Put your money where your mouth was

I shall be brief!

A friend of mine posted today on a popular social networking site about restaurant servers and their view of Sunday customers.

That view is uniformly negative.

Why?

Because when they see a crowd of well-dressed people coming in, they surmise that this group has come from their house of worship. After being run ragged by these people, who are for some reason typically fussier, pickier and more demanding than the average customer, the server can often look forward to a very measly tip -- or worse, no tip at all, or worst, a religious tract or fake money with a scripture verse on the other side.

And no, I am not making that up.

Apparently, some people think it's much more important to leave money in the offering plate than next to the dinner plate.

As any server will tell you:  If you can't afford to tip, eat at home.


Servers make as little as $2.13 per hour. Plenty of countries around the world don't even have a policy of tipping -- they pay servers a reasonable living wage. But here in the good ol' Free-market States of America, it doesn't work that way.  Tips are used as a means of encouraging good service. Servers, however, are at the mercy of numerous factors in the course of their workday, such as incompetent kitchen staff and customers who don't know what they want, among many other things. The server may take the order perfectly, interact with the customer impeccably and deliver the food swiftly, and still take the brunt of the customer's dissatisfaction if something goes wrong.

Cooks are paid on a completely different scale and bussers usually get a percentage of whatever the servers make.

This is not "easy money."

Everyone should have to wait tables at least once in their lives.

This has been a Public Service Announcement on behalf of your restaurant staff.