I’m wondering if this is the case for servers in Aspen Restaurants.
“I recently received an email from a Manhattan server that I found interesting and that I wanted to share. It maintains that diners are tipping less during these tough economic times.
I should be clearer: it maintains not only that check totals have gone down — a reality that’s been widely noted — but also that the percentage of those lower checks that diners are leaving as tips is declining as well.
If true, that means that servers are being hit by a double whammy.
Before I loft some questions to which regular diners — and servers — should please respond, here’s a portion of the server’s email:
Our restaurant is fortunate because we continue to fill up each night, despite the recession. (This is mainly because we are moderately priced and have a number of steady, regular customers.) Even so, the economic problems did penetrate our bubble in October and November. We watched as people ordered sparingly; conscious of prices, they declined second glasses of wine or dessert. Slowly, as things became more stable, the tabs started to climb.
Despite the rising spending, our tips have gone down. In New York the average tip is 20 percent, though some tip as low as 15 percent and some as high as 30 perecent. These days our tips are closer to 17 percent, with a range of 10 percent to 25 percent.
This drop in tips registers to $60 less/night. Over 5 shifts a week that is $300 less per week! But we are working just as hard as we used to, and perhaps even harder, trying to get people to forget their troubles for a few hours . . . It is not fair for people to take out their economic troubles on their server. If one cannot afford to tip, then perhaps that person should be ordering less. It is likely that people are talking themselves out of leaving a proper tip, by concluding that 20% was overly generous. To me, this is a convenient conclusion, and it punishes the hard-working servers.
I’m curious. Are other servers out there encountering what this server is?
And all you frequent restaurant-goers out there: are you consciously lowering the percentage of a check that you tip on, perhaps because your own income has diminished?
Reading the server’s email, I was reminded that not just servers but all people who earn a substantial portion of their income from tips are in a particularly vulnerable position in a recession. While a tip is customary, it’s ultimately voluntary: it can shrink or vanish in an instant. Getting tighter with tips is an easy way for customers to limit their spending, but doing that is in many ways the breaking of an implicit contract. And it has victims.
The situation is complicated. In her email the server says that customers who can’t afford to tip properly “should be ordering less,” but that wouldn’t help servers, because a 20 percent tip on a $75 bill leaves a server with about the same money as a 17 percent tip on a $90 check.
Anyway, I turn the discussion over to you.
By FRANK BRUNI”
New York Times Article