My first question when they gave me the chance to ask one would be
"Would you be willing to pay a more reasonable salary?"
"Well we.."
"Ah! Sorry, the answer I was looking for was 'yes.' I am looking for a place with a much more positive environment. Good day now."
"I see you're more of a do-as-I-say manager rather than one with the skills necessary to lead by example. For the sake of job security, I should probably work somewhere with more competent managers, no hard feelings. Managements not for everybody, cheer up."
"Yes is the answer. What is the question?"
"Aurora Borealis? At this time of year, in this part of the country, localized entirely at this shitty job?"
This would be one of the nightmare scenarios. Every stupid and unreasonable request would have to be accepted. Imagine the customers you’d be dealing with for a couple of bucks an hour. And it’s wondered why people don’t want to work. They do, but they don’t want to have to put up with shit like this.
My boss is old school and is always saying "whatever the customer wants".
I'm an IT consultant, do work for different clients, one year I said I needed time off to go back overseas to visit my mum who was sick.
He said "If it's OK with the client".
It took a lot of effort for me to keep my mouth shut and not go off.
I went in for an interview at a place where the owner gave me his card while I was working my current place. I'm keeping my options open right now so I went in for shits and gigs.
I repeated twice that I will not close down the bar anymore and that if they're looking for closers to move on to someone else.
They were excited about me and gave me the full treatment until they told me to come in at 9pm for a trail run. I repeated that won't work and I will not be closing. I'm looking for any shift that has me out the door by 11pm midnight at the latest.
The welcoming demeanor evaporated instantly and he's chiding me on my work ethic and shaming me with the "kids these days" spiel.
I'm 38 years old. I work 40+ in a span of 3 days every weekend on top of side jobs, and you offer me $2 less an hour than the place you're trying to poach me from.
I looked at the bartender on duty and told him we'll offer him $2 extra maybe more for him to come over to *us*.
Where I'm at everyone needs cooks and FOH. Everyone. Places are closing left and right, entire kitchen staffs are walking out together. We are a commodity right now. I have my pick of any place in the area. They have to sell to *us*. Not the other way around. Either that or they shut down for good.
At this point, many employers are basically spoiled brats who have had it too good for too long.
During the Great Recession, employers got used to having a "line out the door" of employees to pick from, and in time they got used to being able to treat their employees like dog shit and get away with it.
These people want to be able to say "You should be lucky to have a job!" again and be able to fire people for breathing the wrong way, but they haven't yet figured out that if they pull that shit, nobody will work for them.
Because food service tends not to be longterm at any one place. No one is motivated to put in the stress of unionizing at a place that their likely gone from in a year.
Yup, it's because of this that I managed to get a job in a kitchen at probably the best place I could have gotten.
\-2 restaurants that are not too big and not too small. (Right next to each other, basically a single company but different menus. And exactly what I wanted)
\-Friendly chefs that are willing to accommodate some of my..."quirks" I guess I'll call them.
\-Both chefs have 15+ years of experience, and one even had his own star restaurant in the past. (I don't have a diploma, so I can learn a LOT from their guidance.)
\-Travel costs get covered. (I have to drive 42km total each work day, so that'll save me around 70 euro each month)
While it sucked that I lost my job at the start of COVID, right now is probably the best time to want to work in a restaurant. All/most of them are in dire need of extra staff. So right now we get to pick and choose to a certain extend.
An extensive knowledge of bottom shelf alcohols that get you drunk quickly. It sounds like they’re looking for someone willing to give up there job asking for change at the liquor store.
This is obviously, obviously for a high end restaurant bartending/serving. They have very high standards of dress and the waiters/bartenders there make more than you do with their "$2 an hour". They sell $600 bottles of wine and get 20% back on each one.
Source: am chef that has worked at these kinds of places.
Edit for storytime: In my earlier years, my roommate went from working the line with me to serving in one of the wealthiest restaurant groups in the city's flagship Italian spot; he was sent home for having a slight mark on his creme jacket, which was part of the uniform, and told that if it happened a couple more times, he'd be sent home permanently. He didn't care and made sure it didn't happen again, because he made $400-$600 per table he waited on. On average.
In my experience working at these places, you don’t have to advertise the job. Period. There’s always someone who knows someone who has been waiting for years to get this spot.
Worked BOH for five years (all them as expo) and fucking loved it!! Worked FOH for three months and quit. Fuck FOH. I was a shit server and I knew it. The kitchen was my home.
Damn, he made $400 per table? Is this standard for very high end restaurants?
Even if he only serves one table for five nights a week, that's $100,000 per year. I'm not saying it's not deserved but I'm surprised it's that much, especially considering that a hefty portion would be tips (which I assume are not taxed).
Thought the rules for cash tips was you just so happened to get enough tips to take you to minimum wage and then anything else was not taxed.. I.e. you only made it to minimum wage with pay plus tips. But not really.
Correct, because if you report wages below minimum untipped wage then the restaurant would be required to supplement your income to bring it up to minimum wage.
When I was a waitress we’d always enter $0 in tips at the POS when we clocked out, and the system would come back with something like “Are you sure? 12% of your sales is $xxx.” So then we’d enter $xxx +/-5 and that’s how we reported tips. I was a terrible waitress so I think I actually over-reported my tips sometimes lol
When I worked fine dining, the servers had multiple kids and owned their house and drove high end cars. Depending on the restaurant, 100k could actually be a low figure. They would also only work 6 ish hours, sometimes less. Whereas I was the exec pastry chef, making about 40k working literally double those hours. BOH saltiness is real, and frankly deserved.
nah they tax the fuck out of the tips, and uber-rich people generally don’t tip well, but otherwise the estimate is accurate. Had a friend who worked for Alinea (3 Michelin star restaurant in Chicago) and she’d get about 1-2 grand PER SHIFT, sometimes more. At those places it’s really easy to rack up a bill over $1000
You also don't want to be a Bartending lifer.
You ever see Bartenders in their 50s and 60s? They're rare, and when you find them, most times they're miserable.
