I'm a server and I have never tampered with anyones food. Neirher have other employees. WE'd be fired on the spot.

If the boss paid out higher wages, where do you think that money is coming from? Out his ass? No, the customers will end up paying more, it will just be the list price instead of the tip. Just consider a 15% tip to be part of the food cost.

zargon you do realize that most of the food is overpriced right? The extra pay will come from the boss allotting the server their fair share vs. pinching them for every single penny he/she can. You guys could also just do what you're supposed to do and provide good service; this will in turn make people actually want to leave a larger tip.

Restaurants typically make approximately 5% profit when they're doing *well*. There isn't room in that 5% to adjust wages properly without creating more income elsewhere, i.e. by increasing food costs. If things were adjusted such that servers actually made a decent wage without tips, what would normally be considered a tip would just become part of the list price. In light of this, I fail to see what the problem is with acting as if it were already that way and just considering a 15% tip part of the meal cost. I'm not saying that waitstaff shouldn't be trying their best, but it's disingenuous at best and downright assy at worst to assert that all waitstaff should be exceptional if they want to make a living wage. By definition, everyone can't be exceptional. And, finally, give up on the notion that the only thing standing between a waiter and a good tip is their service. Even a perfect waiter will often get stiffed because customers blame them for things beyond their control including, but not limited to a rude hostess, faults of the cook (food not being prepared properly), faults of the laws of reality (a 20-top's food not being served as quickly as a 3-top's), or a waiter being busy with their ten other tables and not being able to focus entirely on a singular table. Add in customers being straight-up assholes, who won't tip no matter how good the service is (and, trust me, way too many such customers exist), and things get pretty tight. Would it make you feel any better if we stopped referring to tips as "tips" so you stop making the association with the way it should be? Just, face it, in the United States, the tip is part of the cost of eating out. If you can't deal with this, don't eat out.

Zargon, I have a question. Where does the 15% figure come from? What are the calculations that show that 15% from all the tables that the server waits on will bring up the server's wage to minimum wage? This is actually a genuine question. I've always wondered if this was a legitimate number (though I really can't imagine how it could be), or if it's just become a standard/norm. =] Having asked that, I'm sorry to say that I agree with the comments that tips should be at least partially based on quality of service. Although it's unfortunate to say the least that restaurants are allowed to use the law this way to maximize their already small profits, until they actually change this law and make the tips reflected in actual list price, tip is still at the sole discretion of the customer. I think that customers should leave SOMETHING (monetary), but since I have no idea where this 15% is from and whether or not it's arbitrary, I can't advocate for it. Do I still tip 15% or higher? Usually. But I don't think I'm obligated to at all, and I have no problem with reducing that to 10% or lower for service that is horrible. Also, I think auto-gratuity for larger parties is such B.S. I'm sorry for those great servers out there who might be offended by my saying this, but for every good server, there is probably also a horrible server. It MIGHT be true that larger parties take more time/effort, etc. but it is not necessarily true. You could have a table of 2 that constantly asks you for napkins, orders more things off the menu in the middle of a meal, spills things, needs refills every five minutes because they have an exceptional bladder, etc. and another table of 6 that orders their 6-8 dishes and drinks and you pretty much never hear from them again until they receive their check. Case in point: last Sunday, I went to a restaurant with my family that made up a party of 5. Our server took our order and punched it into the machine. I ordered a drink that I didn't get for a very long time. After a while, I said to her, "Hi, I ordered a _____, will it be coming soon?" She told me that someone was working on it. The thing is though, this is one of those restaurants in which the drinks are made in plain view of the customers in the back of the restaurants, and there was no one there. No one was working on my drink... so I don't know if she genuinely thought someone was there or if she was talking out of her ass. I waited about 5-10 minutes before asking her again (and by the way, she was hard to flag down). In fact, most of our dishes came before my drink ever came. It wasn't until the third time I asked her that she finally went to work on it. Granted, it was a Sunday which was a busy day, and maybe she had other tables, but shouldn't be my tip for her be conditional upon her service to our table, not how hard she has had it that day with other tables? Turns out, when we got our check, I noticed an auto-gratuity added at the bottom. FOR A PARTY OF FIVE? WTF! For service that was not very good? Um... no. Auto-gratuity sucks ass because it assumes a lot. If the service is good, we will tip generously; we don't need to be mandated to do so and we don't need an excuse for the service given to us to suck. /End rant.

