Life Behind Bars Chapter 15
- Ray DeGraw
- Jul 3
- 18 min read
Chapter 15
$2.13 and the Art of the Tip
In my 20 years of tending bar, it never ceased to amaze me how many people out there don’t know how to leave a proper tip. The scarier part of it all, is that they get even more confused when it comes to tipping the bartender. Yes, of course there are the cheap bastards that will play dumb; and yes there are the foreigners who will act like they thought the tip was included in the bill; and yes, there will be the millennial dipshit taking some sort of principled stand over the practice of tipping…but for the most part it really is just ignorance to how the restaurant world actually works. I’ll give you the quick skinny…
For some ungodly reason, according to federal law, a so-called tipped employee only has to be paid $2.13 per hour against minimum wage. So in layman’s terms, if the server or bartender makes at least minimum wage in his tips (which always happens), the owner only has to top it off with a lousy couple of bucks per hour. So basically the customers are paying the server, not the owner. On top of all that, only 10% of your sales are recorded as tips which means a nice tax break for the server, but also a very nice tax break for the owner of the establishment at hand.
So ownership not only gets away with only paying approximately 20% of minimum wage, but they get an enormous break in payroll taxes when it comes to writing a check for Uncle Sam. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me; don’t ask a restaurant owner though, because they will cry poverty all the way to the bank in their brand new Range Rover, BMW or Mercedes Benz. So, to make a long story short, leave at least 10-to-20 percent tip for your server, otherwise you will actually cost your server money in taxes all while the owner is still making money hand over fist.
The worst part of this whole situation is as this book is being written, there is a proposed bill being considered by the GOP led congress and senate that will actually allow owners to legally confiscate both cash and charge tips from their employees and redistribute them as they feel necessary amongst the front and back end of the house, only being legally liable to pay their state’s minimum wage requirements. Who is responsible for actually writing this disgusting and morally reprehensible bill and lobbying for it you ask? The restaurant owners association, that’s who.
I can’t think of a more despicable, underhanded, greedy, and mind boggling piece of legislation! Imagine, for decades now these restaurant owners have gotten away with paying pennies on the dollar for their employees compared to all other industries and they still want more. Imagine being a server with nothing more than a GED or high school education that found a way to make $25 dollars or more per hour slinging suds and serving food and now their hard earned tips are going to be taken away so that the owners can pay salaried employees such as the chefs, line cooks, dishwashers and managers? Then, on top of that only get minimum wage back? This isn’t just scumbag move, its fucking criminal! And for what? So the owner can buy another house on the beach in Florida?
I implore all restaurant patrons out there, that if this bill ever becomes law, to have an absolute boycott of any restaurant that actually adopts this practice. It is the only way to save this industry and to keep these hard working individuals making a livable wage for having a certain skill set not many possess. Otherwise, what is the motivation for these people to work their asses off? Why would one go above and beyond the call of duty when no matter what they do they’re only making minimum wage? All while the boss, who already has more money than he knows what to do with, is stealing their tips? We might as well go to McDonalds and bring a six pack of beer, because that’s the service you’re going to start getting.
Of course there are more complexities to restaurant payrolls than previously discussed, but I wanted to drill in the point that a tipped employee is only currently getting $2.13 per hour, so it is up to you to pay your server’s salary, and it is up to that server to do everything is their power to work that tip as close to 20% as possible. It’s a weird system, I know. It’s an archaic system, I know. But it’s what we have. And until these thrift driven crybaby owners decide they want to pay $25 dollars an hour to all their staff, then this is the system we are stuck with…so deal with it.
Back during the days of my backyard speakeasy, obviously there were no tips. Our brief attempt at running the place like a real bar crashed and burned real quick as the regular crew didn’t like being charged a buck a beer, the same as some chump who came once a month or was a first timer. It also wasn’t easy for me to shell out 40 or 50 dollars up front to supply ourselves for the weekend, whether we were buying from the liquor store or making the brew ourselves. Eventually we just did what all kids do and that was chip in five bucks a pop; everybody got their six pack and all was right with the world.
