Bad Table Service? Think Again

You just got off from work, after a long hard day, and you're starving. You're exhausted after your eight-hour shift, and the last thing you want to do is go home and cook dinner for yourself. So, you call a friend or your significant other and ask them if they would like to go out to dinner with you. Your friend agrees, so you both decide to eat at your favorite restaurant. You love that they have great food, great service, and it isn't too pricey.

When you get to the restaurant, you are told by the host that your table will be ready in five to 10 minutes; even though you can see open tables, it's not a big deal, your stomach can handle waiting 10 more minutes. After ten minutes go by, you see a group of six people walk through the door and get sat immediately at an open table. Now, you're starting to get frustrated, as it has already been 10 minutes and other people are getting sat before you. A few more minutes go by, and your name is called. Once you’re at your table, it takes the server a little while to get to you, and after you order your food, it doesn't come out for another 40 minutes! By this time you are very upset at your server for taking so long. When you get the bill, you pay the amount and decide she doesn’t deserve a tip because her service was terrible, so you leave.


Most people would be frustrated to have this experience at their favorite restaurant; however, people don’t realize how little their server can control. Not tipping your server is one of the worst things you can do, and most people do not understand why. At the end of every night, servers must “tip out” the bussers, food runners, and the bar. When a table stiff’s their server, at the end of the night, the server will be paying for that table out of her own pocket. This is unfair to the server, especially if there was nothing wrong with her service.


Let me take you behind the scenes of the scenario I described. When you were waiting for a table, the reason it took longer than 10 minutes was because the host was new and was not great at predicting wait times yet. She didn’t want to give you too long of a wait time because you might have left and gone somewhere else, but didn’t want to give too short of one either; so she decided five to 10 minutes was a good happy-medium. There were open tables because it was a Wednesday night, and not all sections of the restaurant are open during the week; the open tables were tables that were not going to be sat at all that night. The group of six people that walked in and were sat immediately had a reservation, so a table was ready for them.


The server took awhile to get to you because she wasn’t ready to take your table, she already had all of her tables full and didn’t know she was taking an extra one as well. She was running around taking care of her five other tables when you were sat, so by the time she got to your table, you had already been there a few minutes. The food came out late because the kitchen was behind. An unexpected party of 15 came in about 20 minutes before you and the kitchen was backed up making their food. It took the kitchen awhile to recover and catch up again, so your food came out later than usual. The server had no control over the kitchen, even though she was asking about your food every couple of minutes.


When you decided not to tip her, you are making her pay for her coworker’s shortcomings. She couldn’t control your wait time, or that the host sat you at the wrong table. She also couldn’t control how long it took to cook your food. Instead of focusing on the aspects of your meal that she couldn’t control, you should focus on the server herself. Was she kind? Did she apologize for the wait? Did she bring refills when you needed them? If you can answer yes to these questions then she deserves to be tipped for doing her job. So, the next time you are at a restaurant, think twice before stiffing your server, because probably deserves the tip more than you think.