Alright…
I am currently a waitress and here is the deal. When you walk into a restaurant and we have never seen your face before, you will be given wonderful service, even if YOU the customer has an attitude. Your server will take very good care of you, try their best to get everything out to you correctly and in a timely manner. If they are mistakes with your food, IT IS MOST LIKELY an error made by the cooks (even though the server is blamed) and we are happy to make the corrections. The reason we do this is because the reward in the end is customer appreciation in the form of a quality tip. Now if you repeatedly come into a restaurant and complain, are rude, and DON’T TIP, why should we waste our energy on you, when it can be put it forth to another table that we know will leave us a good tip if we put the work in? I don’t see how that doesn’t make sense. Treat others how you wish to be treated, right? If you visit your favorite restaurant a few times a month and continue to be rude and leave bad tips, I’m sorry but your service will continue to get worse and worse. If you come in and you are rude and leave a really good tip, like 25% or more consistently, your sever will probably breath a heavy sigh when you get there, but you will get good service because the servers know a good tip is coming. If you are super nice, but leave a bad tip then you will probably get okay service. The server knows you will be nice, but still there is nothing in it for them so you will come second to the other tables.
If you want to use a coupon, split a meal or ask the price of something that is typically not an issue, but do you see the commonality of these things? They imply that you are cheap and cheap people don’t tip! When you see table, after table, after table doing this it is really hard not to think that it will happen every time. I would say a good 80% of the people that ask these questions will leave you a tip under 10% if they tip at all.
I also think a lot of people will use ANY excuse NOT to leave a tip, such as well my food was slightly cool when it came out, he/she didn’t bring enough extra dressing, he/she didn’t smile big enough when we were greeted. If you need something more, just ask politely and we will gladly run back and get it. Don’t keep it to yourself and then use it as an excuse to not tip. How do we know if you don’t tell us?
Yes, servers are people too and they have feelings and they have bad days. Maybe the service wasn’t perfect, but maybe they were having a bad day. It is hard sometimes to keep up that perfect smile and beaming attitude when half of your tables are treating you like dirt. I honestly think that every single person in the entire county should wait tables for just a couple of months so they can understand exactly what it is like and all the work that we have to do, because it is A LOT MORE than putting in your order and bringing it out. It takes a lot of work, stamina and energy and most people could not handle it. If some of these people that are so awful to wait on tried to be a server, most of them would not last a week!
By the way, if you take a girl out on a date, whether you or her wait tables or not, and you don’t leave a tip, it is VERY tacky. You look cheap and unappreciative.
Anyway, I think those shirts are awesome. There is a lot of truth written on them. People really need to think about how they behave in a restaurant or any public place for that manner. For some reason, a lot of people think it is okay to be rude and talk down to customer service people for no reason at all. Maybe talking down to them, makes you feel better about your crappy life or gives you a venue to let out some anger that you won’t allow yourself to take out on a friend, loved one, or job. I don’t know.
Let’s just all try to be a little nicer and show some appreciation for once!