Where things started to get fuzzy, of course, was when I became a real bartender and my old pals began frequenting wherever I was working. They were expecting free drinks, after all they were new to the bar scene and they had an in with me being behind the bar. Initially, like most new bartenders, I gave the house away and they all over tipped since they were basically being charged nothing to drink all night. It doesn’t take a genius owner or manager to figure that scheme out, that’s for sure. So when I had to start treating them like regular customers, they took offense and weren’t leaving the proper tip. Some didn’t leave a tip at all, and that’s where I had to finally speak up…and thus, the first rule of tipping…
Friend Tipping
It’s always good to see an old friend come in and sit at your bar. As you get older and work longer hours, move to different towns and start your own families it gets harder to get together like you did in the old days. So when you see your old fishing budding come stomping through the door to get a burger and brew and shoot the breeze there is no better feeling. Catching up is the easy part, paying the bill…not so much.
As a friend, you don’t really want to accept a tip but at the same time you need to make money. If the bar was busy when your friend was there, he was taking up a barstool and thus preventing one of your normal customers from sitting at the bar. If a regular has to sit at a table you just lost his tip…not to mention if he realizes he likes sitting at a table better, you just lost a regular. Each barstool is a money maker, and the idea is to flip as many stools in a shift as you can. Get them in, and get them out. The more food you move, the more money you make.
Your old pal might also get a little chapped when he realizes you charged him for everything he had. While I would always give a friend at least one drink on the house, or maybe sneak them a cup of hot soup that’s all they would get. I worked at a place where I could literally only give people a drink on their birthday or for Christmas and every free libation was scrutinized to the hilt. The owners would always know it was a friend of mine too, and would analyze the bill up and down after my buddy left like a clockmaker carefully making sure all the gears lined up just right.
So, my overall rule of thumb is your friends should tip 15-to-20% like they would any other bartender. Your friends shouldn’t expect free stuff because the boss is watching like a hawk, which also means if you get a tip over 20% they’re going to assume the house was being given away. The whole situation just gets messier by the moment. After a few times of dealing with this situation I just made it clear the way things had to be. Ending the night with 200 smackers in your tip jar with no friends at the bar is much better than having 125 dollars in your tip jar with a bar full of old drinking buddies. Try to avoid it when possible. But don’t be a total dick!
Buy Back Tipping
(As discussed earlier in the book)
Let me just start off by saying, there is no such thing as a free drink! Ever! In the olden days it was customary to get a free drink every third, fourth or fifth drink you had. It made the customer feel appreciated and they got the bartender bigger tips. The beauty of the whole system was that the drink was never free at all. To reiterate this, if the bar buys beer from the distributor for a dollar a beer and sells it for two dollars it makes a buck profit per beer. But if the bar charges $2.25 per beer it can give you every fifth beer for “free” and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And you can fudge around the numbers however you like depending on which beer you want to give for free. Either way the customer pays the same price for five beers whether they got the fifth one for free or not...just an old trick of the trade.
This system has been disappearing more and more over the years as owners have gotten cheaper, chains have taken over and ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) rules involving free drinks have tightened over the years. It really is a shame because customer retention is so much easier when you make them feel appreciated and it’s often that ownership loses sight of this because they have forgotten that the free drink really isn’t free at all. As a bartender we always wish we had more drinks to give, especially to a good customer who doesn’t mind spending a good buck or two. What becomes irritating though, is when the patron begs and pleads for a freebee and then often talks about how his neighborhood bar always buys back, yada, yada, yada.
Most of the time it’s some jerk who you haven’t seen before and when you tell him the bar’s policy on free drinks they mostly take it out on you, the bartender. Hey, listen, if I can only buy literally 100 drinks a year it certainly isn’t going to be on some scumbag traveling through town who I know is going to leave a lousy tip anyway…it’s going to be on a loyal customer that not only comes in frequently, but tips well. So shut the fuck up about your free drink and leave me my 20%.