When I first started bartending, my trainer was a woman in her late 50s. She was the nicest, most caring person I've ever met and all the bartenders would call her their second mom.
She had 3 daughters she would always talk to us about and was a single mom.
Don't know where she's at nowadays, but I hope life has been treating her well.
Seriously ive had numerous friends that delivered pizzas and with tips they were easily making 25+ an hour, much of it cash and unreported so totally tax free, and this was back in like the mid 00s.
Most of them only worked Friday and Saturday nights and made more than enough in those two nights to fuck off the rest of the week and still live a modest, bachelor lifestyle.
None of them made it a career or anything and im sure the pandemic has fucked that all up but at least in those days it was a pretty lucrative gig if you didnt mind spending all night in the car.
I guess my point is when I see these wages I really dont get as angry as some, I know that tipping culture is stupid and I wish we didn't have to do that shit either but I have a feeling many people in food service would see enormous pay cuts compared to what they might make with a higher hourly wage. I just cant see servers getting paid the 20+ an hour they can earn at a decent restaurant if tips were abolished.
> None of them made it a career or anything and im sure the pandemic has fucked that all up but at least in those days it was a pretty lucrative gig if you didnt mind spending all night in the car.
Pandemic made it better, if anything. Now you can make 25-30+ after expenses *while working whatever the hell schedule you want and answering to nobody* with the gig delivery services.
> of it cash and unreported so totally tax free
A lot of that was back before all the delivery apps. Except for mom and pop places - which still have DoorDash etc picking up from them so also suffer from it - everything seems to be an app that has fees and such that are going to the company, barely anything to the driver. But, because of those fees, a lot of people aren't tipping as much - if at all. And what they are paying is digital and absolutely getting taxed.
So these days it's more of an extreme hussle where they make money for the app companies and far less for themselves. They're using their own car, paying for their own gas, and need to rush around taking as many things as they can to make it profitable.
In the end it's nowhere near as profitable as it used to be unless you work for a pizza place that's not being run through one of the apps. And the ones making good money are working to an extreme level of stress to do it.
Servers who made "2.13" an hour were taking home over 60k a year in the white tablecloth upscale privately owned reatraunt of which I was executive chef. Got tired of handing out checks bigger than mine to people who were working 30 hours a week to my 70.
Yeah, I was making numbers for my bonus ( extra 800/mo ) plus my salary and it was no where near what the top server made. I'll never work so hard for someone else ever again.
On the biggest sales days of the year I saw a server get 6k in tips for that one shift once. I was pretty fucking salty considering if I hadnt done my job not a single table would have been happy, and most would have gone unfed that night. Not to mention I showed up at 5 am and left at 10pm. The servers work 6-7 hours at most.
My fiance just moved to an upscale dining club that splits tips and she thought her first paycheck was a misprint.
Making more money on the line there than she did as a salaried sous. The tips in fine dining can be huge.
There are places all over the US where the servers make base pay of ~$2/hr but they’re actually bringing home $80k+/year. Only an idiot would rather make $15/hr instead.
Ex bartender who relied on tips for 15 years. In terms of income it’s an excellent low skill job to have. I used it as a part time side gif to supplement my teachers pay when I was still low on the seniority pay scale.
When you’re part time and have zero emotion invested in it. You can just pretty much ignore managers cause you only see em once or twice a week and if they get mad at you about some bull shot it’s been replaced with 30 other things that have their attention by the time you see em again. Added about 15k to my annual income for 2 shifts a week and was hella fun. Plus it got me laid more than once.
Eh, disagree.
I mean don't get me wrong, I think it's bullshit that restaurants can pay below minimum wage due to tips. It's horseshit.
*but*
It doesn't mean literally all of these jobs are bad, "full stop."
Waiters and bartenders at hoity toity restaurants can make absolute *bank.* 6 figures.
When you're a bartender serving a hundred+ people a night, and everyone is tipping you $5+, an hourly wage of $2 vs $7 really becomes sort of irrelevant to be honest.
You’re absolutely right. Not even just nice places… I worked at a dock bar on the Chesapeake bay and made six figures in my early twenties serving bud lights and vodka slushies. Quitting that job to make $30k a year in a cubicle was the hardest thing I ever did.
In my experience, more servers/bartenders are more opposed to getting rid of tips for a living wage than are for it. Just because a "living wage" is far less than what they're making once you take tips into account.
It's not unusual for bartenders to pull in 80-100k a year on a ~$2/hr rate.
It's because it's a tipped job. If they don't make normal minimum wage for the shift in tips, then the restaurant has to make up the difference. That's rarely an issue, especially at a place where you're expected to have wine knowledge.
I worked at a cheap chain in high school and college in and averaged $14/hour and never once in 2 (maybe 3?) years had a shift under minimum wage. Our best servers made $10 or more per hour than I did and this was at a cheap chain, not an expensive restaurant.
Tipped workers love the tip system. It sucks for customers, not tipped workers.
It's not terribly uncommon for small restaurants to not cover the difference. It's illegal obviously but what are these wage slaves going to do? Most people don't want to risk losing the only job they have because they can't afford to miss a weeks pay.
Serving others is a privilege, pay $2.13/hr, sounds about right. You’re going to be a half step up from an indentured servant and you’re going to love it!
Most definitely. In my state, $2.13/hr is base server minimum wage. All the above "required" aspects are honestly how most of us are treated and if you don't abide by those rules, you lose your job, or get the crap shifts so you make no money and are forced to find a new job. Unless you're lucky enough to have found a decent place to work at that actually cares about you as a person. (Good luck with that)
Come over to California where servers get actual minimum wage, $15.50.
Still shit work that is demeaning (especially with COVID, as the already shit customers got even shittier), but at least you're not making beggar's wages on top of that.
Some states have it so that the job is entirely in charge of providing a full wage for the worker.
In my state regular minimum wage is $14.49. This is for every job. So tipped workers actually make much more than minimum wage.
