Restaurant rants
Inspired by Nate’s tipping article, I thought I’d post my thoughts on restaurant protocol here, just because sometimes things in restaurants annoy me.
Tipping: I don’t really like the whole cultural practice of “expected tipping” in restaurants, and I like how it’s spilling over into other industries even less. It’s fine to give someone a tip if they provide good service, but I don’t like there being the expectation of a tip regardless of the service. To me that’s just the cheap business owner’s way of getting away with paying their employees lower wages than they need. The employees should be paid by the employer, and if they don’t have enough to do that they can raise the prices slightly to cover the difference. That way, I don’t feel obligated to “tip” someone who didn’t give excellent service just because I know they depend on that money to live. Employers should respect their employees enough to pay them what they’re worth.
Complaining: This one is for people who go to restaurants and are picky or complain about their food. I’m not sure why this annoys me so much; I think it’s probably just the general attitude of “talking down” to the people who are serving that usually accompanies the complaint. If an order is completely wrong, then I thinks it’s OK to politely point it out, but for minor discrepancies I usually let it go. I guess the other point is that I think it’s a wise policy to avoid pissing off people who are serving you food to eat, at all costs. Considering this, even if they bring the wrong food, I’ll probably eat it anyway, unless I really don’t like it.
Custom ordering: This is also why it kind of even bugs me when people do complicated special orders of stuff that isn’t really on the menu, or add/subtract so much from it that it takes a whole sheet of paper to write down the special instructions. This is usually a sure sign that something will get screwed up (because it was overly complicated by the extra instructions), and therefore usually leads back to #2.
Bottom line: be nice to waiters and food service employees. Just because they’re in a position at that moment where they are “serving” you, doesn’t make you better than them. And if you can’t treat them well out of simple respect, just remember that they’re going back to the kitchen where you can’t see them and bringing you back a plate of stuff you will put in your mouth and eat.
26 Comments
I pretty much agree with you on all points especially the complaining thing. People that complain about there food not only complain but are very harsh about it. Its not like the server has much, if any, control over how the food is prepared.
One other thing that bugs me though is servers ignoring you because they assume your young and not going to tip well. If I’m paying $20 for a dinner I would like to at least get a refill on my soda in between the nice conversations the server is having with the old farts next to me.
One time in Santa Monica, I was served a scone that was totally raw dough inside. When I alerted the server he shoved his dirty thumb into it and said, “It seems OK to me. Do you still want it?”
I don’t like complainers either so one of my favorite restaurant stories ends with the a manager telling a really picky and complainy lady that she would comp her meal but would prefer if she never come back to the restaurant.
Jared, did you do a trackback to my blog? Just wondering if it works on my end.
Assuming this is Nate (not Kristen), no I forgot to trackback, but I will right now.
Like I said on Nate’s post, tipping is the best way to ensure good service and to reward or be gracious to someone who does a good service. Having an employee control wages in fields that normally have tipped employees is not practical because you are going to pay that 15% no matter what, whether you add it or the restaurant. Restaurants already add 15% for big parties and some do no matter.
Like I said before employers managing ALL wages in customer service fields creates bad customer service; tipping balances this all out. Look at service at fast food joints or walmart.
Complaining only gets spit in your newly re-cooked food.
Custom ordering: I don’t really like it because it’s made good to begin with. But some people can’t help it. But there there should be boundaries.
It’s not the customer’s job to be sure the employee is getting paid what they deserve. Sure, no one’s stopping them from voluntarily giving the employee a tip for good service, but they shouldn’t be expected to contribute to their pay for doing their job.
The employer should be the one paying his or her employees based on how well they do their jobs. The employer is in a much better position to evaluate the employee’s overall performance than the customer’s limited perspective based on their one-time experience.
If a restaurant were to implement a no-tipping-expected policy, they would not necessarily need to mark up their food by the full 15% amount to make up for it, although they certainly could try and see how it works.
I for one wouldn’t mind going to a place (even if the end price ended up being the same or even a little more) with owners that don’t try to pawn off their responsibilities - namely evaluating their employees’ performance and compensating them based on it - on me as a customer.
It could happen. Imagine. Where an employer treated his/her employees well, paid them fairly, encouraged them and rewarded them for a job well done, inspired warm and wonderful service for his/her customers, charged a reasonable price to cover the cost of all that so that the customers didn’t feel that they had to make up for what the employer wasn’t doing. Ahhh. A perfect world. For now we have McDonalds.
