save his life.
I've seen countless new hires swagger in with the same confidence – after all, it's “just” serving – only for them to leave hours into their 1st shift in actual tears. It's not an easy job. Sure, it's not necessarily complicated, but that doesn't mean it's easy. It's hard. Not everyone can do it. And those of us who can are tired of being shit on for making decent money in light of everything we sacrifice – our mental, emotional, and physical health – on a daily basis.