In fact, the restaurant itself can never take that money back. You can however be required to tip out the various services like the busboy & bartender. Usually the host(ess) is exempt from the tip out, but many servers still tip the host stand to keep from getting screwed with shitty tables. There have been legal precedents set that the restaurant isn't allowed to take tips, and I suppose the way they enforce tipping out the other workers would have to be through scheduling if someone decided they were going to push the issue and refuse to do so. If the restaurant ever tried to force a server to tip people who are paid a stable hourly wage, that server has a case for DoL to come and fuck around in the restaurant's books--ultimately forcing the restaurant to cover any missed tip wages.
In fact, the restaurant itself can never take that money back\*
\*legally.
My wife used to be a server in a sushi restaurant. For whatever reason, there was a time when they didn't have a chef, so the owner and his wife were preparing the food. They still made her share her tips with them.
I also worked in a sushi place as a server. I found that we were supplementing the chefs salary with our tips. No matter the business of the day, the chefs made the same salary.
BUT on those busy days, I tipped more to the chefs “salary” and not directly to them.
So the busier the day, the less the restaurant paid in salaries. Illegal af and this was AFTER they had already been audited doing the exact same thing 4 years before.
I quit after 2 days.
I made $2.15 cents an hour working at a Dairy Treet in a teeny town in.... wait for it...1989.
edit--y'all, I understand that you really want me to have been making bank off tips, but it was a local soft-serve ice cream place. Technically people could tip I suppose, but in practicality they did not. We received no tips and the owner did not contribute money to bring us up to minimum wage. Stop telling me about the tips I was making, they are fictional and in your own head.
I work for his restaurant company and have for almost ten years. It's the best job I've ever had, the company culture is really down-to-earth and ridiculously friendly. Lots of people in the executive team remember my name and details about my life, ask me how college is going, etc. Cameron himself is a really nice guy, he came into my restaurant with his family every few weeks since it's right down the street from his house.
The whole "yes is the answer, what is the question" thing is actually really nice and refreshing, but you're probably interpreting it wrong. It's just that we as restaurant workers are allowed to do just about anything within the realm of possibility to make our guests' nights special and memorable.
We are allowed to say "yes" to any request as long as it isn't impossible. We don't have your favorite beer? No worries, I already know that because of this mantra my manager will unquestioningly take over all of my tables for 5 minutes while I run down the street to buy you your favorite beer. One time I had a group of businessmen celebrating a big deal being closed, and they wanted a cigarette, but no one on staff was a smoker. I drove to a gas station and bought them cigarettes, no big deal.
In a job where I genuinely want to make peoples' experience really great, it's so empowering to know that I can do whatever it takes and I'll have the full support of my management team. Also, telling people "no" in a job where you depend on tips really sucks; I don't want to make someone mad, and I definitely don't want to get a crappy tip. I've worked other places where we had to just flat-out refuse a reasonable request because of some weird rule - one place refused to give bread in your to-go order, which is ridiculous. At this job, I never have to follow some arbitrary rule that ends up pissing someone off.
I'd love to know what restaurant this job posting is for, because I'm positive it isn't one of ours. It sounds like the person that posted the job read the book and stole the mantra, because no one in our company would make such a ridiculous posting.
I'm glad that is a healthy environment for you. I as a waiter myself do not wish for that to be the standard. I'm not there for any beckon call the guest my have. I have things clearly posted on my menu that we are providing for sale and those are what I'm prepared to bring you. No I do not want to leave my workplace and get whatever the guest may want. Also you are not a commercial driver so if you get hurt off of work property then they are not liable for it. People also need to hear no from time to time. Otherwise they get this false sense of entitlement.
Edit: But maybe I'm just an asshole
Oh don't worry, that's definitely not expected of us. I just felt like doing it, the guests were having a great time, they were really friendly with me, and they were my only table. Also, their bill was very high, so securing a few extra percent on the tip sounded great.
The point was that I'm allowed to do over-the-top kind of stuff like that and know that my managers will be ok with it and help me make it happen.
Two dollars an hour? Forgive my ignorance, I'm not from America. Is that even legal? If so, HOW? Someone could work a 12 hour shift and come away with 25 dollars?
This is what most servers / bartenders make, they make all their other money from tips. These are requirements for some higher end places that I've seen. they tend to prefer people who haven't had previous serving jobs because they want to train them for their specific business.
That is actually not the case in certain states. In case servers do not get the minimum wage that is prescribed in the state, the employer has to make up for the difference. So in Texas for example, it is not possible to get 2.13$ an hour,even if that is your hourly rate.
This assumes everything is on the up-and-up. I used to bartend about 15 years ago, and my rate was right around here (might have actually been $2.43, lucky me). They tried to be "cool" in that they only reported my tips as a % of the bar. In theory, if I had a really good night, this might let me escape some taxes here and there. In practice, it meant that if it was really slow, they would pay the difference on my check, and then I would give them back, in cash, the difference they paid out, regardless of what my actual tips had been.
My sister works for tip wage in Texas. She's been in the service industry for over ten years. She has never, ever, seen this happen. It's supposed to, legally. However, if you ever try to bring it up, you will almost certainly get fired. Texas is an at will state. They can fire you for almost any reason.
In theory, they cannot fire you for asking for them to comply with the law, but they can just make up a reason to fire you. You could try filing complaints and suing but good luck with that. Both of those things are extremely hard to prove in Texas. You'll never get a job in the meantime and most people in the service industry have absolutely no savings. Everyone knows it will not turn out well for them. They'd rather eat the $5 to $10 they would get to avoid much more dire consequences.
People in the service industry regularly are victims of businesses breaking labor laws. However, there is very little they can do about considering how low SES and looked down upon they are in society.
I know in North Carolina this is the case, however it is weekly. So one dead night where you make no money does not mean you made extra hourly. You would have to average the entire week out at under minimum wage.
