Life as a Server....

 LIFE AS A SERVER - J. Rivet

You get Ziosked....Told your silver isnt clean enough....your kitchen is too slow...your drinks are flat....your floors too dirty...Its all your fault.....There is just one problem....for the first time in your life...you get paid in cash....every day....and thinking about money all day long all shift...is excitin'...Time goes fast. 

But in the end... at an avg rate of gratuity 12-15p you have to sell 1000.00 to make 120.00. If you dont sell 1000.00 per shift, you will in fact make less than 120.00 nearly every day. Maybe its 75, Maybe its 90...you can buy beer and a cheap hotel room nearly every day in the offseason....buy not during the summer when you are supposed to be busier. 

so it comes down to whether or not you are having personal relationships with your peers or not...and the price of living in your community on whether or not you continue....because in the end the avg shift worker at ChickAFilet, Walmart, and even the busser in your restaurant are going to be paid 13-18/hr for a full 8 hours, and they will in fact make more money than you ever single day with no hassle.

How to Managers view your job

Well they know it's critical as you are talking to their customers, and you help them box up Togo orders that they get paid for and you do not, but in the end they pay you much less than minimum wage against their labor. They have no penalty for hiring more ....only you do....see if you work for a major chain you will get five or six shifts in five days, out of those five or six shifts only one in 20 days are they going to have to true your pay up to minimum wage of 7.25 an hour, the rest of the time they pay you 2.15 an hour or 90.00 a week which almost always goes to social security and fica taxes. If they offer u insurance its usually a hassle for them to ask you to true up 200/month in costs....not from your check but out of your pocket.

And yes if their restaurant is that slow...believe me you get cut, and they aren't going to pay minimum wage for six hours only one or two....so it's more like never will you get minimum wage from bloomin Brands, Chilis, or Darden restaurants unless you are a back of house worker.

Yeah you had a big Night....someone was gracious with a 30p tip....but at bloomin or darden you gotta tip out the host, and the bartender, even if they cheated and refused to pour your drinks while they had 4x more tables than you, or of the host queued up her friends twice as often....

Sleeping with the host stand manager is a really good idea...or at least buying the tequila once a week

usually they are not managers....and have a lot of power in how much business u get...they also help you avoid the angry intercity people who speak directly and are working off their 40min wait time. They also control seating parties which they can assist with and make you look good...or kill you by dropping a line that you don't appear to be able to handle the parties you are given yo your boss.

Hope to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail

There's hope...maybe you can become a bartender, and have 100 people at your bar giving you 3/hr... that sounds good....but it rarely happens, and it takes years to get there ....AND... in some states... like Virginia...the owner of the Pub has no legal liability, while you as the bartender are completely responsible if your customer gets drunk, wrecks his car, and hurts someone....you literally get walked out in cuffs....while your avg proprietor at Outback Steakhouse laughs in your face....didnt you read the sign? We card everyone under 30. But what if the 18 year old looks like a Supermodel, and smiles with big beautiful pearly whites...Yep....you can go to jail for that too....

Now Tom Cruise gets laid in his movies, you however will likely be sitting with a pale white fifty year old which is taking his or her first vacation day during the year and hasn't recovered consciousness yet....it won't be Andrew and Elizabeth Shue sitting with you....and today they will be twittering away mostly the whole time instead of checking out your body.....

And on TV the bartenders look like Margot robbie, but in the real world they are mostly overweight servers who got promoted from lunch shifts in big chains. They wanna make more money too and tell everyone else what to do....why you polish their silver.

So how to decide

So we offer three criteria which matters a lot:

1) Does your kitchen, food, and establishment make you feel good about yourself.

2) Do you regularly sell 1000/day or get an offset in higher than avg base salary (5/hr+tips or more).

3) Do you find any of your peers attractive, and do they party with you?

And one bonus ....

4) Do you get to offset your vacation costs by living at or near a beach you couldnt have gone to otherwise.

If the answer to all four is NO... AND you live in Virginia....we recommend running to Walmart to apply. You might even get dental insurance.

FINALLY AND A WARNING.....

In some beach communities Myrtle Beach, Charleston, etc the average hotel room is over 120/night. And in fact if you havent signed a lease, you will in fact lose money every day. Furthermore, restaurant owners will in fact drag out your employment via training or wait until the next schedule date to put you on the floor, and it could be as long as six weeks without a paycheck with two weeks in arrears in a bi-weekly payroll company.

 In other words, you might lose 700x6 trying to work for a restaurant like Chilis just in the summer. Seasonal work is a massive seasonal loss. You have to train in beach areas in the offseason when they have 6x more hotel rooms than customers. The problem, restaurants, and bars usually have low customer volume during these same periods, and they want to keep their senior staff occupied. If they dont understand and plan for their Seasonal problems, you need to run for the door, or ask for a 6/hr+ tips base. Otherwise do something else.

Restaurants say.... yeah but we will hire high school kids who live with their parents, and thats probably true, but they wont serve 100/table food regularly if they do.

LASTLY - SERVER MINIMUM PAY IS RELEVANT

Since we think servers are significantly higher in position than the busser who has no skills required, we think restaurants have to have a minimum pay for a server, as remember they are not paying you anything usually, your customers are. We think that most restaurants should legally have to true up shift pay to 150/per day and in a low volume store that might put them out of business.

In most states which are sensitive like California, they have increased the tip labor base to much higher than 2.15 which usually results in a zero paycheck, or even a deficit if you have insurance.