Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg Read Free Book Online

their living more than those in any other tipped profession. The reason for this is simple: waiters and waitresses are the only employees who can be exempt from the minimum wage. Although this varies from state to state, it is rare to find a restaurant that pays its servers more than the minimum wage. The theory for this is that servers will more than make up the difference with their tips. This win-win equation is further emphasized by the notion that should employers pay their servers adequately (and this would have to be a pretty penny to convince servers to put up with the vagaries of the business), they would have to raise the prices of their menu items to make up the cost, making dining out much less affordable. Tipping is still optional, after all. Unless a preset tip is worked into the bill (usually for large parties or banquets), the amount of extra cash a patron leaves at the end of a meal is up to him and based, supposedly, on the quality of service rendered. Sounds reasonable. However, there are many variables that interrupt a seamless implementation of this fairly simple notion.
    One such variable is the tip-out policy. Almost every restau rant I’ve worked in has required that servers tip out a certain per centage of their tips to other workers. The tip-out where I work now is as follows: 15 percent to the busboy, 8 percent to the bar tender, 5 percent to the hostess, 5 percent to the food expediter, and 2 percent to the extremely underpaid wretch who makes cof fee drinks. The math is easy to do. In order to walk out the door with $100 in tips, I have to earn $155 (and when I do tip out, I am sure to have detractors, my busboy chief among them, who will claim they did all kinds of work for me that they didn’t get paid for and curse me on the way out). On some nights my bus boy, who services three waiters at a time, will actually make more than me (and this after he tells me, “Listen, I take care of you tonight, make all your tables happy. Twenny percen’ tonight, chap parita, OK?”). The bartender makes more than me every night.
    The tip-out doesn’t really end there. Because as we all know, one of the two sure things in this life is taxes—and we do pay them. Servers are required by law to report all their tips. Before the use of credit cards exploded (and I am actually old enough to remember such a time), waiters and waitresses barely declared anything. Sometime during the Bush administration, the IRS decided to crack down on these scofflaws (after all, everybody knows waiters make six-figure incomes, right?). I know several waiters who got busted for back taxes this way. Regardless of whether or not a server declares all of her tips, the government knows how much she has sold during the course of the year because her restaurant is required to report it. In the old days, 8 percent of what you’d sold was considered taxable income. That figure has since gone up. The last time I tried to calculate, it was hovering between 10 and 15 percent, but these days I prefer to give all my paperwork to an accountant and let him figure it out.
    To illustrate how this all plays out, I’ll offer an example. Say on a given night I sell $1,000 in food and beverages. Say it’s been an average night and I’ve netted $150 in tips. After I tip out, I have $97 left in my pocket. But shortly I will owe more of that $97 to the IRS, and that will be subtracted from my hourly wage. In fact, the more I sell, the more I will owe, regardless of whether I’ve made any set percentage or not. If I am not tipped, or tipped badly, I will still owe a percentage of my sales. Guests who don’t tip, therefore, are effectively costing their server money.
    I am sure most diners are not aware of these complexities, nor should they be. Their responsibility is not to calculate how well their waitress is doing financially but rather to realize that tipping is a fact of dining (at least in this country) and deal with it accordingly. There