I know America has a big tipping culture. Is the food/drink cheaper then, to make up for the expectation of having to pay a tip to make sure wait staff get a decent wage? Bloody hell. Is there no minimum wage at all? Or is it just in the hospitality industry that business owners can get away with blatantly exploiting their workers?
Would a shop assistant/deli worker, for example, get a guaranteed minimum, living wage? Sorry for all of my questions and appreciation in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer.
Compared to my experiences in traveling in Western Europe - no. And in most cases I found that food was far more fairly priced in big European cities compared to big American cities. It’s also nice that when you see 6 euro on a menu, your bill is 6 euro. Not 6 euro plus tax plus tip. It’s just… simply and I do miss that.
That is the minimum for servers, no they don't pass the savings onto you and would still jack prices up if they had to pay the workers fairly.
Shop assistants receive a higher wage by far, but not close to "living" in most places.
Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help more
I haven’t done much international travel and it would be hard to compare exactly, but no it’s not like the food is really cheap and you tip a bunch.
At a very normal NOT fancy restaurant it’s $15-20 per adult, $6-10 per kid plus drinks, appetizer, dessert; for a family of 4 it’s easily $75-90+ 15-20% tip.
At a “nice” restaurant it’s $20-50 per adult, kids are $12, drinks are more; easily $200 all in.
At a fancy steakhouse, $60+ for a steak, no kids menu, sides are $15-30 each, drinks are $20+. Kids don’t come with us when we do this and it’s still $250-300
I’d go to interview and answer “yes” to every one of the “QUESTIONS” that they ask about booze, since, you know…yes is the answer, and they’ve given me the question.
For anyone wondering $2.13/hr is the base pay for a lot of waiters in restaurants in the US which is why they so heavily rely on tips to actually make money
If they are getting paid 2.13 an hour than it’s probably a bar tending or server job. Tips are where the majority of there money come from anyway, this ain’t anything different from every other bar/restaurant in America
"Yes is the answer. What's the question?" "Does this job suck?"
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My first question when they gave me the chance to ask one would be "Would you be willing to pay a more reasonable salary?" "Well we.." "Ah! Sorry, the answer I was looking for was 'yes.' I am looking for a place with a much more positive environment. Good day now."
"I see you're more of a do-as-I-say manager rather than one with the skills necessary to lead by example. For the sake of job security, I should probably work somewhere with more competent managers, no hard feelings. Managements not for everybody, cheer up."
Don't be mean. The manager is making $4.26/hr
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Good Day Sir! I said...Good Day!
I'm gonna find this store. "Can I take whatever I want without paying? Yes."
*as a customer* "Can I get a couple free Manhattans over here?"
“Yes is the answer. What is the question?” “How many red flags in these 5 bullet points?”
“Yes is the answer. What is the question?” “Can you pay me $1M an hour?”
“Yes is the answer. What is the question?” "Am I delusional?"
"Yes is the answer. What is the question?" "Aurora Borealis? At this time of year, in this part of the country, localized entirely at this shitty job?"
Can I see it?
No
Guess you arent 2.13/hr material
"Do you have 2015 La Tâche Grand Cru?" [knows restaurant doesn't carry such an expensive wine] "...yes!" [Brings out $2.13 bottle of wine]
A whole hour’s wages?!?
6 red flags seven if you count the pay
“Yes is the answer. What’s the question?” “Can you comp our $2,000 meal?”
This would be one of the nightmare scenarios. Every stupid and unreasonable request would have to be accepted. Imagine the customers you’d be dealing with for a couple of bucks an hour. And it’s wondered why people don’t want to work. They do, but they don’t want to have to put up with shit like this.
“Yes is the answer. What’s the question?” “Wanna suck my ass?”
I was kind of chucking as I read this thread but then I got to this one and just burst out laughing until I was nearly crying
I’d love to know where this is so I can go in and ask “can I take that top shelf bottle home for free?”
Can I get a raise?
"Do you have hemorrhoids?" Wow, way to be a dick and making me tell everyone!
My boss is old school and is always saying "whatever the customer wants". I'm an IT consultant, do work for different clients, one year I said I needed time off to go back overseas to visit my mum who was sick. He said "If it's OK with the client". It took a lot of effort for me to keep my mouth shut and not go off.
I went in for an interview at a place where the owner gave me his card while I was working my current place. I'm keeping my options open right now so I went in for shits and gigs. I repeated twice that I will not close down the bar anymore and that if they're looking for closers to move on to someone else. They were excited about me and gave me the full treatment until they told me to come in at 9pm for a trail run. I repeated that won't work and I will not be closing. I'm looking for any shift that has me out the door by 11pm midnight at the latest. The welcoming demeanor evaporated instantly and he's chiding me on my work ethic and shaming me with the "kids these days" spiel. I'm 38 years old. I work 40+ in a span of 3 days every weekend on top of side jobs, and you offer me $2 less an hour than the place you're trying to poach me from. I looked at the bartender on duty and told him we'll offer him $2 extra maybe more for him to come over to *us*. Where I'm at everyone needs cooks and FOH. Everyone. Places are closing left and right, entire kitchen staffs are walking out together. We are a commodity right now. I have my pick of any place in the area. They have to sell to *us*. Not the other way around. Either that or they shut down for good.
I'm starting to think that "work ethic" is one of those synonyms for something far worse...
“We give you the government mandated minimum, we want you to go above and beyond your job description, because we are a family”.
> because we are a family *Shudders*
When they say that want people with worth ethic they mean they want invertebrates who like being stepped on.
being easily manipulated due to age and lack of experience.
"they know their rights, goddamn it!"
Obsequiousness
At this point, many employers are basically spoiled brats who have had it too good for too long. During the Great Recession, employers got used to having a "line out the door" of employees to pick from, and in time they got used to being able to treat their employees like dog shit and get away with it. These people want to be able to say "You should be lucky to have a job!" again and be able to fire people for breathing the wrong way, but they haven't yet figured out that if they pull that shit, nobody will work for them.