The bottom line is, if the bartender could give you free drinks he or she certainly would as much as possible. We know the tips are bigger when we give free things away…but it’s not our booze to give as we please. And for the most part owners tighten up like a snare drum when it comes to giving things away. If the bartender does give you a free drink, throw them an extra buck or two more than you were going to leave. If he can’t give you a freebie, still tip him 15-to-20 percent and respect him for being honest and not a thief.
To Tab or Not To Tab
As a bartender I was taught to always run a tab whether the customer wanted one or not. Otherwise a drinker will sit at the bar with a stack of cash and as he drinks, the stack gets smaller and smaller. Before you know it, the money is gone with a buck and a pile of nickels and dimes and pocket lint. The customer has no idea how much he drank and has a handful of loose change left for the tip. Guess what pal? You just made a buck and a half for four hours of putting up with this asshole. Never again!
When you run a tab the customer gets to see how many drinks he had, how long they’ve been there and the overall cost of his visit. For the most part he is now forced to leave a proper tip. It also encourages the customer to eat, which should always be your overall goal with each guest. You’re basically a legalized drug dealer who is responsible for sending people back out on the road. Having six drinks on an empty stomach is not a good idea.
When you run a tab, the customer most likely will have to pay with a credit card, so his mindset changes about how much money he or she does or doesn’t have. And like I’ve already stated in this book, food is where your money is, it boosts your checks and ups your tip percentages. Make ‘em eat baby!
Keeping all this in mind, it won’t always work out the way you want it to, after all the customer is your true boss when all is said and done. If he doesn’t want to run a tab, he doesn’t want to run a tab. If that’s the case, they should be leaving a buck a drink if not two bucks depending on the cost and complexity of the drink. And if you’re ordering for five of your friends don’t go leaving a buck! It’s still at least a dollar per drink. Order five drinks, leave five bucks. Simple math, a numbskull can figure it out.
The Real Estate Fee
There is one instance where tipping 15-to-20 percent is simply not enough. We’ve all seen this before with couples on first dates, old friends catching up, or work associates conducting business away from the office. It’s when you have people take up barstools for hours on end, chit chatting and endlessly sipping on a beer that went flat four hours ago when the night was young.
This is something I actually had to teach my wife when we first met. On one of our first dates we spent a couple of hours whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears while sipping on coffees as we had spent the earlier part of the night at another restaurant. When we eventually got the bill it was only for a few bucks, but I had left a 20 dollar bill and said keep the change. My wife-to-be’s eyes grew to the size of balloons and she thought I was trying to impress her with the large tip. When I explained how we took up that booth for too long and the waitress could have sat it at least twice with people who were actually spending money and leaving tips she was aghast. If I had left 20% the waitress would have made a dollar for that booth in the two hours we were there.
She immediately felt guilty for all the years she had sat and sipped coffees at late night diners, or nursed a beer while taking up a stool at a bar. Sure, she left 20% every time, but that didn’t count for taking up the seat while other paying customers went elsewhere, or sat in another section of the restaurant for another server to make money. Bottom line, if you’re going to work, get googly eyes with your lover or nurse your beers…you must account for the time you took up, or in other words, pay your damned real estate fee!
Equal Pay
Back in the early 2000’s the PGA tour held its championships in New Jersey and the little Irish pub I worked in was only about five miles away. All week long the caddies had been frequenting our place and leaving tips so lousy I was going to check if they were from Scotland (you seasoned bartenders know what I mean). It was no secret that most golfers are famous for leaving the world’s lousiest tips, but it was unbeknownst to us that the caddies would be far worse.
Five straight days this same caddie would come in, spend 50 dollars on dinner and leave a buck. Being that we were closed on Sundays, the caddie needed to find another hole to get a bite and a brew. Across the street there was a chain restaurant and I would make it a priority to visit every Sunday to sort of pay my gratitude for the kids that worked there because they came to my bar every night after work. Tit for tat, as they say.
