Why It Is Important to Tip/Respect Your Servers (Reblog w/ Commentary Post)
Why It Is Important to Tip/Respect Your Servers
This blog linked above is a first-hand description of a waitress’ day at Denny’s. Some acquaintances come to her restaurant and she serves them because it’s “easy to take care of people you know.” Service was normal, seemingly done well, until the check was delivered to the table and one of the guests began complaining incessantly about the prices of her food and drink. Honestly that’s probably normal there as customers at any establishment will complain about pricing. Overall that portion of the experience was annoying, but the worst part is the $0.25tip left on the table for the waitress.
The poster of this story explains that that little of a tip is insulting. Based on the information given about their check and their tip, they tipped .01% of their bill, which makes it sound even worse. The author goes on to remind us all that you waiter/waitress is also trying to pay bills and survive, followed by stories of large bills being tipped poorly but laden with compliments- which we all know (and our author reminds us) “compliments don’t pay the bills.”
To me this touches briefly on occupational prestige. Encyclopedia.com says “Occupational prestige refers primarily to the differential social evaluation which is ascribed to jobs or occupations”, essentially: how people judge you based on your job and where you sit in the status hierarchy. Everyone knows that waiters, waitresses, bussers, etc. in the restaurant industry get paid at a level called the wage floor. I’m not sure if that is why these employees are treated so poorly (and tipped so poorly- which is completely backwards) or if it is because a lot of people have this misconception that working in the food/restaurant/service industry isn’t a “real job”. Realistically, this industry is incredibly difficult to work in because you actually have to work for your money. If that’s not considered a real job, I’m not entirely sure what is.