Tax Day is fast approaching, so let's turn our attention to money — specifically, how much to tip at a restaurant!
The disparity in restaurant pay is such that on a busy night, servers can make twice what the kitchen staff makes, which doesn't accurately reflect the difference in the skill/difficulty of the positions.
A lot of restaurants have done informal tip pooling, where the servers share at least some portion of their tips with the rest of the untipped staff, from cooks to barbacks to dishwashers.
But recently, a few new restaurants have done away with variable gratuity, either adding a flat service charge to each check or building that cost into the prices of the dishes. Upton 43 and Heirloom use those two models and split the money with all staff. There's less mental math, less hassle, more simplicity.
Some like to feel like they control the amount, but at best, there's probably a lot of arbitrary decision-making involved — or at worst, racist and sexist decisions at play. And if you have a bad experience? Don't express it though the tip — talk to the manager.
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