Waiters and other restaurant staff: spill the beans

Doc_N

d70cw6 wrote: »

good god, no. never tip, it only encourages the practise.
always ask for service charges to be removed from bills.

Fine, unless you eat in the same place twice and enjoy sputum (or worse) in your food/drink. :eek:

Beanish

I wish we could be like Japan where tipping just doesn't exist because staff are paid a proper living wage. If you leave a tip, it will be returned to you. Tipping seems to be a method that employers use to bump up their profits.

catewithers

I work for TGI Fridays as an assistant restaurant manager. Before going into management, I was a waitress.

As an American company, we run the American system of tips. All of our waiting staff have a section of tables to look after during their shift. Any tips they earn from those tables are theirs to keep. Cash obviously goes straight in their pocket. Tips that are left on card are processed through the system and paid to them in their wages each week, clearly marked as such on their wage slip. They do, however, pay tax on those tips because they've been declared.

At the end of each shift, the waiting staff are expected to give 10% of their tips to the Service bartender - the guy (or girl) who has made the drinks for their tables all night - cocktails, beers etc. - and also 10% to the Service Assistant team - they're the kids who run food, clean tables, polish cutlery and generally work very hard for everyone. The bartenders tip out is just their own, regardless of how many bartenders were on shift, as there is only one on service bar during any one shift. The SA tip out is split equally between all members of the team who were on shift. This means that each member of the waiting staff keeps 80% of their tips every shift.

The kitchen staff do not receive any tips at all, although they are on a considerably higher hourly rate, whereas front of house staff are all on the NMW. However, I have known of chefs being tipped personally by guests who have particularly enjoyed a meal, especially in those restaurants that have kitchen open to the restaurant. On those occasions, the chef, of course, gets to keep the tip. When I was a waitress, I also shared a tip with one of the line chefs because he'd bailed me out when I'd made a mistake. I reasoned that without his help, I would never have earned the tip in the first place, so it seemed only fair that he had at least 50% of it.

Managers do not receive any tips at all and even if they end up being left some because they've had to take some tables on a very busy shift, we are not permitted to keep them. It would be a contravention of our financial policy. On the rare occasions I've been in that position, the tips I've been left have gone into a pot for the next staff party.

I think this is the fairest system there can possibly be.

Tips are a massively important source of income for waiting staff who work very hard over long hours for the NMW. If you're good at your job, you can earn decent money. But it requires a high level of people skills, the ability to multitask and perform very well under huge pressure. When I was a waitress I was disappointed to leave a double shift without £80 in cash in my pocket. And there were others I worked with, far better than me, who would earn more.

It's also worth noting that many waiting staff who move into management effectively take a cut in earnings. Although obviously there are other benefits.

As someone who works in the industry, when eating out, I always leave a tip of some degree, unless the service has been appalling. But I always make a point of asking first what the tipping policy of the restaurant is. The answer to that question also has a bearing on how much I leave.

AmyTurtle

I've worked in several bars and kitchens with varying systems, but the last was the most unfair IMO.
I worked in a pub on the bar on Saturday nights - set wage of £30 for the night whether you went home at 12pm or 2am (very rarely got out before 12). The waiting staff worked until 10.30 at the latest and got £25 for their shift. Bar staff were expected to take food orders at the bar, run food, clean & clear tables etc on top of what the waiting staff did, as well as keep the bar going, but the tips were all shared between waiting staff and kitchen and we never saw a penny. I resented it somewhat as some of the waiting staff were really lazy and the bar staff would be running round like blue @rsed flies all night while they stood around chatting, then they would get our tips! The manager justified it by saying that they earned less than us but they didn't as they went home so much earlier than us, and since the food was quite high end they were all taking home £20+ each in tips each night.

Happy_Hippo

No one seems to object to the fact that pocketing cash tips, making up the wages, apparently in several of the formuites posts without paying tax on them, is an acceptable transaction in modern UK society.

