coffee on Friday blowing off some steam

[byhammerandhand]

Ok which of you out there is responsible for this delay?

[gene]

I hope those are biodegradable packaging peanuts. Let's keep this forum PC. Just because our new president thinks PC is BS doesn't mean that we all have to start thinking in a rational and logical manner.

gene

[Mojo]

It is a job few people could tolerate. I always treat the wait staff with respect but I always try and get a smile and laugh from them. If I see one having a bad day I try and say something to make her smile. Typically waitresses fight to have me sit in their section. Not because I am nice or a stud but I have a tendency to tip heavily if the service is good. They gladly put up with my ugly mug and smart ass ways because of the cash I leave behind. :)

So many are single Mom's or Married Mom's trying to add to a pitiful household income.

Did you know that in Australia you do not tip ? Reason being is he servers make $ 15 an hour with benefits. Our servers make $ 2.45 or something.

Chris

I ordered coffee once at a restaurant and the waitress asked me how I wanted it. I told her I like my coffee just like my women,..........Hot & Black.... She shook her head and walked away laughing. Obviously she appreciaes smart aleck old men. :)

Chris

A good waitress can tell a smart aleck versus a jerk and does appreciate remarks like that.  It beats the heck out of the guy b*tching about his coffee being lukewarm ; )  (see how I brought the thread back on topic).  THPPPPP

But seriously, waiting tables is hard work and you do like the guys or gals that come in and get you laughing.  Especially if they leave you a decent tip.

Virginia

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

Bob is the same way.  He always tips well, provided the service warrants it.  The reward is that we have one waitress in whatever establishment we enter that grabs our table.  Our food is always precisely the way we want it and I know that is because they want that tip.

Our breakfast restaurant is one of my customers.  I did the last third of their booths, counter stools and 50 plus chairs.  Our waitress there is part of the large, Catholic family that owns it.  We both feel like she is a friend and she feels the same way about us.  If she's not busy with other tables, she chats with us while we eat.  At Christmas, we gave her a much larger than normal tip and wished her a Merry Christmas.  The next week, she handed Bob our ticket -- the amount due was scratched out and she had written on the ticket "Merry Christmas, you two". 

It's been my experience that some of the nicest folks are wait staff.  They have to be to withstand some of the treatment, from both management and customers, that they receive.  And you are correct, Chris, about them typically being Single or Married Mom's with pitiful household incomes.  I believe we could learn something from other countries some times.

Virginia

[sofadoc]

Bob is the same way.  He always tips well, provided the service warrants it.

I tip the standard 15%, which is probably considered chintzy nowadays. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay exorbitant prices for my food and then pay the help's salary on top of that.

I think waitstaff should be paid a living wage in addition to any tips they can earn. But of course, that would drive food prices so high, that people would tip less. The restaurant biz is a hard hustle. You see places all the time that are seemingly always packed with customers, yet the business fails anyway.

I have a friend that waits tables at a "mom & pop" restaurant. The owner also waits tables. She gives herself the good section with the big tippers, and assigns my friend the "family" section with all the screaming kids.

[byhammerandhand]

For those of you that do work for restaurants, do you find that they think you should be getting $2.45 an hour for your labor?   In my limited experience with them, yes.

I used to do a lot of chair re-glues for the upscale pancake house down the street from my old house.   These chairs were well beyond their life, almost disgusting in the amount of wear and tear, to say nothing of the looseness.   I think I finally convinced the owner to pick up some new ones, which he started gradually doing.


Topic drift -- isn't that something to do with sailboats?

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

For those of you that do work for restaurants, do you find that they think you should be getting $2.45 an hour for your labor?   In my limited experience with them, yes.

Not quite that bad but close.   The restaurants I worked at were competitively priced with their competitors, perhaps even a tad higher.  But they all whined about how they could barely afford to do this, yada, yada, yada.  Being hungry for work, I took the jobs. 

When I did the bar/grill, the manager was putting everything either on a business note or the owner's tab and he paid me what I was worth.  I was very sorry when that job was completed as he never tried to bargain me down, never blinked an eye.  I would give him an invoice, he would eyeball it over and write me a check.

Virginia

[sofadoc]

For those of you that do work for restaurants, do you find that they think you should be getting $2.45 an hour for your labor?   

It depends. If it's a major chain restaurant, they don't complain much about the price. They just send the bill to the corporate office.

BUT if it's a sole proprietor, YES!! (they expect you to work for $2.45 an hour). And they want you to do it after hours so none of their customers are displaced. It's even worse if the sole proprietor is of Asian or middle eastern descent. Never done any work for Hispanics. They always just make their staff (waiter, busboy, cook, etc.) do a "wrap job" on the booths and seats.

I did have an owner of a steakhouse complain once that my price had gone up nearly 30% since the last time I did his booths about 10 years earlier. I explained to him "Well you see, a lot of things have gone up in the last 10 years. Vinyl has gone up. Foam and supplies have gone up. And your steaks have gone up."

This may actually be a great new way to keep the discussions about upholstery. All we have to do is start out off-topic, and then we'll gradually drift back on to an upholstery related topic.