Well Done Fillet, what is it good for it?

All this talk of tipping has been getting me down. It's been all consuming over the last week or so. From taxi drivers to guests to the guy in the shop to newspapers to radio and tv, everybody has been talking about tips. I've been defending waiters and tipping 'til I'm blue in the face. Do you have to defend the money you earn on a daily basis? I very much hope not. It's a fucking bore.

So this is the last I'll say about it.

If you want to tip, then tip. If you don't want to tip, then don't. It's no skin off my nose.

I'm a trained waiter, like my colleagues too. We know what we are talking about. We know about wine, we know about food, we know about service and we work hard to bring all this knowledge together to ensure you have a great time. Hey don't get me wrong from time to time we aren't all we can be. But we try hard to do a great job everyday.

I do well out of tips. It affords me a good lifestyle, I've not got the Porsche yet (wouldn't want one) but I can get through life quite well. I appreciate the money I earn and like most waiters I work hard for it. I'm not asking people to tip more. I'm not asking people to tip at all. You do what you you feel is right. What waiters want is fairness and the closing of shady loopholes that let disreputable employers take advantage of not only their staff but you the guest. And this week we got, part, of what we had been asking for.

I do believe that a tip is to be earned and not expected just as you should believe that great service deserves a reward. Yes from time to time I get pissed when I get shafted out of my tip when I know I deserved it. But I get more pissed and the red rage will descend quicker when I'm treated badly, when you're rude to me.

And finally over my nineteen years in this industry I have come to the belief that people like to tip. It makes them feel good. So make yourself feel good the next time you go out and tip the waiter. They will appreciate it.

This blog wasn't started and isn't about tips. Well Done Fillet is about people. It's about the good, the bad, the dramatic, the finger clickers, the bed wetters, amongst others. It's about the laughs, the tears, the barely controlled rage. It is observations on life in the context of a restaurant. Well that's what I aim for.

So lets draw a line and move on.

Eh that is after you listen to this radio phone in. (Requires Real Player) One of the callers is WDF reader and commenter Belfast Plate Carrier (Shane). Well said fella!

So lets draw another line, here.........

When tips were the "Tribute of shame and the wage of shame"

Further to this post...

click the picture to see a larger version

As waiters in London protest about their employers sticky fingering their hard earned tips it transpires that they didn't always feel that way. The New York Times article (above) from 1906 reveals that waiters at the turn of the last century protested to their Member of Parliament about the tipping system. My favourite line is that one near the bottom which quotes one speaker as saying "tipping degraded the man that gave and the man who received."

Eh let me clarify my position,

DEGRADE ME, DEGRADE ME LIKE THE BAD LITTLE PUPPY I AM.

First there was the miners strike, then the waiters got uppity

waiters of the revolution
that's what we all look like...

Tips, it always comes back to tips. It's my Raison d'être. The reason why I ask you how you are when I really couldn't give a fiddlers fuck. The reason why I listen to your dull as dishwater stories about hill walking on your last holiday or some such banal shite. Tips are why I bust my hump to get you a table at half eight on a Saturday night when you show up without a reservation. Tips, tips, tips, tips, tips mmmmmmmmmtips.

I try to tell the new waiters not to "chase the tip", not to worry about the tip. If you do your job right the reward will follow. Newbies can get a bit cocky after their first couple of weeks and think everyday should be a winning visit to the casino. I've always believed that customers, like dogs, can smell a tip hungry waiter. They tend to drip desperation over the table, much like a second hand car salesman at the sight of customer with cash in their hand. If you chase the tip you are setting yourself up for a disappointing fall.

I tell the new waiters this, but I'm guilty of it too. I tend not to drip desperation, I drip actual sweat, on the customers. Honestly it was so warm at work on Friday night that the sweat was almost blinding me. No hair you see to soak up my perspiration. Aren't I painting a pretty picture!? But when more than half of your remuneration is made up by tips it's hard not to spend every waking moment on the floor thinking about tips. That anticipation creates the energy that keeps you working when you really cant be bothered, well that and the fact that you have bills to pay.

Anyway what I've been trying to explain in the last 3 paragraphs, if you hadn't twigged on already, is that tips are damn important. If you stiff me on my tip I will hold it against you and more importantly use it against you if you manage to make it into the restaurant again. I say "if" because waiters are like scorned lovers, we hold grudges and will come round and boil your bunny. I think I've made that point more than a few times. But it's not just the ever important customer who has an effect on tips, there are our almighty employers too! And that is the crux of today's offering....

