Restaurant Wait Staff

During my senior year in high school, I worked as a waitress at a local seafood restaurant. Most of the wait staff was compromised of people in their early to mid twenties, who were struggling to make ends meet. They would work at least four shifts each week, ranging from four to eight hours each, in addition to working a second job, going to school, (and for some) taking care of a baby.

I am very fortunate to have parents who have great careers, so I didn’t necessarily have to get a job to help with our household income. But I knew that the extra money that I made could help my parents pay for my college tuition and could give me a little more spending money. At first my parents were against the idea of me getting a job. They thought that I couldn’t balance schoolwork, volunteering and work all at the same time. But one of the reasons why I wanted to work as a waitress was because I knew that I would learn how to juggle multiple things at once. Working as a waitress definitely taught me how to multitask, inside and outside of the restaurant. In a typical shift, I would have to juggle the anywhere from three to six tables, which all seated four to six customers.

The restaurant that I worked at tends to attract customers who are lower to middle class. I don’t want to be stereotypical, but it’s true that the level of the customer’s needs tends to increase, the lower they are in the class hierarchy. Most customers were very rude and demanding, so it was typical for all the wait staff to be agitated and distressed during their shifts. The aggravation would not only stem from the customer’s rudeness, but also from the tips (or rather lack of tips) that they left. All of the wait staff at the restaurant that I worked at gave excellent service and were always friendly, no matter how disrespectful the customer was. We would always try to satisfy all of their irrational requests and yet we were always left with a low tip, usually ranging from 0% to 5% of the bill. Regarding tipping in general, I can understand why people leave bad tips; maybe it was because the waiter wasn’t attentive and the service was horrible. But in the restaurant that I worked at, no matter how amazing the wait staff service was, we were always left with no tip or 5% tip. It was just because of the type of customers that our restaurant attracted.

On one hand, I felt like I was in the same boat as the other waiters and waitresses. We have all experienced the same frustrations, whether it was regarding the bad tipping of customers or other distresses in the restaurant. But at the same time, I wasn’t in the same boat as them. I wasn’t highly dependent on the money that I made each shift. If I didn’t make that much tip money in a certain shift, I would be disappointed but for the other wait staff, they would freak out. Rent, books for school, gas and car payments are all necessities. Yet with consistent low tips from customers, they aren’t able to afford those essentials and struggle to make ends meet.