mini-rant on tipping
I had dinner at the Midway Market buffet at Cedar Point for the first time this past Saturday. A little card on the table says, among other quasi-humorous things, "Our servers are paid 54% of minimum wage. The rest is made up by your generous tips," or words to that effect. That means they make $2.78 an hour.
Frankly, that's crap. This is a BUFFET. Our server brought and refilled our drinks and cleared our plates. Normally, I tip a server 20%, but am I supposed to give this guy the same I would in a full service restaurant where the wait staff is doing far more work? If I don't, then he's not even making minimum wage, which is unfortunate, because this guy was friendly and funny. Yet I also feel stupid leaving a 20% tip on a $15.00 buffet when I had to dish up and carry my own food to my table.
(The other problem is that the $15 was paid upon entering the restaurant, and I used a credit card, as I normally would. In a full service restaurant, this receipt would include the opportunity to write in the tip on a separate line, but since I hadn't eaten yet, I couldn't do that. I had to leave cash for a tip, and only had twenties and two singles on me. But I guess 13% isn't too bad for a few drink refills. I suppose if I really wanted to leave $3 I could've asked him for change.)
Are all buffets run this way? Sorry, the old "you can pay them below minimum wage because they'll earn tips" law shouldn't apply to tipless or low-tip situations like this. I have a problem with the tip-wage law in this country anyway, but that's a story for another time, and the law will never change anyway.
11 Comments:
I will only tip $1 at a buffet. Maybe 2 if you are really efficient. I have waitressed before and I'm sorry, but if you are dumb enough to work at a buffet where they only pay 2.78/hr, you don't deserve minimum wage. Also, those signs sound tacky. I have heard that CP is cheap and I guess this applies to their restaurant people too. oh, ya should have gone to the Thirsty Pony!...laurie
Yeah, but going to the Thirsty Pony would've meant paying for parking twice. I had never been to the MM buffet though, so it was nice to dine there. Good thing I was hungry.
You may want to check but I think your daily parking pass may be good for re-entry.
Hmm, good point, it is called a "daily parking pass," so maybe it allows for re-entry.
For those not familiar with The Thirsty Pony, it's right on the corner of Cleveland Road and the CP causeway. It's connected to a bowling alley and Quality Inn. When I was a kid, it was called Johnny Angel's, had a '50s theme, and had a pink Cadillac sticking out of the wall. Now it has a horseracing theme.
Dinners come with a free game of bowling, although we've yet to take advantage of this offer. But they have awesome teriyaki wings (Fricker's sauce) and ribs, and prices are reasonable for what you get.
The table card, hopefully, is for people that don't think the wait staff deserve any tips at all. If it's not, it's an advertisement of exactly how cheap they really are.
Since it is a buffet, and the wait staff is only filling drinks and taking away dishes, they can service twice as many tables (and thus earn twice as many tips) as someone who had to take orders, deliver food, etc. My opinion is that 10% is a good median tip, more or less for better or worse service.
I do frequent a Chinese buffet near my home and I have my favorite waitress whose station I will wait for if her section is full. She offers more than just drinks and dish removal - she offers stories and friendly gossip and we've become almost friends - to the point where Hubby and I invited her to our July 4th barbecue. She gets 20%, but that's an exception rather than a rule for us.
YMMV
the restaurant probably is that cheap. through my various jobs I have encountered the owners and the workers of such establishments, and your story is not unique.
...anonymous can go ahead and call somebody stupid for working somewhere, but this job market sucks. and if you went to a crappy school system and had uneducated parents, you may just not be the right fit for serving at a "better" restaurant.
the better part is that some of these business owners actually get angry and surprised about their high turnover and their staff's ineptness, and refuse to cooperate with social service programs when asked to supply wage information, acting thoroughly surprised that their offer of no benefits and 2.75/hour plus tips (in a poor neighborhood) got them a worker who is disabled or a has a family in need of medicaid.
f.
I did find out that, in Ohio at least, if one's tips don't add up to minimum wage, the restaurant must make up the rest. So at least there's that. Not that one should be expected to live on 1997's wages in 2006.
Well. Maybe Congress will up the ante on minimum wage soon. I doubt it, they would rather give themselves raises (three of them), since they last raised the minimum wage. But our inept government is a totally different rant!
I doubt they will raise it anytime soon.
They have new ammo to support trickle down economics:
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/07/09/a3.economy.0709.p1.php?section=cityregion
A right winger at work was already touting this as proof of success.
Blech. It's ridiculously tacky to have signs out that advertise the fact that "We don't pay our employees! We charge you $40 admission to pay them $2 an hour!" Now THAT is a prime example of how trickle down economics doesn't work. But that makes me wonder, Johnny Rocket's, also found at CP, is a chain; are they technically CP employees, or are they like contract employees? "Food" for thought...
The card is tacky, yet helpful. If I'm not mistaken, according to etiquette, it would also be rude to ask the server what they earn or if it's proper to leave a tip (and the server could lie just to get some extra cash anyway). Otherwise, I would've assumed no tip was necessary, or perhaps just left a dollar. Now I have to wonder about all the other buffets I've been to, and whether the servers are now spitting in my drinks because I didn't tip last time. How was I to know?
I think it's all part of this "it's rude to talk about income" mentality in American eitquette. Personally, I have no problem telling someone how much I earn at my job, if that's the topic at hand. It's certainly easier than the nudges, winks, and other vague generalities that people usually substitute for raw numbers under the guise of being polite.
Or maybe it's just because people often assume I earn more than I do and think I have the greatest job in the world since it involves both art and music, so I like to set the record straight. :)
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