it always really bothered me when wait staff ignored me + my friends just because we were young bc we are all really respectful people but the assumption was that we wouldn’t tip
anyway so fast fowards to when i became a waitress and one day this group of scrubbyass kids came in and i had 8 other tables with other people to look to but i overheard that one kid wanted a milkshake but he couldn’t afford it and the other kids offered to pay but he was like “nonono it’s fine” and i looked over and he just looked real run down and sad and stuff —- later it just so happened that our kitchen had a mixup so we had an extra shake and since it would just be dumped otherwise, i snuck it out to their table and gave it to him for free
and his friends were so fucking impressed by this they pooled every fucking cent they had i got a $50 tip and later his friend’s mom came in and said “i heard what you did for that boy” and gave me another 20 and offered me a better job working with her
and meanwhile at my other table a rich white guy i was serving complained bc he didn’t want to pay the 15% tip on a $8.90 bill and when his wife said “she’s been a good waitress, though,” he said, “but just plain good isn’t worth 15%”
That rich white guy is the same one that’s always saying people need to just work harder and get better jobs so they can get the things he thinks he worked for.
I work at a pizza place. I once got a table of 50 high schoolers. They all ordered small things like just fries and a drink or something like that adding up to around $250. They tipped a collective $65, that’s more than 25%. Meanwhile another day, I got a table of 15 upper middle class adults and they gave me $3. On a $160 order. That’s 2%.
The difference between those adults and the kids is most of those kids know what it’s like to work a min wage job.
And speaking as a hostess, i never get complaints from groups of teenagers if I tell them itll be a 35-45 min wait. They just smile, say thank you, and talk amongst eachother while waiting. But you know who does complain every 10 min? Middle aged adults with a serious issue of self-importance.
When I worked at the cafe during graveyard shift, I was helping another server serve their table. Said co-worker was in her late-40′s and the table in question was two teenagers who seemed to be out on a date of sorts. My co-worker apparently didn’t want to “deal with them” so I pretty much served her table and helped do refills and chatted with them.
By the time they were leaving, they paid the check and handed me a 20 (I think their bill in total was only 30?) and thanked me for treating them like adults. They also completely ignored the co-worker when they tried to say “thanks for coming!” after seeing me getting handed the 20.
Moral of the story: just treat them like actual customers and chances are they’ll be great. Sometimes you get the trouble makers, but 90% of the time they just want to eat food and be happy too.