#66 "The Dirty Shirty Gang" July 17, 2013

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Being a server or bartender in America, you are dependent on the system of tipping. We make a hourly wage, but it is the minimum wage, so in New York, it comes to about $5.00 an hour. That's double what waiters are making in 19 states, the lowest being $2.13 an hour to wait tables. That is not a lot of money, to say the least, so we depend on the system of tipping. A lot of people are against this system and think it should be abolished completely, with servers then making a salary like any other profession. I am of the school of thought that this is not going to happen any time soon, as it is not something that anyone ever thinks about unless they are working in the restaurant business. People who have never worked in a restaurant know that they have to tip, and so many times it becomes a power trip for them, or a discriminatory act. Some people hold the tip over their servers head nearly from the get-go, saying some things like, "we're going to be a pain in the ass, but we leave good tips." Other people warn you, usually in a joking manner, like when you spill a little water, or worse, some of the drink; "That's coming out of your tip!" It seems to me that at the end of the night, the tips have a way of equalling out, so you'll get those awful tips, but then you'll have some great tippers, so the two offset.
There are some instances in which the tip is entirely lost because of the way people divide up the tip. These days, most people pay by credit card. I don't mind this although our tips are then taxed, but most places these days also collect the cash tips at the end of the night and put it all in the pot so it's all taxed anyway. This is not the case at our place, so our cash tips are tax free. Again, since most people don't pay cash, or tip in cash, this money is usually just a couple bucks here and there; enough to buy a round of drinks, essentially. What really irks me though, and this was the point of this rant, is when people divide the check between each other using cash and credit card, because the majority of these people do it incorrectly. I am here to let you know the incorrect method and hope that in the future, you and your friends will divide it better. So, the incorrect way, and the way that is most commonly seen is as such. Two (or more) people will be dividing the check, I will come over to the table and one of them will hand me a bunch of cash, a card or two, and say, "put the rest on the card." That is incorrect! What usually happens in this case is, I do just that; I count the cash (9 times out of 10 it is more than half of the bill because people are "adding on the tip" as part of their cash payment) and then I run the card. Most times, I pick up the credit card slip and the tip that has been left is only counting the money on the credit card slip, so I am only being tipped on half of the bill. This happens all the time. For some reason, people don't understand that this is happening. They think that since the cash payer "included" the tip in their part of the bill that we are going to get that "extra" money as a tip. But, when someone asks to "put the rest on the card" they obviously know how much they owe. So, if you take out the cash tip, and put more money on the card, they accuse you of overcharging. Some of the time, the people who are paying with credit cards will leave the right amount for the tip, but most of the time, in this scenario, the waiter gets half of the tip that is standard. If the credit card payer is a lousy tipper, then it is sometimes even less.
The correct way of doing this is so achingly simple, it makes me crazy each and every time I get the line, "put the rest on the card." Before I get to that, let me just preface this statement with the following. I realize that not everyone who comes into the restaurant has a lot of money on their debit card. I realize that a lot of the people paying with credit cards are behind on their payments and drowning in debt. I understand all of this. But, this does not excuse you from paying for your meal. So, with that said, here is the correct way to divide the check with cash and a credit card.

Whoever is paying cash in the party gives the cash to the person who is paying with the credit card. The person paying with the credit card keeps the cash and puts the whole bill on the card.
 Boom. Simple.

This way, the whole bill goes on the credit card, the credit card payer can leave tip in cash or credit form, and everyone is happy! The cash payer can feel good about his "tip included" payment, the credit card payer now has some cash on their person, and the tip is correct. Unless, of course, the credit card payer is a bad tipper. But t least they paid correctly!

#56 "Frozen Pool Party" May 1, 2013

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There have been a lot of dishwashers at the restaurant since I started working there a million years ago. Some of them have been teenagers, some of them have been grown men. Most of them have been from Mexico, although a couple of them were white boys right out of high school. That didn't last that long, it may have been a summer job, but all of them left looking for something more; a promotion, a different position in the kitchen, or anything else besides being in Dish Land. Being a dishwasher in a restaurant is a brutal, thankless job. It's hot and wet and the dishes seem to never stop arriving from the dining room. On top of all of that, you are expected to mop the dining room, the kitchen and the bathrooms every day. You have to be the last ones there most nights, cleaning the kitchen, and a lot of the time, you have to be the first one in to clean the dining room. Sometimes you have to help in the preparation of food, doing the most mundane of chores; peeling carrots, dicing bread, peeling shrimp. Because of this challenging workload, and it is a challenging job, most people do not want to have anything to do with it. That, and it doesn't pay well. If you are working in a restaurant, being a dishwasher is the low end of the totem pole, and usually you want to work your way up through the ranks as fast as humanly possible. 

I started out as a dishwasher at my aunt and uncle's restaurant, called Bishop's Terrace. I worked the lunch shift when it wasn't that busy. I am thankful for that now, because the fast pace of dinner would have been a bit much for my childhood self to deal with. Having to load, and unload an industrial sized dishwasher under pressure can be not only difficult, but incredibly unnerving. You are dealing with scalding hot water and extremely hot dishes; the metal ones burn your hands and the ceramics slip and can shatter. And then there is the mess. The whole job revolves around taking something that is dirty and making it clean. Dealing with food waste is particularly disgusting. People forget this, and are mindless with their plates. They put butter everywhere, ketchup everywhere, and all of it ends up on the dishwashers hands. I rarely eat ketchup to this day because of this. 

I washed dishes a couple other times in my life. Mostly just to help out when there was a spot that needed to be filled, but it was never my only job. I would supplement it with waiting tables and working the counter at the fish market, for example. I can't imagine washing dishes 5 or 6 days a week as your only job. And yet, people do it. We have a guy named Carlos who started at the restaurant the same time I did, worked the dish pit for 7 years, and then took all his money that he made and moved back to Mexico. He bought a house, married a girl and had a baby. A couple months ago, he moved back and got a bunch of his old shifts back. I guess if you can save money, it doesn't matter how bad the job appears to be from the outside if you can deal with the day to day monotony of the thing. I have said it before on this blog that every job can be monotonous and awful if you have a bad attitude about the whole thing. After all, you don't want to be defined by your job, even though a lot of times, people actually will judge you by what you do. It's one of the reasons I stopped asking people what they do. They have to actively tell me what they do for work, but I have stopped asking. I have good friends that I have no idea what they do for work. In the end, it doesn't matter to me what you do if you are a interesting person to be around. 

The whole reason for this dishwashing rant is that one of the dish washers who work with Tim and I at the restaurant contributed to this edition of "Mind on Loup." The kid's name is Alex and his last day was actually just last night. Like Carlos, he is taking the money that he made here for the last couple years and is moving back home, where presumably the money will last way longer than it will here in New York. Alex has some talent as an artist, he would sometimes draw pictures on the white board in the kitchen and is always interested in the progress of these drawings. I don't remember which night he contributed to this one, but he wrote the "Graffitty" in the lefthand side. Then, he wrote "Mexico" on the right hand side, which got turned into a monster of some sort. In the colored-in version, you can't even make out the word as it has been completely integrated into the drawing. I don't know Alex's last name and I might never see him again, but I will always remember him through this picture. He is a good kid and I wish him luck in Mexico and wherever else his life might take him. I hope he continues to draw pictures and make art in some way. I also hope that he never washes another dish if he doesn't want to. Dishwashers are an integral part of every restaurant but they never get the respect.