Hello all --
I'm excited to join your forum and discuss restaurant/food life with you all. Seems like a helpful spot.
So, I'll just get down to the nitty gritty -- I'm a waitress at a pretty slow/variable restaurant. The owner's mood changes on a dime. The cook and the busser are two drinking buddies. The one other waiter I work with goes from taking the heat one day because of his combative attitude to being the favorite because of his attention to detail. I consider myself an attentive and friendly server -- those are my strengths. Sometimes I don't feel fancy enough because I'm a novice in wine descriptions -- but I always offer them a taste (which I feel is even better?). I bus my tables, reset, make the cocktails, the whole shebang.
When I first started, the other server told me to tip 2% of sales to the BOH. I'm embarrassed to admit that I thought he meant 2% to both the cook and the busser. I myself always tip about 20% of my tips and have split that among the two of them. But the server (who I guess is trying to look out for me, but he does so in a very argumentative way), confronted me when I was going to tip 50 dollars total to the BOH on a 200 dollar night (so that's 25 for each of them). He told me I should give them each 20%, which means I'd be tipping out the busser and the cook 40%.
Personally, that seems like a lot. I do want to make them happy -- I even texted the busser and asked him what he thinks would be fair (with no reply yet...)-- but if I were to raise it, I would probably give 10-15% to the busser, depending on how busy we were and how much he did, and 15-20% to the cook, given the same variables.
I am also going through financial hardship myself. I live on my own and am a struggling freelance writer. I just found out one of my clients has to cut back on hours by half come next January, and this is a significant source of income. The other server lives in a housemate situation and has the better shifts (Thursday/Friday night, I work Tues/Weds) due to seniority -- he's been here 2 years, me just one month, so I actually very much resent his comments in the first place. But, I definitely don't want my resentment to hurt the BOH guys -- without them, there'd be no food! They're the heart and soul of the business.
Any advice?! I want to be fair to everyone -- the kitchen and myself.
