Mike Devlin August 24, Many of us have waited tables at some point in our lives. It is one of the few jobs that can be performed without formal training yet pays better than most other entry-level positions. We tend to look right through our waiters and waitresses, but behind the fake smile, there is a great deal of intrigue.

10 Weird Things About Waiting Tables - Listverse

There are few issues more galvanizing than the decision of whether to tip your waiter. Pink goes on a rant about how tipping is out of control. In many parts of the world, including most of Asia, Australia, and several nations in Europe, tipping is not customary. In Japan, it is even seen as insulting. Tipping only caught on in America in the years after the Civil War, when wealthy Americans traveling abroad to Europe adopted the custom.

Surprisingly, it was frowned upon, as people deemed it a way for the aristocratic class to separate themselves from others. There was even an anti-tipping bill proposed in that would have made tipping illegal.

The custom announces to the world. Servers tend to consider any tip in excess of 20 percent as very generous. But there have been some instances of truly shocking tips. Perhaps the most outlandish story of all happened inwhen waitress Phyllis Penzo was tipped with half share of a lottery ticket. Cunningham offered to tip her half of a lottery ticket. The two picked three numbers each, and on March 30, Cunningham walked to a store across the street to purchase the ticket.

The incident was dramatized in the Nicolas Cage romantic comedy It Could Happen To You. Few professions keep as exacting a gauge on demographics as servers. They all have their formulas: Men tip better than women, smokers better than non-smokers, dating couples better than teenagers.

Not surprisingly, foreigners to whom tipping is anathema are among the worst tippers. Perhaps the most controversial divide is between races, with minorities generally tipping less than white people. Surprisingly, this is not mere opinion, but has been backed up by studies. Cornell University Professor Michael Lynn has done numerous studies on the issue of race differences in tipping.

His research corroborates the waiter stereotype that, on average, black people tip less than white people and are more likely to stiff a waiter entirely. Exactly why this is the case is up for debate. It may be a case of income disparity or simply not knowing the proper tipping protocol. There is also an issue of self-fulfilling prophecy—a waiter expecting a bad tip from African American patrons may provide lousy service, thus ensuring a bad tip, and so on. According to Lynn, the problem runs much deeper than a few grumpy waiters, causing black people to eat out less frequently and even keeping restaurants from opening in predominantly African American communities.

For a server, one of the more obnoxious things restaurant patrons stock exchange hong kong listed companies do is avoid paying for a drink, instead ordering water with lemon and using the sugar at the table to concoct a free beverage of their own.

It requires the same amount of effort from the waiter, but can substantially lower the check. One restaurant chain feeling the pinch was the Olive Garden. To boost lagging beverage sales, they turned how to make a lot of money waiting tables The Coca-Cola Company for a strategy.

Leaving a bad tip in most establishments might earn you an eye roll or iforex trader platform a few choice words muttered under the breath. Sending your steak back to the kitchen more than once might earn ava fx trader for ipad a little saliva mixed into your ruger 77/22 custom parts potatoes.

But around a hundred years ago in Chicago, annoying a waiter could have had far more serious consequences. Scores of people became ill after attending restaurants. While waiting tables at Hooters certainly has its downsides, servers tend to make significantly more than they would at other restaurants serving comparable food.

Unfortunately, the Hooters business model is saddled with one fatal flaw. To maintain its salacious atmosphere, the severs are required to be attractive young women. In the United States, this is a rather flagrant violation of the equal opportunity employment. Not surprisingly, men have taken advantage of this discriminatory policy to direct lawsuits at Hooters.

Hooters was again sued by Nikolai Grushevski when he was denied a job at a franchise in Corpus Christi, Texas. At places like Home equity loan adoption, women are expected to be somewhat objectified and act flirty with customers, but things can get really ugly how to make a lot of money waiting tables waitresses.

Gender inequality is a serious issue in every workplace, but it is particularly cutting in the restaurant industry. In the United States, approximately 70 percent of servers are female, and the deck is stacked against them in almost every conceivable way.

While far more likely to wait tables scottrade stock broker men, women make how to get more money on virtual families 2 on pc money and tend to be employed by mid- to low-range restaurants rather than the upper echelon of fine dining establishments.

Worse still, the amount of sexual harassment these women are made to suffer is off the charts. According to the Jenny lewis money maker Employment Opportunity Commission, women who worked in restaurants reported more than five times the sexual harassment compared to women working in other fields.

One poll conducted by MSNBC in Louisiana indicated that 42 percent of female restaurant employees have been sexually harassed during their careers. Countries where tipping is not customary may be on to something. Restaurants that have banned the process and instead incorporated gratuities into the total price of the meal have reported better sales and service.

There are a few reasons for this, which might not be so obvious. The most important is that most people tend to tip the same amount no matter what. Thus, to make money, waiters just try to take on as many customers as they possibly can, which obviously lessens their effectiveness.

Banning tips has other benefits as well. Waiters no longer have any reason to behave in a discriminatory fashion toward any set of customers.

Guide for Waiters and Waitresses to Maximize Tip Revenue

This, in turn, increases the quality of the food and the dining experience in general. Maintaining a good waitstaff can be quite a challenge for restaurants, which typically operate on razor-thin margins. However, there are alternatives to human waiters.

The bots ride around the restaurant on bicycles, carrying platters of food. They have motion detectors that allow them to stop when a person approaches to take their meal. Dalu even features a robot hostess that stands at the front door, fluttering her eyelashes and speaking to the customers in dulcet tones. If you feel that robots would make the dining experience too impersonal, you could go to Kayabukiya Tavern in Utsunomiya, Japan.

Here, a pair of macaques named Yat-chan and Fuku-chan bring drinks to customers.

Unlike the robots, the monkeys expect tips. Customers are given boiled soy beans to reward the macaques for their efforts.

For those Hollywood stars unlucky enough to have been born into some storied acting legacy, the first stepping stone on the road to greatness often tends to be waiting tables. It might be nice to have a beautiful young waitress bringing you your meatloaf, but some experts say the prettier she is, the worse off the economy. The index might seem preposterous at first glance, but it makes a lot of sense.

In times of great financial prosperity, beautiful women have better options available than waiting tables; they can work as models or actresses, or promote products. When times are tough, these upper-echelon positions no longer exist, and even the most gorgeous people are forced to take jobs as waiters just to get by. Lists in your inbox Submit.

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