I’m with Jared on this one!
i agree with…d-d-d-dan. wow, that was so hard to get out. i can’t even finish my reasoning why…
Once again, Jared is wrong…even if it is opinion…go cry to ma ma j.
Just because you guys agree with each other doesn’t mean you’re right. First of all, it’s just an opinion, so there isn’t necessarily a right side; and secondly, I think I definitely made a better case for my point of view than you guys, so if anyone is “right”, I still think it’s me.
Any time pay can be directly correlated to performance that’s the way to go I think. Sales commissions, performance bonuses, tips, etc. get the most out of employees. I agree that it sucks that it’s so hard not to tip at a restraunt, although I can’t remember I time I didn’t want to tip so whatever.
Jared, you make two assumptions that I don’t think are necessarily true. The first is that restaurant owners are the only ones upholding the culture of “expected tipping” and second is that restaurant employees are all underpaid. Your server may be getting a perfeclty fair wage, but they will still want you to feel obligated to give them a little extra cash.
dan,
if you are going to put someone down, don’t use my name. next time you’re at my house, i might spit on your food. and if you come crying to me, cause ma ma j don’t care.
what i meant was DON’T come cryin’ to me.
I don’t think I’m making either of those two assumptions.
Obviously the customers play a part in keeping the tipping tradition alive; I don’t think I said anything that indicated that the owners were completely responsible for it, just that they could prevent it if they chose to (by “it” I mean the expectation for tipping regardless of service).
I also never said that all restaurant employees are underpaid. I would suspect a lot of them are, but my point was that many (maybe even most) do rely on the tips as a part of their pay, rather than a “bonus” that they may or may not get. Just look at any help wanted ad for waiters, etc. - it will say “$X/hr. + tips”, implying that it should be thought of as a part of the pay structure.
I also completely agree that pay should be tied to performance. That doesn’t mean that tipping should be considered (or counted on) as pay. As I said before, an owner/manager of a restaurant is in a much better position to objectively evaluate the service level of his/her employees than the customer is, and the employer can (and should) adjust their pay according to how well they’re doing their job.
It’s sounding like some of you guys (at least Dan) believe that there would be extremely crappy service if there were no tips expected, but I don’t see the reasoning behind that. It would still be in the owner’s best interests to maintain a high level of customer service, and they could easily fire people who weren’t performing adequately, and reward those who were with higher wages.
I perform well at what I do for several reasons, but one of them is that I know that my performance affects my reputation which therefore (indirectly) affects how much money I make (although I would do good work even if it didn’t). And (SHOCKER) I don’t get “tips” for this. This is the way it is in most professions; I’m not sure why you guys seem to be implying that food service employees are some kind of lower class person that will never do good work without tips to motivate them.
I am sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It was supposed to be humorous because Jared is never wrong on his own blog. I only brought your name up because you two are the only ones that agree, at the time.
Jared: I did say it was opinion. And I disagree with you making a better case, so there, :D.
You can’t compare yourself to waiters/waitress’.
I expect crappy service, in a way, but that is only because other similar fields prove horrible service if the employee is not being compensated for good work.
I disagree with management being in a better position. Throughout my “developmental” jobs I never had a manager accurately compensate employees with wages that they deserved. And you really think that a manager sees more then the customer during that customers stay? Over a long run yes, but the customer sees more of the employee, BY FAR, then the manager and the manger never truly sees the employee’s customer service, only attitude after and before.
For example, an employee that doesn’t click with a manager WILL get paid less then the buddy-buddy kiss ass, no doubt.
Employee performance can never be accurately assessed by a manger, unless they were robots or in the 1% or good managers.
Sure I can, in that we both have jobs, and I think it’s kind of insulting to them to imply that they won’t do theirs well unless they get good tips.
Of course, if you have a bad manager, then they won’t be observing their employees’ customer service (along with all the other relevant aspects of their jobs), but I could just as easily say that there are plenty of “bad” (or unfair in regards to tipping) customers out there. Some will not give a good (or maybe even any) tip for excellent service, many will still give the expected 15% tip regardless of bad service, and I’m sure there are more than a few that will give a bigger tip to certain waiters (or waitresses, more specifically) whom they “click with”, if you know what I mean.
Every inadequacy and bias you point out about managers can also easily be applied to customers. To say that it’s impossible for managers to assess performance I think is incorrect.
Also, not expecting tipping will in no way hinder your ability as a customer to provide input to the owner/manager on how their employees or doing, nor will it prevent you from tipping the employee if they do provide good service. If anything, it would enhance it. I’m not suggesting banning tipping, just suggesting that the restaurant could let the customers know that no tips are expected.