Dude, where is this 5% coming from? No company can survive from a 5% profit. Especially if it has to pay its employees from this 5%. From the simple fact that you pulled the minimum wage rates out your ass in your other posts, I'm highly inclined to not believe you. You're trying to pull this what if scenario that involves the 15% being a part of the actual bill. If that was the case then you'd ask for an additional tip on to of that. Either way though, that isn't the case. In reality the 15% is considered a tip. I don't understand what's so hard about gaining some work ethic and earning your tip. When did I say a server must be exceptional? Never did I say that. What I said was that I expect decent service, which isn't much at all. The "living wage" excuse holds no weight with me. I've already stated the laws regarding minimum wages and reduced minimum wages due to tips in an earlier post. If you fail to make enough on tips to satisfy the established federal rate the U.S. Gov't makes it mandatory for your employer to compensate for the deficit. The federal rate now stands at $6.55/hr and will go up to $7.25/hr on July 24, 2009. That amounts to a decent living in every state. A server's tip depending on their service is 'not' just a notion. Its a fact. Why should I tip you extra for doing the job you're paid to do if you're rude and/or incompetent? Yes a perfect waiter gets stiffed every once in a while, but they make up the difference from their other customers because people tend to reward hard work and diligence. There are more people who tip well based off merit than there are assholes. Hell most assholes, myself included, won't deny a job well done. Even assholes give credit where credit is due. My best friend is a waiter and he nets $50-$60 a night on slow nights. He's a hard worker, knows how to work a table, and if he gets stiffed he keeps it moving. You're just making excuses for your incompetence. Considering a tip is a calculated percentage of a transaction value, and its size is determined by the customer only as social custom. How in the hell is it not being used as it should be? Stop making up your own definitions. That's assanine. The tip is 'not' a mandatory part of dining out. Good service begets a good tip, shitty service begets a shitty or no tip. If you can't give 100% while you're working then maybe you should look into a different line of work. Enough of your bitching and complaining, do your damn job correctly and you'll have nothing to worry about. If you get stiffed boo ****** whoo. Charge it to the game and make up the difference with the next table. If everybody stops eating out you're out of a job. If you stop serving as protest guess what? Your butt gets canned in favor of someone who's not lazy and won't make excuses all the time, and you're out of a job once again. If you're just plain incompetent and receive too many complaints, you're still out of a job. So your only solution is to do your job right and not give anybody an excuse to lower your tip or stiff you. You understand how that works? Lazyness, excuses, and a false sense of entitlement get you up shit creek without a paddle real fast.

Are you completely retarded, or just mostly retarded? Profit means 'amount left after expenses', in which PAYROLL IS ONE OF THEM, dumbass. I've worked in states where tipped employees made minimum + tips (WA) and in states where they did not (ME, PA). And I'll tell you this much: The prices for food in WA are substantially higher than they are in ME or PA specifically because the prices had to go up so the restaurant could still make a profit. There's a rule in the restaurant industry: 30-30-30-10. 30% of sales goes to food cost, 30% of sales goes to labor cost (Front of House and Back of House and Management), 30% of sales goes to operating expenses (power/water/office supplies/toiletries/etc), and 10% goes to profit. Unfortunately, in the world we live in where assholes like you don't have a goddamn clue where the money actually goes and just want things cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, restaurants have to skim by on a much lower profit margin - anywhere from 2% - 5%. Do a little research, would ya?

Good job on reading what makes you happy lithorien, you keep that up. No part of your post is relevant to anything that I said, except maybe me questioning zargon about his info due to me being inclined to not believe him on account of his previously shotty info. I don't research things that I don't care about, nor do I care about whiny little bitches like you that complain because they can't keep up with supply and demand. Not to mention 5% profit of a million dollar restaurant chain is a helluvalot more than 5% profit of ma and pa's cafe, so don't give me that "skim by" bullshit. Maybe if the bigwigs at the top took a lil less of a cut then then the actual employees would get paid more. Still it doesn't mean that lazy ass servers should automatically get tipped for shitty service.

