The Angry Server
By Jeremy Schall, Contributing Columnist

I’m the server. You’re the patron.

Topic #1: Tipping

Tipping is a strange and powerful instrument. Having somehow evolved into its current form through whatever combination of chance and design, the tip you leave on the table has the power: 1) to light up a brilliant city of goodwill toward mankind in your server, or 2) break the proverbial spine of even the most bitter and calloused lifetime waitress. “But,” you might begin, “why all this heaviness?”

“It’s just a tip,” you might even find yourself whispering, to no one, to just yourself, “One among many.”

Let us investigate a touch further. Even though I’ve done no research at all, I still have no idea how the current tipping system has developed through history. I do, however, know uncomfortably well exactly how the current system functions.

First off: Waiters and waitresses make $2.13 an hour. This is the minimum wage for tipped employees, and all restaurants pay exactly this, while simultaneously refusing to even entertain the notion of a raise. Every server, regardless of how many long years they devote to a particular restaurant, still gets paid $2.13 per every hour worked. Therefore, the payday for an eight-hour table-waiting shift is a whopping $17.04 (pre-tax), though most if not all of that money will be deducted from the paycheck in order to pay for the various taxes (income, state, payroll, etc) on the server’s real income: tips. (The exception to this is California, which the last I heard is the only state that requires even tipped employees be paid minimum wage.)

So this means: Waiters and waitresses are de facto paid by you, the patron. We’re counting on you to provide us with food money, tuition money, gas money, insurance money, beer money, etc. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it is extremely frustrating to work for a restaurant-eating public that can be surprisingly ignorant of how the whole system works. It would be like going into an office job day after day, busting your hump for a boss that pays you erratically, with your salary fluctuating wildly and unpredictably. And to even hint that he’s not paying you well enough would cost you your job, flat-out.

And therefore: Tip well. Please. We live on it.

Continue: Twenty percent is a good tip, and requires no calculators or special math abilities to calculate. Just take the first digit in the check, and double it. A good tip on a $20 check is four dollars, tip $16 on an $80 check. If $100 or more, double the first two digits. $28 on a $140 dollar check, $40 on a $200 dollar check, $20 on a $100 check, and so forth. This will keep your server happy, fed, and still in school.

One final word: Do you have a question about restaurant etiquette? Need to settle a bet? Write me! angryserver@columbuswired.net 

Until next week, happy dining, and good tipping!