When I finally finished work, I was so angry my stomach hurt. I drove home without stopping for any of the things I needed to get. I didn't have music on, which is incredibly rare for me. But everything was irritating me. I came home and curled up on my couch with all the lights off and the tv on, and fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later, I just went to bed.
Today I feel better. The whole day wasn't terrible. It mostly just had a really, really bad end. The whole lunch shift had been slow ... very slow. Like $200 in sales before four o'clock (stupid football). Dinner wasn't much busier, and my section sorta sucked. It was four booths, which normally would rock, but three of them were six-seaters by the bar, which the hosts try not to seat with smaller tables. Tonight, I thought I got lucky. I got a five and a six top. The six top seemed pretty much cool. The five top ... well ... I'll get to them later.
The end result? 10% off the six top, and 7% on the five. I was frustrated at the first, because they got GREAT service. I mean awesome. Prompt, smiling, friendly, helpful, engaging. I drew a picture on their little boy's to go box because he wasn't a smiley face on it. I talked to them. Their ticket was $116. So it aggravated me a little bit, but it wasn't until the second table left that I got wicked pissed.
The second table was a group that I had a bad feeling about. I try not to engage in any sort of profiling, be it age, race, sex, etc. etc. ... but this type of table doesn't tip well, generally speaking. In fact, in the nine years I've been waitressing, I've never gotten more than 10% off this sort of table. Last night was a perfect example: $7 on $90. Again, absolutely perfect service.
After that, I just got angry. I only had five tables all night, and two of them treat me like shit. I had two two-tops, who tipped me 20%, I had one other six top, that gave me 14%. These two other tables were my money-makers. They were my big spenders. Because of them, I did win a prize for selling a certain amount of booze. Other than that, I got screwed.
So I made a decision. Although I would never intentionally give anybody bad service, when I get that type of table next time, I'm not going to upsell them. All that does is increase my sales, which means I have to claim a higher tip percentage, when they're probably not going to give me that percentage. So why should I bother?
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