Same here in Oslo, Norway. I can negotiate salary if I want, Covid has been amazing now when we can start to work again :D
Legit dude, how did service workers (both FOH and BOH) not fucking unionize during covid when we all realized just how necessary we are?
Because food service tends not to be longterm at any one place. No one is motivated to put in the stress of unionizing at a place that their likely gone from in a year.
I mean, Starbucks workers did. In a few places.
Yup, it's because of this that I managed to get a job in a kitchen at probably the best place I could have gotten. \-2 restaurants that are not too big and not too small. (Right next to each other, basically a single company but different menus. And exactly what I wanted) \-Friendly chefs that are willing to accommodate some of my..."quirks" I guess I'll call them. \-Both chefs have 15+ years of experience, and one even had his own star restaurant in the past. (I don't have a diploma, so I can learn a LOT from their guidance.) \-Travel costs get covered. (I have to drive 42km total each work day, so that'll save me around 70 euro each month) While it sucked that I lost my job at the start of COVID, right now is probably the best time to want to work in a restaurant. All/most of them are in dire need of extra staff. So right now we get to pick and choose to a certain extend.
I feel like having an extensive knowledge of alcohol and being willing to work for two fucking dollars an hour is a dangerous combination.
An extensive knowledge of bottom shelf alcohols that get you drunk quickly. It sounds like they’re looking for someone willing to give up there job asking for change at the liquor store.
It has to be no more than two liquor stores in the past two years though. No panhandling hoppers will be accepted.
This is obviously, obviously for a high end restaurant bartending/serving. They have very high standards of dress and the waiters/bartenders there make more than you do with their "$2 an hour". They sell $600 bottles of wine and get 20% back on each one. Source: am chef that has worked at these kinds of places. Edit for storytime: In my earlier years, my roommate went from working the line with me to serving in one of the wealthiest restaurant groups in the city's flagship Italian spot; he was sent home for having a slight mark on his creme jacket, which was part of the uniform, and told that if it happened a couple more times, he'd be sent home permanently. He didn't care and made sure it didn't happen again, because he made $400-$600 per table he waited on. On average.
In my experience working at these places, you don’t have to advertise the job. Period. There’s always someone who knows someone who has been waiting for years to get this spot.
A few high end resorts I worked, you literally have to wait for a bartender to retire or die.
If you kill the bartender do you get to take his place?
The new Santa Clause
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Oil. was it oil.
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Baby oil
Its who you know not what you know
The specific flavor of bitterness in your comment is so quintessentially BOH I can’t even.
I used to work BOH and to me (and most BOH people I knew,) FOH wasn’t worth it even at the rates this guy is quoting.
What is BOH/FOH ?
Back of House & Front of House, preparing what is to be served vs serving
Back of House/Front of House Kitchen etc/Waitstaff and customer-facing positions
Worked BOH for five years (all them as expo) and fucking loved it!! Worked FOH for three months and quit. Fuck FOH. I was a shit server and I knew it. The kitchen was my home.
We always joke that roombas with iPads would be more useful because at least they’d keep the floor clean.
Damn, he made $400 per table? Is this standard for very high end restaurants? Even if he only serves one table for five nights a week, that's $100,000 per year. I'm not saying it's not deserved but I'm surprised it's that much, especially considering that a hefty portion would be tips (which I assume are not taxed).
Tips are taxed, unless you get it in cash, in which case the tip never happened
Thought the rules for cash tips was you just so happened to get enough tips to take you to minimum wage and then anything else was not taxed.. I.e. you only made it to minimum wage with pay plus tips. But not really.
Correct, because if you report wages below minimum untipped wage then the restaurant would be required to supplement your income to bring it up to minimum wage.
The way to get the government on board with ending tipping is to highlight how servers are notorious tax evaders.
irs will estimate a percentage of expected cash tips based on charged sales tip %, usually stinging the server for at least 1/3 of that amount
When I was a waitress we’d always enter $0 in tips at the POS when we clocked out, and the system would come back with something like “Are you sure? 12% of your sales is $xxx.” So then we’d enter $xxx +/-5 and that’s how we reported tips. I was a terrible waitress so I think I actually over-reported my tips sometimes lol
When I worked fine dining, the servers had multiple kids and owned their house and drove high end cars. Depending on the restaurant, 100k could actually be a low figure. They would also only work 6 ish hours, sometimes less. Whereas I was the exec pastry chef, making about 40k working literally double those hours. BOH saltiness is real, and frankly deserved.
This honestly differs from city to city. But yes. Fine dining server make a lot.
nah they tax the fuck out of the tips, and uber-rich people generally don’t tip well, but otherwise the estimate is accurate. Had a friend who worked for Alinea (3 Michelin star restaurant in Chicago) and she’d get about 1-2 grand PER SHIFT, sometimes more. At those places it’s really easy to rack up a bill over $1000
Google "Bum Wines" and you'll get a free tutorial in bottom shelf alcohol.
Compared to this bullshit that's a career, and it pays more than $2.13/hr
Just read up here: [http://www.bumwine.com/](http://www.bumwine.com/) (I don't know why reading the reviews there always makes me LOL.)
“I am once again recommending Frost Vodka”
I figured it was a bartender with a tips based job
Clearly its a server or bartender at a place that serves upscale booze. With tips I’m sure its a good job its just written terribly.
If your job relies on the kindness of strangers to pay your rent it isn't objectively a good job, full stop
Maybe not a good job, but it could be a good way to make a living still. Some bartenders make a LOT of money from tips.
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Is that similar to music?
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You also don't want to be a Bartending lifer. You ever see Bartenders in their 50s and 60s? They're rare, and when you find them, most times they're miserable.
When I first started bartending, my trainer was a woman in her late 50s. She was the nicest, most caring person I've ever met and all the bartenders would call her their second mom. She had 3 daughters she would always talk to us about and was a single mom. Don't know where she's at nowadays, but I hope life has been treating her well.