As I walked in, I saw the caddie on his way out. The bartender was a slender blonde with a pretty face…and as far as her ability to bartend, she was at the same level as me. I was eager to find out if he stiffed her too. I later found out that he left $15 dollars on a 50 dollar tab. I was never so insulted in my entire life. Because I had a ding dong in between my legs I got stiffed. Talk about reverse discrimination!
I won’t lie to you, girls are going to get bigger tips than guy bartenders, especially if they put on the act and flirt a little bit. And there is nothing wrong with that, it’s the name of the damned game. But don’t stiff a bartender because he can’t flash his tits in your face or wiggle his ass to your liking. If he’s doing just as good a job as his female counterpart you have to tip equally. After all, this is the 21st century, is it not?!
Uncle Ray's Tricks of the Trade
Generally speaking, your highball glass, rocks glass and martini glass are all eight ounces (or at least they should be!). They all have different shapes and sizes to fool the eye, the customer does not know this. If they think the rocks glass is too small, pour the same drink into the highball glass and make them think they are getting the greatest deal ever. Works like a charm and will boost your tip.
Slow Kitchen, Quick Bartender
There are always a number of contributing factors when it comes to good, great or poor service. Even the best bartender in the world is going to have those days where the kitchen is consistently fucking up or slow as molasses in the wintertime. And once an outside contributing force like that puts the barkeep out of whack, everything else starts falling like dominoes.
As long as you, the customer, are kept in the loop as to why your lunch is taking 45 minutes to cook, then please don’t shoot the messenger by lowering his tip. If you’re that ticked off, take it out on the manager or owner and let them know how your lunch was ruined because the chef couldn’t figure out how to cook a grilled cheese and fries in less than five minutes.
Chefs and cooks are often moody prima donnas who will let the slightest thing tick them off, and once that’s done they are literally impossible to work with for the rest of the shift. They know you are working on tips and that your tips will suffer if the food is late, the wrong temperature or just wrong altogether.
They also know that no matter what happens, they will get the same paycheck at the end of each week, no matter if they brought their A-game or they simply phoned it in. So always keep this in mind when your poor bartender has made 10 trips back to the kitchen checking on your food. Not only is he dealing with increasingly agitated customers, he is dealing with an uncooperative coworker.
Big Tips…
I’ll start out by saying there is nothing in the world wrong with giving a big tip! Keep ‘em coming baby! But, that being said, there are ways to give them properly. Never lose sight of the fact that restaurant owners are two things: paranoid and thrifty. If you leave tips over 20%, you should always do so in cash, even if you are paying the bill with a credit card. It keeps the tax man at bay for both the owner and the bartender, and it keeps suspicion at acceptable levels.
Restaurant owners always feel that people are stealing from them, even if their sales percentages and profits are where they are supposed to be. If a customer is consistently leaving large and generous tips, the bartender is always called into the back office. Not to be given a pat on the back for providing superior customer service I mind you, but to be interrogated as to why in the world is this customer leaving you more than you’re worth.
When I worked for the Brothers Grimm at the Irish pub for all those years, every single tip over 20% was scrutinized to the hilt. Every time the bar was busy on a Tuesday happy hour eyebrows were raised. If the bar was empty, it was me hurting their business and changes were going to be made soon if business didn’t pick up. If the place was packed and the register drawer was singing, you were stealing something. They didn’t know what, or how, but you were certainly stealing something.
As much as I would love to see a huge tip, it would make me cringe as well because I knew the shit storm that was coming. Best way to keep everything on the up and up is to leave the normal 20% on the card and tip cash on top of that. Because believe it or not, if the tip line is left blank too many times, that raises red flags too! It really was a nightmare. But it was more than the Brothers Grim that acted in this way, all of them did. Whether the owners were Irish, Italian or Greek, they all were convinced I was a thief. It certainly was great for morale, I can tell you that! Especially when I was the world’s most honest bartender!
Tip Pooling
Whenever there is more than one bartender working, they are pooling tips. So basically if you leave 20 bucks on your 100 dollar tab, both bartenders are getting ten dollars out of the deal. So please keep that in mind when you decide to try and slip your normal bartender an extra wad of cash, it is just going into the tip jar to be shared. That is, if your barkeep is an honest person.