Interesting logic there. There's only one little problem. I agree with you for the most part and still think you're a total dumbass. Yes, the upper management in corporations make way too much money. However, that doesn't change the fact that AS IT IS NOW, the low-end employees have to scrape by on below minimum wage. (Yes, the theory is that the restaurant has to pay tipped employees the difference between what they make and minimum wage, the reality is that anyone who speaks up in quite a few places ends up fired, without the money for a lawyer.) It would be wonderful if servers were paid a real minimum wage and tipping could work like you seem to think it does now. Heck, it'd be wonderful if servers could even go to the state's labor board and hope to have a chance of winning - but it becomes a lawyer game really quickly, and who's more likely to have the cash for a good lawyer? The company, not the server. And it's really hard to prove that you weren't making more in tips than you claim - the company can just say that you were getting tipped in cash, and unless you can prove otherwise, you're screwed. Which means that yes, as the restaurant industry is RIGHT NOW in all but a very few states, tipping -is- part of the price of your meal and you should be tipping a minimum of 8% on the bill (pre-tax even, if you're that much of a tight ass) to make sure the person serving your food isn't paying for the "privilidge". Oh, and for your knowledge? I've worked as a software engineer subcontractor to the US Navy, writing intelligence and analysis software. I work as a cook now for the love of the profession, not for the pay - and it was an insane pay cut (to the tune of nearly $30k/yr.) The difference between you and I, then? I did research before I started writing my post - you admit that you prefer to remain ignorant. Congratulations.

I'm a dumbass yet you claim law to be theory and you took a 30k/yr pay cut for the love of cooking only to complain about the pay......good job. Though I really don't care about your life story seeing as it poses no relevance to the actual argument. You used to be a software engineer I'm currently an applied physics/ aerospace engineering major, whoop di damn doo. I like how you also make the bogus claim that I didn't do research whilst ignoring every other post I wrote. Dumbasses read what makes them feel good while intelligent people read the entire posts. The only thing that I didn't do research on was the profit claim, and I actually asked the other guy what made that so. If I don't fully believe people, especially ones that have provided false info, I ask question so that they back up their claims with solid info. Tipping isn't part of any meal in any state, it is however, a part of the server's salary. Those are two different things, if it were part of the meal it would be mandatory to pay and including into the price of the food. A lawyer is not required to represent oneself in the court of law, so the excuse of a server not being able to afford one can't be used. If a server provides to a judge detailed documentation of all their work related affairs, it doesn't matter what the lawyer says, the server will win. Evidence speaks for itself and numbers don't lie. Seeing as how many states have laws that pertain specifically to employees who receive tips. Restaurants require their servers to document their tips in their taxes so that they won't be accused of breaking minimum wage laws. A lawyer claiming a server receives tips in cash holds no weight. How about you do some research instead of talking out your ass. Open mouth insert foot bitch. Tipping based on service is not being a tight ass, its called I'm not giving you extra money just to do the job you're paid to do. You don't like it? Bitch to your boss for higher pay, or do something that warrants receiving a decent tip. If I wanted to give handouts to lazy/rude people I'd open a soup kitchen.

Labor is included. That's the same with gratuity. There is a charge because larger parties require more attention and take time away from other tables. It's good that you tip. When I go into work...I don't expect great tips, but I don't expect to get stiffed. After all I have atleast provided you with some sort of service. Usually I make decent tips because I go the extra mile to make my tables feel welcome and feel satisfied.

EXACTLY. A tip and a gratuity are not the same. A tip is an amount you deem appropriate to give a server and a gratuity is a semi-manditory amount added to the check for the service of a large party. If you go into a restaurant with 15 people expecting perfect service you should probably go kill youself because it won't happen. People are human and things happen. I doubt that the OP was a HORRIBLE server and no one deserves to get a note on the table in lieu of money.

The restaurant/hospitality industry in the United States needs to start PAYING THEIR OWN ******* STAFF! If that means upping the price of that already overpriced "gourmet" burger on their generic-ass menus, then so be it. A tip/gratuity used to be (and in most countries still is) recognition of exceptional service, something above and beyond. Delivering a Coke and entree to my table is neither exceptional or above and beyond. Your hotel restaurant needs to pay you a fair wage and customer's should pay a fair rate for their food, and then everyone can shut the **** up. I mean, at minimum, this could put an end to the table of 5 little old ladies who crack open the calculator to find out what their share of 11.25% may be, right?