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Originally Posted by Charlatan
This speaks volumes about why a Canadian would pay 15% to 20%. Where I come from, 15% is acceptable because we pay a reasonable wage to our servers to start with. It is also drilled into our heads (here anyway) that a tip should be 15% of the bill.
The insanity of paying a server $2.50 I just can't fathom.
As for fine dining (as I believe Host was speaking about), I would be hard-pressed to believe that a two or three-star Michelin restaurant pays their servers anywhere near $2.50. I would expect that a top restaurant would pay much more as their servers have a lot more to do (and know) than a regular restaurant. I should also be noted that 15% of some of the bills that can get racked up at establishments of this nature is a significant amount of money.
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It's $2.13 per hour, unless an individual state enacts a different "tip offset" scheme into the minimum wage law in that state.
The "real world" situation is the exact opposite of what you would be "hard-pressed" to believe. The average guest check (per seat) is triple or quadruple the norm, at that Michelin rated restaurant (there are so few of those, in the US, and they are concentrated in such few cities, that the term is not a good one to describe US fine dining...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant_rating">see US ratings</a>), and other near caliber venues, driven at least as much by sales of expensive wine and champagne as by higher food menu pricing.
People who work for tips in these top tier restaurants, except in a few markets, NY City and Las Vegas, where some are unionized and receive an actual wage and benefits, are unaffected, compared to everywhere else by the tiny hourly wage. These staffs our professionals, because they do average 19 percent of gross sales, plus tax, as a gross tip. There are no "college students" waiting on you, and the servers are primarily college degreed males, over 30 years of age.
They are paid $2.13 in the top tier restaurants here, as in almost all other local "sit down" businesses of any level of quality, because the owner can pay like that and still have plenty of applicants for the positions. In every front of the house position not requiring direct dialogue with guests, the staffing is almost exclusively Mexican illegals. They work extremely hard and fast, and since they know of any job openings before outsiders do, hiring is restricted to their friends and family because management loves their hardworking cooperative (timid) attitudes. They are paid $2.13, and we pay them the rest from our tips. They average, before deductions, $100 per shift, and double that amount on convention nights in the best stations.
They are imposed on us, we joke that we could pull up at a Home Depot on our way to work and bring our own handpicked support staff into work with us and pay them $50 per night as subcontractors. These highly paid (for their skill, language fluency, and education levels) workers only rarely advance because they do not attempt to become fluent in English. The ones assigned to the best stations make more than the waitstaff working in the worst stations (the ones where the anticipated poor tipping guests are escorted to be seated...), and they have no job risk or responsibility, compared to the waiter who is fired or disciplined after management receipt of a complaint letter from some irritated individual who did not get that personalized birthday dessert per the instructions on the reservation slip, didn't like the location of their table, or felt slighted because their waiters spent more time with the party of ten than with their "two top" (five times more time was spent at the other table....)
When I encounter an especially friendly, articulate, outgoing, and attractive store checkout line cashier, I am sometimes tempted to ask, "what are you doing, working here?" and then follow with, "why...the illegal immigrant workers where I am employed, probably make twice the amount you make", but I don't.
This turned into an unplanned narrative, but I'm trying to point out that it doesn't follow that the best restaurants would pay a higher wage; it is the lowest rung places that must do that to slow staff turnover, and.... the impact from foreign visitors and other poorly tipping guests is on the staffs in the restaurants where a $50 per week difference in tips earned is enough to effect economics to the point where the job is not worth continuing to show up for, especially if it costs $5 or $6 per day to travel to and fro.
The difference between a 15 percent and a 19 percent tip, on an average check of $15 per head can have that effect. If you wait on a large party and it is half your cover for the night, in an average priced restaurant a lower tip has a huge impact, and so does a $2.13 hourly wage. Mitigating that is the tendency for lower level server to receive more cash tips and enjoy more discretion in how much they are required to tip out to their busboy or food runner. Tip distribution procedures tend to be written in stone at top level venues, and 95 percent of cash flow is in the form of easy to track credit card transactions.
So many claim that they prefer to experience the tip built into the menu pricing. Do you think the owners would do that without a markup for themselves? Do you think in better restaurants, the staff would be motivated with a fixed, guaranteed income, to avoid doing what Ustwo described in an earlier post? The US restaurant service "system" is truly a model of capitalistic incentives vs. a more socialist model.
You have the power to prompt the best service, via the amount that you tip,
T.I.P.S. (Tip to Insure Prompt Service), but you arbitrarily want to set too low of a top limit on how much you tip, an unlimited lower limit (down to .02 cents....) and you seem to have a tendency to walk into a place with a chip on your shoulder. You state that you would prefer not to have to tip at all, and many of you maintain that there is no problem, we're just imagining that you tip reluctantly and below average...you don't tip too little, the people at the other tables tip too much and "spoil" the waitstaff, turning them into greedy, entitlement seeking sloths. Thank god for the owners, putting them back in their place, with that $2.13 per hour.
You should consider that you are seeking out the least powerful to exact a price from. Why not go up to the manager and ask to see the owner, or ask if the manager has the authority to knock ten percent off your bill, or comp your drinks or appetizers, because you think that the prices are too high, compared to similar venues in your country. <h3>You don't do that, it's just easier to short the service staff, the only people in the restaurant, and in the country, who give you the benefit of the doubt, the trust and respect, to compensate them for their work, as you see fit,</h3> with no consequence to you, except in forums like this, or in jokes behind your back, about canoes and "Canadian" juries.