My employers have a rather contradictory policy on tips, that is to say they have no actual policy on tips. They keep their noses out of our tip trough, which is just fine by me. Their attitude being, "If we don't know about them, we don't have to tell anyone about them." "Anyone" is of course the thieving taxman and/or woman. This is a tremendous state of affairs. But contradictory all the same as they use the fact that wait staff earn tips to put us on a lower pay scale than the bar staff. And that, ladies and gentlemen gets right up my nose. But that is a different story for a different day.

Not all restaurateurs take such an hands off view on their waiters tips. Quite the opposite in fact. Some nasty thieving scumbag restaurateurs have a very hands on approach to tips. It's as corrupt as it gets. Tips are being used to pay wages instead of being, as they were intended as, an addition to wages. They aren't actually dipping into the waiters pockets or going through their bags when they are out having a smoke, given the opportunity I'm sure some of them would. Instead, they are syphoning it at source at the cash register and credit card machine. Service charges and tips left on credit cards are essentially "filtered" by the sticky fingered bastards and instead of ending up in to a column marked TIPS they magically make their way to the column marked WAGES. It's a cunt trick and no mistake.

Well there'll be no more of these shenanigans! Well not in London anyway. The good waiters of London, and I'm sure a few bad ones too, decided enough was enough of this robbery and took to the streets in protest on Thursday last. Organised in association with the UNITE Union waiters picketed outside big name restaurants such as Pizza Express, Garfunkels, Deep Pan Pizza, and Frankie & Bennies at lunchtime. It's shameful that chains with multi million pound turnovers such as these have to steal from their own staff to pay the wages thus boosting their own profits. Cunts.

There is a sneaky loophole in the law that allows employers to steal tips left on credit cards and use them to bring wages up to the minimum level. That loophole needs to be closed pronto. Dave Turnbull, Unite regional industrial organiser, said:

"Many customers would be horrified if they knew their service charge went towards paying hard-working waiters and waitresses [I would expect better from a Union man] the minimum wage, rather than rewarding good service. Tips and service charges should always be considered an addition to a decent living wage. As well as urging a change in the minimum wage law that allows employers to take advantage, customers can also help by asking the restaurant where the tips go."

So to ensure that the wonderful waiter that made your night the success that it inevitably was try, were possible, to leave any tip in cash. If there is a service charge added to your bill ask if it goes to the wait staff, if not don't pay it but DO leave the equivalent, or more (cough cough), in cash. And always try and give the cash directly to the waiter that served you.

I heard a sorry tale recently regarding the waiters in one of Belfast's finer restaurants which is owned by one of our "celebrity" chefs. The managers had been slyly recording the tips made by the staff and for reasons that aren't clear to me shopped all the waiters to the tax people! Well fuck me with a calculator but that is just nasty beyond words. I wouldn't have wanted to be a customer that night. There would have been more than a few "mistakes" that night. Why would they do that? Why?

I'd love to go out on strike, well on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday that is. I'd lose too much money over a weekend. Solidarity though mid week.....

So who's a Mr Pink then?

Just found the pubic hairs in your coffee eh?

NICE GUY EDDIE
Okay, everybody cough up green for
the little lady.

Everybody whips out a buck, and throws it on the table.
Everybody, that is, except Mr. White.

NICE GUY EDDIE
C'mon, throw in a buck.

MR. PINK
Uh-uh. I don't tip.

NICE GUY EDDIE
Whaddaya mean you don't tip?

MR. PINK
I don't believe in it.

NICE GUY EDDIE
You don't believe in tipping?

MR. WHITE
(laughing)
I love this kid, he's a madman,
this guy.

MR. BLONDE
Do you have any idea what these
ladies make? They make shit.

MR. PINK
Don't give me that. She don't
make enough money, she can quit.

Everybody laughs.

NICE GUY EDDIE
I don't even know a Jew who'd have
the balls to say that. So let's
get this straight. You never ever
tip?

MR. PINK
I don't tip because society says I
gotta. I tip when somebody
deserves a tip. When somebody
really puts forth an effort, they
deserve a little something extra.
But this tipping automatically,
that shit's for the birds. As far
as I'm concerned, they're just
doin their job.

