[AlexM]

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15 minutes of work for a 5 hour table? Really, you're going with that ratio? You think perhaps there might be some stuff going on behind the scenes?


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Obviously it's not that low - but let's take a middle of the road restaurant, around $20/head. Party of 6. Let's go long and say the party is there for 2 hours.

With drinks, the bill might come out to $200 or so. At 15%, that's a $30 tip, still averaging $15/hr (and that's assuming the waiter is actually working that full 2 hours and has no other tables.)

It was never uncommon for some of my friends at nicer restaurants to come home with $150 - $200 in their pockets working a 6-7 hour shift.

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Ok, now we're being rational and logical with reasonable numbers. Much better.

Others with industry experience (I have zero) can elaborate on the amounts (which vary) but I do know that the tip is shared among several people so the $15/hr in our discussion is not going to be achieved.

J

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if they are sharing 33% of the tips, then that table is $10/hr

is that the only table they have for that timeframe?

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Of course not and if we continue down this logical path I'm certain we discover that being a halfway decent waiter at a upper middle to high end place is a job that can actually be a middle class career.

We back down the drink assumptions, tweak the number of tables, [censored] around with timing cause it isn't 9-5 of course but with my zero experience I suspect we find that 40-70k is our range of salaries for this career. Using the rule of 2000 this means $20-35/hr which seems about right.

Note I live in a city and have not dined at an Applebees / Outback / Red Lobster / etc in many years so experiences may vary.

J

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If this is true I need to start tipping less. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]