Good service should be rewarded with good tips

by Hylann Camacho, online editor

 

For those of you who don’t know this, waiters and waitresses usually only make a measly $2.15 an hour.

Waiting tables involves the action of someone catering to someone’s needs, such as serving food, drinks or both. The waiter or waitress also tries to attend to every other need that the customer may have, in order to receive a good tip when the customer decides to leave.  When the customer doesn’t leave a tip, even if the service was perfect, it can leave some waiters broke and wondering about what went wrong.

I, along with many other people, am one of the people who perform this job in order to pay bills, or maybe just have a little spending money for the weekend. Waiting tables can be one of the hardest jobs a person can have. You have to deal with, and wait on, people who don’t have any manners. You know the kind of people you see in a restaurant, bullying their waiter or complaining about ridiculous things for the sake of complaining. Those people should be ashamed of themselves.

Being treated horribly by someone you don’t even know is a very horrible feeling.  It makes me wonder what exactly it accomplishes by being irrational and discourteous to another person like that.

If you are one of these people, stop. Do not do this. It is wrong, and no one thinks it’s funny. Grow up and act like a human being. Learn how to treat others like you want to be treated. It makes the job harder than it actually has to be, and it even ruins my or my roommate’s day sometimes.

Also, if you have children and you like to go out and have family dinners at restaurants, remember a couple of key things when you go out. First, the wait staff at the restaurant is not a bunch of baby sitters. Second, the sugar packets and salt and peppershakers are not toys. There is no need to for your child, or anyone else, to throw them all over the place.

Remember, your server has to clean up those ridiculous messes. Also, please control your children and keep them from running around in the restaurant. They could hurt themselves, and it’s very nerve-racking and annoying to others.

Even if you don’t have children, it doesn’t mean you should act like them. Please don’t go to a bar and jump on top of tables, or run around screaming and hollering. But especially do not stand in a crowd in the middle of the walkway that waiters and waitresses use to get to their tables as fast as possible. This is also very irritating.

While waiting tables, I have seen people deny knowing their own wife to get out of paying half the tab. There are those who don’t even bother to pay their tabs and sneak out of the restaurant just after they send their server to get a round of drinks.

I have also seen a customer try and set a table on fire in the middle of the bar and then get mad because he was asked to put out the huge flame. I have even seen waiters get tipped absolutely nothing for a tab of more than $200.

I’ve seen someone complain about the state tax on the check and ask for it to be removed. I’ve also seen, on a regular basis, customers speaking very condescendingly to their server as if they were completely incompetent.

Situations like that should never happen, and it is utterly ridiculous that they do. But as waiting tables goes, you just have to deal with it, and sometimes you get people who are nice and have manners.

Coming to the point, you should tip your servers when you go out. I’m not suggesting you break yourself tipping, but at least tip them as good as you possibly can, if they did a good job.

Catering to someone’s every need is not an easy thing to do. People need to realize that and realize that the person serving them is also a human being. It seems as if I see people forgetting this a lot of the time, not only while I am working, but even at restaurants I’ve gone out to.

So to everyone whoever goes out to eat, please compose yourself in public and treat your servers well. You don’t know when you just might make somebody’s day a little better.