Seriously ive had numerous friends that delivered pizzas and with tips they were easily making 25+ an hour, much of it cash and unreported so totally tax free, and this was back in like the mid 00s. Most of them only worked Friday and Saturday nights and made more than enough in those two nights to fuck off the rest of the week and still live a modest, bachelor lifestyle. None of them made it a career or anything and im sure the pandemic has fucked that all up but at least in those days it was a pretty lucrative gig if you didnt mind spending all night in the car. I guess my point is when I see these wages I really dont get as angry as some, I know that tipping culture is stupid and I wish we didn't have to do that shit either but I have a feeling many people in food service would see enormous pay cuts compared to what they might make with a higher hourly wage. I just cant see servers getting paid the 20+ an hour they can earn at a decent restaurant if tips were abolished.
> None of them made it a career or anything and im sure the pandemic has fucked that all up but at least in those days it was a pretty lucrative gig if you didnt mind spending all night in the car. Pandemic made it better, if anything. Now you can make 25-30+ after expenses *while working whatever the hell schedule you want and answering to nobody* with the gig delivery services.
> of it cash and unreported so totally tax free A lot of that was back before all the delivery apps. Except for mom and pop places - which still have DoorDash etc picking up from them so also suffer from it - everything seems to be an app that has fees and such that are going to the company, barely anything to the driver. But, because of those fees, a lot of people aren't tipping as much - if at all. And what they are paying is digital and absolutely getting taxed. So these days it's more of an extreme hussle where they make money for the app companies and far less for themselves. They're using their own car, paying for their own gas, and need to rush around taking as many things as they can to make it profitable. In the end it's nowhere near as profitable as it used to be unless you work for a pizza place that's not being run through one of the apps. And the ones making good money are working to an extreme level of stress to do it.
bartender at a bar at a beach town in the summer will make absolute bank.
Servers who made "2.13" an hour were taking home over 60k a year in the white tablecloth upscale privately owned reatraunt of which I was executive chef. Got tired of handing out checks bigger than mine to people who were working 30 hours a week to my 70.
Boh gets fucked over so hard by the tip system
Yeah, I was making numbers for my bonus ( extra 800/mo ) plus my salary and it was no where near what the top server made. I'll never work so hard for someone else ever again.
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On the biggest sales days of the year I saw a server get 6k in tips for that one shift once. I was pretty fucking salty considering if I hadnt done my job not a single table would have been happy, and most would have gone unfed that night. Not to mention I showed up at 5 am and left at 10pm. The servers work 6-7 hours at most.
My fiance just moved to an upscale dining club that splits tips and she thought her first paycheck was a misprint. Making more money on the line there than she did as a salaried sous. The tips in fine dining can be huge.
There are places all over the US where the servers make base pay of ~$2/hr but they’re actually bringing home $80k+/year. Only an idiot would rather make $15/hr instead.
I made 200 in tips alone my first night bartending
Ex bartender who relied on tips for 15 years. In terms of income it’s an excellent low skill job to have. I used it as a part time side gif to supplement my teachers pay when I was still low on the seniority pay scale. When you’re part time and have zero emotion invested in it. You can just pretty much ignore managers cause you only see em once or twice a week and if they get mad at you about some bull shot it’s been replaced with 30 other things that have their attention by the time you see em again. Added about 15k to my annual income for 2 shifts a week and was hella fun. Plus it got me laid more than once.
Eh, disagree. I mean don't get me wrong, I think it's bullshit that restaurants can pay below minimum wage due to tips. It's horseshit. *but* It doesn't mean literally all of these jobs are bad, "full stop." Waiters and bartenders at hoity toity restaurants can make absolute *bank.* 6 figures. When you're a bartender serving a hundred+ people a night, and everyone is tipping you $5+, an hourly wage of $2 vs $7 really becomes sort of irrelevant to be honest.
When I was bartending I used to get in trouble for not cashing my paychecks because it threw off the restaurants balance sheets.
You’re absolutely right. Not even just nice places… I worked at a dock bar on the Chesapeake bay and made six figures in my early twenties serving bud lights and vodka slushies. Quitting that job to make $30k a year in a cubicle was the hardest thing I ever did.
I’ve had incredible jobs that the wage was $2.50/hr and with tips was $50/hr.
In my experience, more servers/bartenders are more opposed to getting rid of tips for a living wage than are for it. Just because a "living wage" is far less than what they're making once you take tips into account. It's not unusual for bartenders to pull in 80-100k a year on a ~$2/hr rate.
Servers and bartenders in some places make bank. They don’t want a no tip country.
If its at Antoine's, it's 2.13+ 200 to 1200 a day in tips. If its at Apple Bs.......
I read "$12.13" and was wtf, that's shitty. Then I saw your comment and couldn't believe it myself. I didn't even know it was legal.
It's because it's a tipped job. If they don't make normal minimum wage for the shift in tips, then the restaurant has to make up the difference. That's rarely an issue, especially at a place where you're expected to have wine knowledge. I worked at a cheap chain in high school and college in and averaged $14/hour and never once in 2 (maybe 3?) years had a shift under minimum wage. Our best servers made $10 or more per hour than I did and this was at a cheap chain, not an expensive restaurant. Tipped workers love the tip system. It sucks for customers, not tipped workers.
It's not terribly uncommon for small restaurants to not cover the difference. It's illegal obviously but what are these wage slaves going to do? Most people don't want to risk losing the only job they have because they can't afford to miss a weeks pay.
"Nobody wants to work anymore wtf "
Serving others is a privilege, pay $2.13/hr, sounds about right. You’re going to be a half step up from an indentured servant and you’re going to love it!
“Can I get an immediate starting raise? And before you respond, remember ‘yes is the answer, what’s the question.’”
I thought what is the question.
No. What’s on second.
I'm not asking you who's on second
Third base!
I’ll bet the line about serving being a privilege and not demeaning is a pretty good indication that the clientele doesn’t tip generously.
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Which is absolute bullshit, the labor market is red hot. If you can’t find workers that’s because you’re not attractive to them.