There is an old saying to “keep your fucking hand out of the tip jar,” which applies directly to tip sharing among bartenders sharing a bar for a shift. All tips left on the bar or placed in hand go directly in that jar and it is not to be touched until the end of the shift when all parties are present to tally up. If you need to make change because your register is full of Andrew Jacksons, Grants and Benjamins, then both bartenders need to be present to watch the money being counted. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Just because a particular customer happens to be “yours” doesn’t mean his or her entire tip goes to you. If you want to work alone you can either work the lousy shifts, or you can become a daytime bartender, it’s as simple as that. The only exception for keeping a full tip when working with another bartender is for a Holiday tip only. And usually, most customers will either give you both a Holiday tip, or at least wait until one of your solo shifts or when you are off duty to give it to you.
Easy Twenty
Back in simpler times before we all became imprisoned by our cell phones, people had a really hard time figuring out how to leave 20 percent. People actually used to carry around tip cards with conversion charts in their wallets and pocketbooks. Nowadays all you have to do is turn on your calculator and figure it out. I’m sure there’s also apps out there where you can scan your receipt and it will tell you the tip percentages. But if the grid ever goes down, or you’re stuck with a dead cell phone there is a very simple way to figure it out…so simple my five year old son figures out our tips for us now when we go out to eat.
Whatever your bill comes to, multiply it by 10%, now take your answer and multiply it by two. There, my friend is your 20%, easy peasy lemon squeezy. So your bill is $81.50, when you multiply it by 10% you get $8.15, now multiply by two and you get $16.30. Your server or bartender now got 20% and you look like a certified genius for figuring out the tip in your head. Impress your millennial beard wielding friends with your calculation skills!
Uncle Ray's Tricks of the Trade
Always save your change. At the end of every shift, you usually average about five bucks in coins. Don't cash them in. Throw them in an old whiskey canister at home. By the end of the year you'll have over a $1000 bucks to help pay for your vacation. Because God knows ownership isn't dishing out vacation pay!
Odds and Ends
Last but not least, never under any circumstance tip an owner if he or she is working the bar. I know I mentioned this earlier, but I really want to drill this point home. It is an old rule of thumb, but a damned good one. We’ve all walked into a restaurant to see our normal bartender not there and an owner attempting to sling suds behind the bar. Even though people feel that when the door opens in the morning the bartender is already on duty as if he sleeps there, bartenders do get sick from time to time and need a day off.
It’s not the kind of job where you can just call out sick, anybody who has waited tables or tended bar can tell you that. If you are sick or going on vacation or just need a day off, not only do you have to get it approved first, but you have to arrange for your own backup. There’s no “calling out” in the restaurant world. You better be sick or dying if you can’t come in and are unable to find somebody to work for you. (And by the way, don’t count on sick pay like in the normal world!). You don’t come to work, you don’t make money.
So if you see the owner sloppily bouncing around behind the bar when you walk in, that means the shit has quite literally hit the fan. And even though he is serving you and he is doing his best, he owns the joint. Every owner I ever worked for had at least two houses if not three. Every owner drove either a Mercedes or a BMW and so did their wives and children. They don’t need any more money, don’t give it to them.
If anything, save your tip for your regular bartender, because when he gets back to work, he’s out the money from the missed work. Help them make up the difference so they can still pay their bills at the end of the month. After all, you’re most likely there to see them anyway, not for the crappy burgers that come out cold and cooked improperly by a psychotic and cranky chef. And you certainly weren’t there to see the owner, who after seeing you in their restaurant for the last ten years still hasn’t taken the time to learn your name.
Always remember, working a tip is an art. Paying out a tip is an obligation. Until the government or society decides to change the rules and etiquette on tipping and force ownership to actually pay a livable wage and not $2.13 an hour, then that’s the way it is. It is not a server’s fault that restaurant owners have gotten away with murder for decades, or that ultimately you are the one paying their salary. It is what it is, deal with it!
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