SS!! I thought we were keeping that a secret for a while!!

Not sure about the rest of the country but here in New Hampshire it is not uncommon for servers to make the minimum allowed wage of $2.13/hour...That being said there is a potential to make considerably more with tips. My sister would bring home on a good night anywhere from $200-400 in a single 5-6 hour shift. Of course on bad nights she was lucky to clear $30-40 if it was absolutely dead, but law also requires that with tips and the hourly rate of $2.13 the server must make at least minimum wage. If tips do not suffice to meet the average then the employer must cover the difference.

As long as service was decent I used to tip at an absolute minimum of 20% with the thought that for those doing it were lucky to pick up 25-30 hours a week so they needed more to make ends meet. Then one night I watched the server as she buzzed around six tables and I started doing some rough math and at 20% the waitress would be looking at between $80-120 for that hour alone. I know this is not a constant open to close thing, but I figure you get at a minimum three full cycles on the tables, so even on the low and of $80 per six table she would be netting $240 and likely more. Combined with the fact that common practice here in NH is to only claim 10% of your actual tips and after missing the bulk of the taxes the waitress would be making more in her five hours then I make in my 10 daily...That just seemed like total Bullfluff...I can appreciate paying someone a decent wage for a job well done, but I just have a hard time justifying paying the person carrying plates back and forth more then our local law enforcement, fire fighters and teachers get paid...So now I tend to base the tip not on the bill necessarily, but on service and how long I was there...Typical tip is around a $10/max for the ~45 minutes we are there, if service was just unbelievable and makes us want to come back based on that alone they may see more, but that doesn't happen too too often..

One thing I forgot to mention is that the only real time I deviate is if it one of those places where they have to split tips with the bartenders and the bus staff. Then I may leave an extra 25-30% tops, but that is not the norm by any means...

=O

I'm an Asshat?! Man, I never knew =(

I didn't read most of this random flaming junk, but I did see one thing I would like to dispute. I was never Head FR...I did a stint in FR but never actually did anything but chit chat with TAN from time to time about RL and very little stuff that was actually game related...

I have been around a long while, mostly in IA or Division leadership roles in SOLID, AoD, Titans, 7thDay, MD (I was just a member here, though I may have gone as far as aDL) and I have called LaF home for going on four years now...I am also pretty sure I have been Marthaen throughout the duration of my career. Though I know I did tweak with changes here and there, nothing ever stuck more then a week or two...

On a random note TAN is the only earther I have had appear in a dream. He was a pasty white Emo/Scene styled kid moving boxes of stuff into an "old school" silver sided 50's style diner...I am pretty sure the appearance was spot on =D

Now, hopefully this will do the hoped for task of hijacking the thread and steering it in a more "interesting" direction...That is another credit I was not attributed...In conjunction with spamming I am the LaF Head of Thread Hijacking and Discussion Redirection...

Now where is mrford with the probing equipment...I know a few folks who obviously need a good "Roto-Rooting" of the pipes...

*Has a "Cure-All HeeBee JeeBee"style illness blanket...Obtained from a wise bear shaman in the secret tropical jungles of the arctic*

mrford: Begin preparation of your base to be occupied by my field mouse minions (they work cheap and don't mind the occasional scabee out break so long as I keep an open case of snacks in the pantry)...

TAN: I can't believe you have dealt with SS and feel Parallax to be the most reasonable...Para is like a raging wolverine compared to the fluffy stuffed teddy bear that is SS...

*wonders where the political excitement of the boards will come from with TAN gone*

Watcher, your initial reasoning only applies if you are saying the majority of the community are asshats. He just says to ignore the majority of the asshats (my guess is he is getting special favors from the minority he wants listened to) so I take that to mean just the whiners, not the rest of us...

*Preps a container ship full of whine and "drammar" to ship to mrford as a sign of good will*

*waves at TAN*

*wonders what kind of universe we live in where "Parallax seems entirely reasonable"...Hides under the desk with a blanket over his head and emergency survival supplies consisting of office coffee, bagels and the laptop and waits for the apocalypse to come*