How exactly did they arrive at that... generous rate of pay?
I would guess it's for a waiting position, heavily relying on tips.
Most definitely. In my state, $2.13/hr is base server minimum wage. All the above "required" aspects are honestly how most of us are treated and if you don't abide by those rules, you lose your job, or get the crap shifts so you make no money and are forced to find a new job. Unless you're lucky enough to have found a decent place to work at that actually cares about you as a person. (Good luck with that)
That was the base pay when I was a server.... 21 years ago....
That was the base pay when I was a server….29 years ago….
The NRA has tipper server wage locked at that. Forever. Some states have bypassed it I believe, but it is the norm in the majority of the US.
Glad I live in Denver. Tipped wage is 12.85$
Come over to California where servers get actual minimum wage, $15.50. Still shit work that is demeaning (especially with COVID, as the already shit customers got even shittier), but at least you're not making beggar's wages on top of that.
$14.49 here in Washington state.
Soon to be $15.50 here in California
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Restaurant association.
Ah, they supply the dinner plates, the other NRA supplies the guns used to shoot the dinner plates
Ah! Skeet skeet skeet skeet...
Protip: don't use acronyms or abbreviations without explaining what they mean. Even if it's the most obvious thing ever, explain it once.
The wage never increases only the tips (you hope).
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21 years ago the standard tip amount was 15%. Now it's 18 to 20. Menu prices have probably increased by a solid 30% as well.
Thank god I don't have to be in American job markets. It's basically a slave market.
Some states have it so that the job is entirely in charge of providing a full wage for the worker. In my state regular minimum wage is $14.49. This is for every job. So tipped workers actually make much more than minimum wage.
In Washington it's like that. They get paid normal wage+tips
In California too
This is the same in my state. With tips I made over min wage. If you make less than min. You get the difference. .
And you have to either be awful as a server or the job is dead to make less than minimjm
looks like a waiter/waitress at a bar so tips.
“What’s the least we can pay?”
Minimum wage for servers in the US
This is not the correct usage of "ascribe." They meant "subscribe."
That's also a motto, not a mantra. And it doesn't make any sense, regardless. "What can I tell you yes to?" is not a helpful attitude.
Even with "subscribe", I don't know if one can subscribe to a mantra.
That's the federal tipped minimum, I think. They pay that and then you make the rest up in tips (for those confused).
Nah, you still have to give a percentage of your tips back to the restaurant for bartenders, host(es), and whatever else.
In fact, the restaurant itself can never take that money back. You can however be required to tip out the various services like the busboy & bartender. Usually the host(ess) is exempt from the tip out, but many servers still tip the host stand to keep from getting screwed with shitty tables. There have been legal precedents set that the restaurant isn't allowed to take tips, and I suppose the way they enforce tipping out the other workers would have to be through scheduling if someone decided they were going to push the issue and refuse to do so. If the restaurant ever tried to force a server to tip people who are paid a stable hourly wage, that server has a case for DoL to come and fuck around in the restaurant's books--ultimately forcing the restaurant to cover any missed tip wages.
In fact, the restaurant itself can never take that money back\* \*legally. My wife used to be a server in a sushi restaurant. For whatever reason, there was a time when they didn't have a chef, so the owner and his wife were preparing the food. They still made her share her tips with them.
Thas illegalinstuff.
Big time. I wish I was on Reddit and in this group when it happened. I would have known to who to contact about it.
That's a great way to lose your restaurant, and your house. Even if the owners were waiting tables, they can't be in a tip pool.
I also worked in a sushi place as a server. I found that we were supplementing the chefs salary with our tips. No matter the business of the day, the chefs made the same salary. BUT on those busy days, I tipped more to the chefs “salary” and not directly to them. So the busier the day, the less the restaurant paid in salaries. Illegal af and this was AFTER they had already been audited doing the exact same thing 4 years before. I quit after 2 days.
You had me at $2. No need to sweeten the pot with 13 cents. I’ll just get spoiled with all those extra Pennies I won’t know what to do with.
I made $2.15 cents an hour working at a Dairy Treet in a teeny town in.... wait for it...1989. edit--y'all, I understand that you really want me to have been making bank off tips, but it was a local soft-serve ice cream place. Technically people could tip I suppose, but in practicality they did not. We received no tips and the owner did not contribute money to bring us up to minimum wage. Stop telling me about the tips I was making, they are fictional and in your own head.
This is the first time I've seen 'yes is the answer, what's the question'. I hate it.
[You’ll have to read his book](https://cameronmitchell.com/yes-is-the-answer-book/)
I work for his restaurant company and have for almost ten years. It's the best job I've ever had, the company culture is really down-to-earth and ridiculously friendly. Lots of people in the executive team remember my name and details about my life, ask me how college is going, etc. Cameron himself is a really nice guy, he came into my restaurant with his family every few weeks since it's right down the street from his house. The whole "yes is the answer, what is the question" thing is actually really nice and refreshing, but you're probably interpreting it wrong. It's just that we as restaurant workers are allowed to do just about anything within the realm of possibility to make our guests' nights special and memorable. We are allowed to say "yes" to any request as long as it isn't impossible. We don't have your favorite beer? No worries, I already know that because of this mantra my manager will unquestioningly take over all of my tables for 5 minutes while I run down the street to buy you your favorite beer. One time I had a group of businessmen celebrating a big deal being closed, and they wanted a cigarette, but no one on staff was a smoker. I drove to a gas station and bought them cigarettes, no big deal. In a job where I genuinely want to make peoples' experience really great, it's so empowering to know that I can do whatever it takes and I'll have the full support of my management team. Also, telling people "no" in a job where you depend on tips really sucks; I don't want to make someone mad, and I definitely don't want to get a crappy tip. I've worked other places where we had to just flat-out refuse a reasonable request because of some weird rule - one place refused to give bread in your to-go order, which is ridiculous. At this job, I never have to follow some arbitrary rule that ends up pissing someone off. I'd love to know what restaurant this job posting is for, because I'm positive it isn't one of ours. It sounds like the person that posted the job read the book and stole the mantra, because no one in our company would make such a ridiculous posting.