It's principle is no differerent (albeit on a smaller individual scale, but a very considerable amount across the whole of the hospitality, hotel, transport [taxi/coach drivers] and leisure industry) to paying tradesmen in cash, businessmen putting money in Swiss banks, corporations using tax loopholes, all so they avoid paying the taxes that they should be fairly paying their share of.

Also, it's many years since I was an assistant manager in a pub, around the time when the IR (HMRC) introduced a process of sticking a finger in the air, quoting a figure of how much they expected me to earn in tips, and then adjusting my tax code to claim back the unpaid tax.

This was before the days of paying by card when all the transactions in the pub were by cash, so I don't know how HMRC now treat cash tips nowadays. What I do know is that they assumed that males and females would all receive similar amounts for the same job and taxed accordingly. However, in general I found that the females behind the bar would frequently receive more tips than the male staff, possibly because the majority of those buying were male, and in some cases flirting=money and was no reflection on the actual service provided.
Since leaving the trade and now being at the other side of the bar, I notice that that this is often still the norm.

Consequently, for doing the same job, the females can earn considerably more than males, simply for being the fairer sex.

So, in a time of equality, ending the servile and dated process of tipping, and paying a higher fair wage to all to reflect the hard work and unsocial hours worked by all the staff, with fair taxation on all earnings, can only be the way forward.

Bettie

Happy_Hippo wrote: »

No one seems to object to the fact that pocketing cash tips, making up the wages, apparently in several of the formuites posts without paying tax on them, is an acceptable transaction in modern UK society.

I always paid tax on cash tips. Full timers do get taxed whether cash or card if of course they declare their employment as waiting staff and not as a general help in a restaurant! Some people are part time and possibly wouldn't have to pay tax,the industry does employ a lot of part timers.
If the tax man is reading this thread I would expect TGI Fridays to get a visit!
sometimes it takes a few years but if he decides that tax evasion is going on he will look at every member of staff on the books.
When I worked in an Indian restaurant all tips were shared between waiting staff and then sent 'home' for their families. not sure if tax was paid then as staff turnover was high and after a few weeks we would never see some staff again, usually students chucked out of the country after uni.

redscarf88

When I worked in a restaurant we only accepted cash tips. The money was shared between everyone from managers to waiters, the cleaners and cooks etc.
You get a bigger share depending on the hours you work so naturally the managers who clocked in and out after the 'normal' staff got a massive chunk more than anyone else especially since they only really wanted lots of part time people. That always annoyed me because we were all on minimum wage and the managers were on a decent salary as they used to go on holidays and things which none of us part timers or even the full time minimum wagers could. Grrrrrrr :mad:

Oh and we did pay tax on them but as I'm student and only worked 8 hours a week at the time I got it back at the end of the year.

Happy_Hippo

Bettie wrote: »

I always paid tax on cash tips. Full timers do get taxed whether cash or card if of course they declare their employment as waiting staff and not as a general help in a restaurant!

Thanks for bringing me up to date - how does it work now?

Do you have to take note of what you receive and declare all sums?

The problem I observed was that HMRC had an "average" industry figure, and if you worked in a particular role, regardless of where you worked or who for, & they adjusted your tax code accordingly, regardless of what you actually received, so there were some big winners and some big loosers, which often followed a gender bias.

redscarf88

My ideal system for tips would be this:

We had a pot at the till kind of like the charity boxes you see - a plastic box with a hole in the top (you had to go to till not leave money on the table like in some restaurants) and I think money put in here should be shared between all staff except managers. Any money given directly to a person should be allowed to be kept, and at the end of a shift a person could write down what they've got to pay tax (which most of us wouldn't be bothered as we didn't pay tax anyway as students etc).

I was often given money and I would say "Thankyou I will put it in the pot" and many people would say "no it's for you I want you to have it" so I'd have to explain that I'm not allowed to keep it. To me it is the customers choice who they give it to. They don't have to part with their cash so they should be able to choose who it goes to not the managers.

Bargain_gatherer

I asked who benefited from a 12.5% service charge in a restaurant recently. I was told that some of it went towards their wages and the rest was shared out. Let's have a fair wage without the embarrassing need for tipping.