By Cassie Roy | Observer Contributor
Waitressing- a long standing profession for the charismatic and hard working. Although this job can be a dream come true for those in need of fast cash, it can come with some difficult nights. Customers tend to believe that their food taking a long time, coming out wrong, or their drink not tasting good is the server’s fault, which is not true, and most of the time the server is as frustrated as the customer.
Customers thinking like this can affect the way they view waitresses as well as the way they tip. Another common belief is that waitresses make a base pay. As this may be true for small family owned cafés, it is actually the opposite for chain restaurants.
Waitresses make $0 per hour that they work unless they make less than minimum wage at the end of the week in tips; only then will they get a paycheck from their restaurant to make up for lack of tips. For example, if the waitress works forty hours a week and makes only $400 (only $10/hour) for the week in tips, the restaurant will reimburse you $40. However they still tax that small paycheck they give you.
Waitresses also have to run all of their food, bus their tables, run glassware, roll silver, and even clean parts of the kitchen and service stations before they’re allowed to leave for the night. They also have to clean the section of five to seven tables that we are assigned each night. This includes sweeping, wiping down the mirrors, setting the tables with full ketchups, 32 sugars in each caddy, and wrapped silverware for every table.
Waitresses have to put up with a lot, but the most tiring part of the job can be the nasty comments that they are sure to hear throughout their shift. Lauren Nichols, a waitress at the Marlborough TGIFriday’s, overheard a mother at one of her tables make this comment while she watched Lauren bus a dirty table, “this is why you have to go to college, girl, so you can make more money than she does.”
As you probably have assumed by now in the article, yes, I am a waitress at TGIFriday’s in Berlin, Massachusetts. I have worked there full time for almost a year now, and in that year I have endured nasty comments by hangry people who need someone to yell at, and unfortunately that is always the waitress. The Shakespearian saying “don’t shoot the messenger,” has become my new motto for work.
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