MR. BLUE
Our girl was nice.

MR. PINK
Our girl was okay. She didn't do
anything special.

MR. BLONDE
What's something special, take ya
in the kitchen and suck your dick?

They all laugh.

NICE GUY EDDIE
I'd go over twelve percent for
that.

MR. PINK
Look, I ordered coffee. Now we've
been here a long fuckin time, and
she's only filled my cup three
times. When I order coffee, I
want it filled six times.

MR. BLONDE
What if she's too busy?

MR. PINK
The words "too busy" shouldn't be
in a waitress's vocabulary.

NICE GUY EDDIE
Excuse me, Mr. White, but the last
thing you need is another cup of
coffee.

They all laugh.

MR. PINK
These ladies aren't starvin to
death. They make minimum wage.
When I worked for minimum wage, I
wasn't lucky enough to have a job
that society deemed tipworthy.

NICE GUY EDDIE
Ahh, now we're getting down to it.
It's not just that he's a cheap
bastard--

MR. ORANGE
--It is that too--

NICE GUY EDDIE
--It is that too. But it's also
he couldn't get a waiter job. You
talk like a pissed off dishwasher:
"Fuck those cunts and their
fucking tips."

MR. BLONDE
So you don't care that they're
counting on your tip to live?

Mr. White rubs two of his fingers together.

MR. PINK
Do you know what this is? It's
the world's smallest violin,
playing just for the waitresses.

MR. BLONDE
You don't have any idea what
you're talking about. These
people bust their ass. This
is a hard job.

MR. PINK
So's working at McDonald's, but
you don't feel the need to tip
them. They're servin ya food, you
should tip em. But no, society
says tip these guys over here, but
not those guys over there. That's
bullshit.

MR. ORANGE
They work harder than the kids at
McDonald's.

MR. PINK
Oh yeah, I don't see them cleaning
fryers.

MR. BROWN
These people are taxed on the tips
they make. When you stiff 'em,
you cost them money.

MR. BLONDE
Waitressing is the number one
occupation for female non-college
graduates in this country. It's
the one jab basically any woman
can get, and make a living on.
The reason is because of tips.

MR. PINK
Fuck all that.

They all laugh.

MR. PINK
Hey, I'm very sorry that the
government taxes their tips.
That's fucked up. But that ain't
my fault. it would appear that
waitresses are just one of the
many groups the government fucks
in the ass on a regular basis.
You show me a paper says the
government shouldn't do that, I'll
sign it. Put it to a vote, I'll
vote for it. But what I won't do
is play ball. And this non-
college bullshit you're telling
me, I got two words for that:
"Learn to fuckin type." Cause if
you're expecting me to help out
with the rent, you're in for a big
fuckin surprise.

MR. ORANGE
He's convinced me. Give me my
dollar back.

Everybody laughs. Joe's comes back to the table.

JOE
Okay ramblers, let's get to
rambling. Wait a minute, who
didn't throw in?

MR. ORANGE
Mr. PINK

JOE
(to Mr. Orange)
Mr. PINK?
(to Mr. PINK)
Why?

MR. ORANGE
He don't tip.

JOE
(to Mr. Orange)
He don't tip?
(to Mr. PINK)
You don't tip? Why?

MR. ORANGE
He don't believe in it.

JOE
(to Mr. Orange)
He don't believe in it?
(to Mr. PINK)
You don't believe in it?

MR. ORANGE
Nope.

JOE
(to Mr. Orange)
Shut up!
(to Mr. PINK)
Cough up the buck, ya cheap
bastard, I paid for your goddamn
breakfast.

MR. PINK
Because you paid for the
breakfast, I'm gonna tip.
Normally I wouldn't.

JOE
Whatever. Just throw in your
dollar, and let's move.
(to Mr. Blonde)
See what I'm dealing with here.
Infants. I'm fuckin dealin with
infants.

from Reservoir Dogs
or watch it here

So are you a Mr Pink? Do you suffer from entitlement issues? Do you start the tippometer when you walk into a restaurant? Be brave and share your "tipping policy" with Manuel, because everyone has one. I ask out of genuine interest. Whilst I earn a damn good wedge through tips I am always and I mean always after more. Any God damn waiter that says they are doing this job to meet interesting people or because it offers them flexible hours is a liar. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CASH! So make with the "tipping policy" people.