That way, if you as a customer receive excellent service, you are still completely free to tip the employee, or just make a comment to the manager that the employee provided excellent service. In the same manner, you also still have the ability to report bad service to the manager, which is probably much more effective than “sending your message of disapproval” by giving a small (or no) tip.
Unless no tips are expected (as I suggest), employees that give mediocre service (or even bad service) are still going to get tips a lot of the time (in the current model that you favor), whereas in mine, the customers would only give tips if they were really deserved, so if anything my strategy would provide even more tip-based motivation for good service!
Furthermore, if the service really did deteriorate like you predict, even the bad manager would quickly notice the drop in sales that would result, and then start paying more attention to the part of their job that involves monitoring service and make adjustments accordingly.
I am not:
I am saying that great work or higher then expected work would occur when that great service is compensated directly and not indirectly.
You cannot compare yourself to this situation because you make more money and you are not in a “customer service” field. It’s different when you see one customer a month or year than 50 a day.
Maybe we should talk to a waiter or waitress. Because neither of us are very familiar to what is best.
But I do know tipping is the best in most fields because I have experience with it. I couldn’t imagine 2 years ago my Caddy Master giving every Honor Caddy a certain wage, and getting non-expected tips. In my experience, since certain occasions we did do this, it created two types of employees, the ones that worked real hard for the extra tips and another that would smoke dope all day and do nothing because they knew it wasn’t worth it since there was only a 10% average difference in total wage. From your previous comments you would say, the Caddy Master needs to fire those stoners and get better employees. Not possible/practical since it consisted of 85% of the caddies on those days and most importantly when we went back to normal, every caddy worked 110%. So from a managers point of view club determined that employees work best under tipped compensation. And I would think it would be the same in the restaurant business, but all speculation.
I think you are going off of a bad example; if the Caddy Master didn’t fire those guys for not doing anything, he’s an idiot and so are they. I don’t think this specific example by any means disproves or contradicts what I said above.
It’s better then comparing them to you and your job.
If the CM fired 85% of the caddies what would you suggest for having to hire, train and weed out 40 good caddies in 1 week?
I also don’t think it’s appropriate to call them idiots. One reason, what’s stupid about knowing you could do half the work for the same pay, that’s not idiotic, it’s lazy.
Anyways: The point is not that the Caddies were not disciplined but that they work harder, more efficient, and are feel better about thier work when they get paid/tipped directly by the consumer.
And this example is the only example any of us can bring to this conversation because this is the only example that has/had real consequences of not tipping in a tipping field of work.
No, the situation is not comparable. You are talking about a one-time event in which tipped employees went to non-tipped for a fixed period of time, then back again. If the employer didn’t do business that way to begin with, he wouldn’t have to weed out the bad employees and replace them in a week, he could do it naturally over time.
The BBC gives some tips on the correct way to complain about food service.
Yes, it is comparable. Restaurants would have to do the same thing unless they could time travel back in time, which they can’t. Yes, the restaurant could do it over time, Sherwood could not, but I still believe it’s not only in the best interest of the management/owners, like you say, but every other involved party, the consumer and the employee.
Simple fact is, you are in the minority of people who rather see the restaurant charge instead of the customer tipping. What is it that will change your mind?
Your opinion truly doesn’t make sense to me because you say that the employee should be paid that 15% but by the employer and not the customer. What does it matter? Just think 15% is an obligated tax on top of you meal and if you have good service then you could tip.
The pros of tipping:
You can actually skimp the “obligated” 15% if your service is bad. You can’t do that if your burrito price has increased.
The employee is happier.
The management is happier.
The customer is happier because they know they are in control of the customer service.
“Idiot” employees; as you egregiously called them; work harder.
and all the others above.
Cons of tipping:
You don’t need to multiply the tax.
“If an order is completely wrong, then I thinks it’s OK to politely point it out, but for minor discrepancies I usually let it go.”
I am the complete opposite. If some of the meal is wrong, it’s the server’s job to make it right. I am NOT going to enjoy my food unless it’s COMPLETELY correct. Like if I don’t have my side of ranch dressing. I don’t like ketchup, but I do like ranch dressing with fries. I am PAYING for the server to get it right, by gosh, GET IT RIGHT.
“And if you can’t treat them well out of simple respect.”