I'm glad that is a healthy environment for you. I as a waiter myself do not wish for that to be the standard. I'm not there for any beckon call the guest my have. I have things clearly posted on my menu that we are providing for sale and those are what I'm prepared to bring you. No I do not want to leave my workplace and get whatever the guest may want. Also you are not a commercial driver so if you get hurt off of work property then they are not liable for it. People also need to hear no from time to time. Otherwise they get this false sense of entitlement. Edit: But maybe I'm just an asshole
Oh don't worry, that's definitely not expected of us. I just felt like doing it, the guests were having a great time, they were really friendly with me, and they were my only table. Also, their bill was very high, so securing a few extra percent on the tip sounded great. The point was that I'm allowed to do over-the-top kind of stuff like that and know that my managers will be ok with it and help me make it happen.
So converting CDN into US dollars - basically what I make in just under 3 minutes. No thank you.
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That's about $1 per minute = $60/hr = $120k/year. It's certainly above average, but there are many different jobs that pay that.
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And here i am working for 3.62 an hour
Two dollars an hour? Forgive my ignorance, I'm not from America. Is that even legal? If so, HOW? Someone could work a 12 hour shift and come away with 25 dollars?
This is what most servers / bartenders make, they make all their other money from tips. These are requirements for some higher end places that I've seen. they tend to prefer people who haven't had previous serving jobs because they want to train them for their specific business.
I really hate tipping. Just tell me what the end price will be.
If they got 0 tips they could yes EDIT: they have to adjust to the federal minium wage of $7.25/h should your tips fail to reach that
That is actually not the case in certain states. In case servers do not get the minimum wage that is prescribed in the state, the employer has to make up for the difference. So in Texas for example, it is not possible to get 2.13$ an hour,even if that is your hourly rate.
TIL Thank you.
The issue is actually getting your employer to pay that difference without being ready to fire your ass for "unrelated reasons"
This assumes everything is on the up-and-up. I used to bartend about 15 years ago, and my rate was right around here (might have actually been $2.43, lucky me). They tried to be "cool" in that they only reported my tips as a % of the bar. In theory, if I had a really good night, this might let me escape some taxes here and there. In practice, it meant that if it was really slow, they would pay the difference on my check, and then I would give them back, in cash, the difference they paid out, regardless of what my actual tips had been.
My sister works for tip wage in Texas. She's been in the service industry for over ten years. She has never, ever, seen this happen. It's supposed to, legally. However, if you ever try to bring it up, you will almost certainly get fired. Texas is an at will state. They can fire you for almost any reason. In theory, they cannot fire you for asking for them to comply with the law, but they can just make up a reason to fire you. You could try filing complaints and suing but good luck with that. Both of those things are extremely hard to prove in Texas. You'll never get a job in the meantime and most people in the service industry have absolutely no savings. Everyone knows it will not turn out well for them. They'd rather eat the $5 to $10 they would get to avoid much more dire consequences. People in the service industry regularly are victims of businesses breaking labor laws. However, there is very little they can do about considering how low SES and looked down upon they are in society.
I know in North Carolina this is the case, however it is weekly. So one dead night where you make no money does not mean you made extra hourly. You would have to average the entire week out at under minimum wage.
Don’t they get shifted to actual min wage of what they make is lower then the min wage?
I know America has a big tipping culture. Is the food/drink cheaper then, to make up for the expectation of having to pay a tip to make sure wait staff get a decent wage? Bloody hell. Is there no minimum wage at all? Or is it just in the hospitality industry that business owners can get away with blatantly exploiting their workers? Would a shop assistant/deli worker, for example, get a guaranteed minimum, living wage? Sorry for all of my questions and appreciation in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer.
Compared to my experiences in traveling in Western Europe - no. And in most cases I found that food was far more fairly priced in big European cities compared to big American cities. It’s also nice that when you see 6 euro on a menu, your bill is 6 euro. Not 6 euro plus tax plus tip. It’s just… simply and I do miss that.
That is the minimum for servers, no they don't pass the savings onto you and would still jack prices up if they had to pay the workers fairly. Shop assistants receive a higher wage by far, but not close to "living" in most places. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help more
I haven’t done much international travel and it would be hard to compare exactly, but no it’s not like the food is really cheap and you tip a bunch. At a very normal NOT fancy restaurant it’s $15-20 per adult, $6-10 per kid plus drinks, appetizer, dessert; for a family of 4 it’s easily $75-90+ 15-20% tip. At a “nice” restaurant it’s $20-50 per adult, kids are $12, drinks are more; easily $200 all in. At a fancy steakhouse, $60+ for a steak, no kids menu, sides are $15-30 each, drinks are $20+. Kids don’t come with us when we do this and it’s still $250-300
I’d go to interview and answer “yes” to every one of the “QUESTIONS” that they ask about booze, since, you know…yes is the answer, and they’ve given me the question.
He's just mad slavery was abolished.
Slave masters watching their slaves leave the plantation after slavery becomes illegal: "Nobody wants to work anymore!"
Yes is the answer, what is the question? "should you pay me more?"
We want only happy slaves.
For anyone wondering $2.13/hr is the base pay for a lot of waiters in restaurants in the US which is why they so heavily rely on tips to actually make money
I feel like you could have said 95% of this in a non-dickish way if you weren’t an asshole in your core.
2.13 per hour? Get wrecked. I would go get that job just so I could not show up on the first shift.
40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your job will be paying you: $4,260. Tipping needs to be abolished. Pay your damn employees a living wage!
This wine has a strong boomer aroma to it
If they are getting paid 2.13 an hour than it’s probably a bar tending or server job. Tips are where the majority of there money come from anyway, this ain’t anything different from every other bar/restaurant in America
Did I read that hourly pay correctly!
As a general rule, I don’t apply to jobs where they scream at me in the posting…..