Originally Posted by
QueenOfCoach
Once you have left the tip, the money is no longer your money. What the server does with the money is the server's business, not yours.
I agree; it's her or his money.
Different establishments have different means of dealing with pooled tips. When my husband was a bus boy, the servers gave him a cut of their tips at the end of the night, and similarly gave the cooks and others their cuts.
The servers' choice to do so?
A pleasant restaurant experience is the sum of all the service personnel doing their jobs. You are seated promptly, without having to walk by a bunch of empty, un-bussed tables, finding your own table neat, sanitary and tidy. (Thanks, bus boys.) Then you are served by your waiter, the food is cooked by a chef and sometimes brought in by a food runner. The restroom is clean and tidy. All those people contribute to your pleasant evening meal, and there's nothing wrong with the tip being shared by all who contributed.
We should tip because the bathroom is clean? It must be clean by law. The chef should get a tip too? Chefs are paid minimum wage?
Often, we see better service in smaller restaurants. I wonder if it has to do with the server getting to keep her tip in its entirety instead of being forced to share her tip with servers who are lazy.
One thing I don't think you clarified: Do the servers pool their tips together or is the cut for the bus boy and other support staff taken from each server's tip separately so that the lazy servers aren't making the same tips as those servers who are better and thus earn more?
Team effort, team compensation.
I can agree with that only if the lazy aren't sharing in the spoils of those who work extra hard to get the larger tips.
Remember, your tip is still 15-20%. You don't tip anything extra just because a waiter and a food runner are involved.
I tip extra when I get great service from the server. I don't tip more because the bathroom is stocked with toilet paper. It's a personal decision to tip 20% or more based on the personality, talent, and efficiency of the server. Great ones get higher tips. So do the lazier servers share in the same tips of the better servers whose tips are more?
This has been very informative. The next time we get a top-knotch server who goes above and beyond, we will want to tip him directly. We'll give him a CASH tip and tell him that it's for him and him alone because we appreciate his service. So that he doesn't get in trouble, we'll tell the manager what we're doing so she can know what a great employee she has and so she knows that we want the server to keep the tip for a service well done. It would be pretty stupid for a manager to tell customers that they can't do that assuming they want return business. It's very hard to be a server; they have to deal with all kinds of personalities at the tables. They are on the front line and they deserve the money at least from this customer's point of view.
I will of course ask first if tips are pooled. It would be worse if the tips are divided equally among all servers IMO.