While tipping is not a mandatory gesture, restaurants and hotel chains have greatly enforced the idea that you should tip your servers for adequate to good service.
As someone who has been working in the restaurant industry for a little over five months now, I have realized how important tipping your server really is.
Though the federal minimum wage is 7.25 dollars an hour, restaurants can pay their employees less as long they earn the standard minimum wage in addition to tips they receive from people they served. Restaurants can pay their servers and bartenders as low as 2.13 dollars an hour.
Because of the low hourly rate, most of servers’ income come from the amount of tips they get, which motivates servers to do a good job because their service determines their tip from the consumer. Undertipping a server for good service means their work to ensure you have a good experience was for nothing.
Servers are the most dependent on tips to supplement their salary, but tipping affects other restaurant employees as well.
The restaurant where I work pays me 6.25 dollars an hour, and tips cover the rest of my hourly rate. The restaurant pays me in tips from my previous shift. The low hourly rate for hosts and bussers mean when you undertip your server, you also undertip the person who sat you at a table and the one who will clean your table.
Being a server may seem unimportant, but according to the Bureau of Labor there are almost 2.3 million waiters and waitresses working in the US today. For a lot of my coworkers, serving is their full time job.
At my workplace, hopeful servers have to memorize the restaurant’s menus, take a test on the menus, work as hosts and food runners, shadow a more experienced waiter and then serve a manager, before they officially become a server.
While serving is far from one of the hardest jobs, servers still have to keep a positive attitude serving you, your friends, your parents and, worst of all, annoying toddlers who scream and cry before making a mess for the busser to clean up. The least you could do is pay an extra four dollars for your burger and fries that cost 20 dollars.
So, tip your servers more; it may seem annoying that you have to pay even more money after you paid your bill, but servers and others rely on this money. A good rule is to tip about 15 to 20 percent of your total bill for adequate to good service.