Simple respect, would accompany an apology for my missing item. Say your sorry like you care and I’ll care more about your tip. It’s disrespectful not to apologize for a mistake, whether it is a small mistake such as forgetting a side of ranch dressing or a huge mistake like a completey wrong entree brought to my table.
“This is also why it kind of even bugs me when people do complicated special orders of stuff that isn’t really on the menu, or add/subtract so much from it that it takes a whole sheet of paper to write down the special instructions.”
Disagree with you TOTALLY. The customer wants a hamburger medium well with lettuce and onions only with 2 sides of mayo and 1 side of mustard. That is how I’ve ordered before. It has gotten messed up a few times. I don’t like too much mustard and I like a whole lot of mayo. Sometimes, the cook may put too much of mustard and not enough mayo. I’d rather be prepared AHEAD of time and just order it on the side. I am the customer, so please me, that is the server’s job, whether it is complicated or not. If the server can’t write each and EVERYTHING down, it’s not my fault that it comes out wrong. The server didn’t take ANY EFFORT to TRY to even get it right. Also, if they do write it down, WHY NOT just REREAD the order BEFORE bringing it to the customer? Otherwise writing it down is USELESS.
kristen
“It’s not like the server has much, if any, control over how the food is prepared.”
That’s NOT true at all. The food is prepared a certain way, because just maybe(which has happened to me because the waiter admitted he did it), pressed the WRONG button and the kitchen cooked the COMPLETELY WRONG entree. So, NO, the wait staff has some control over the way the food is prepared if they don’t put the food order in correctly to BEGIN with. Secondly, if I have ordered a side of ranch and the server brings it to me with NO ranch, GEE, who’s fault is it? It’s the SERVER’S, because the cook was NEVER told the order verbally from the customer, the SERVER was. So, honestly, the server is the ONLY person that knows the order. Not even a food runner may have no idea if it isn’t printed on a ticket. Since the server took my order, it is up to THEM to make sure they bring out the ENTIRE order correctly. It’s like don’t come with onion rings, if I ordered fries. Honestly, HOW will the cook know if the server doesn’t print the ticket correctly or verbally tell the cook? Also, even if the cook knows, the tip relies on good service, so depending on SOMEONE ELSE for a server’s tip is just STUPID. The only person the server can trust is THEMSELF. So, I say don’t rely on the cook or food runner to get the order right, because, 80% of the time, I have something missing when a food runner brings my food. I have had some servers bring condiments to me BEFORE my meal arrived, because they told me they didn’t want to forget them. Those servers got a GREAT tip for caring about the customer’s needs. Also, if I ordered white bread and the cook put wheat bread, it’s OBVIOUS the cook messed up and for a server to bring it to my table that way is INSANE. So what if the cooked messed up, wasting my time bringing the wrong thing to me doesn’t help the server’s tip any, it just makes things worse by wasting ALL customer’s time, not just myself. Bring it out correct, that should be the goal.
Hope that works out for you.
My first job (when I was 16) was at Taco Bell. I worked the drive thru, and this one guy drives up and orders a bean burrito, and is careful to specify that he did want onions. The reason he ordered it this way was that (at least at the time) it was standard practice to make a stock of bean burritos, and regular tacos ahead of time, since they were ordered so frequently, and since almost everyone always ordered “bean burrito, no onions” they usually just always made the pre-made ones without onions, even though it technically was a standard ingredient.
So anyway, I understood perfectly why this guy ordered it this way; he just wanted to make sure he got a traditional one - with onions like it’s supposed to be. So I said OK, finished taking his order, and repeated it back to him. Then he (obviously irritated by someone getting this wrong before) told me to be sure that there was onions on this one, since we (”you guys”) usually mess it up.
“I know what you mean”, I told him, “I’ll take care of it”.
Him: “No, I want to be sure. Will you be making it? If not, I want to talk to the person who will to make sure they don’t screw it up.”
Me: “I can’t really do that sir. I’m not supposed to be making the food, and the people who are are busy making food right now, but I’ll be sure to let them know.”
Him: “No, put it in as ‘extra onions’ just to be sure.’”
Me: “OK, fine”
Me: goes over to the food line when they’re making his, grabs a large handful of onions and tosses them in his burrito, making it easily >%50 onions.
He never came back to complain. From what I’ve heard of food service stories, that is a pretty mild one when it comes to customers who get a bad attitude. If you want to nit pick about your food, I would advise you to at least speak to the server as humbly and respectfully as possible, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because you really don’t want to piss anyone off that comes into contact with your food while you don’t see it.