Things are tough all over. This isn't exactly news. I can't think of a single person I know who hasn't been hit on some level by the mess our economy is in. Everyone, it seems, is scaling back on spending.

And who can blame them?

In a city that prides itself on its food scene, San Francisco's restaurants have taken a very hard hit. With fewer people lunching and dining out these days, many places in the city have either laid off staff or cut their hours. Some once-favored haunts have decided to close their doors for lunch, some have chosen to to hang out the "Now Open for Sunday Brunch" sign (which is usually an indicator of fiscal desperation), some have been forced to shut down permanently.

As a professional waiter, I consider myself very lucky to be working in a popular and (blessedly) busy restaurant. Hell, I consider myself lucky to have a job. Period.

Tipping Down

The current trend in dining these days seems to be downsizing-- from the price tag of the wine purchase to the amount of food ordered. Perfectly understandable. Not a single server I have talked to about the situation was unsympathetic to the current, collective economic plight. People are ordering fewer bottles of wine, and more are going for what some refer to as "non'trées"-- the ordering of appetizers in lieu of main courses. It's a hit to our wallets, of course (I have personally seen an average 30% decrease in my own sales), but we know were not the only ones. It's been openly discussed at our staff meetings that the guests who were dining with us in the fat times are still here with us in the lean ones, and we should be ever mindful of that. Which, for the most part, we are. The goal is to keep them coming back. We are making less money, of course, but we are working harder for it.

And that's fine.

What isn't fine is the much more alarming trend that seems to be running apace with the downsizing of dine-out meals-- the downsizing of tips. Along with decreased sales, servers are seeing a general lowering of their gratuity's percentage. And this is not okay. Not at all.

Tipping Out

I've always wondered if people who have never worked in the service industry know how restaurant tipping actually operates. It's a subject that most people probably don't give much thought to. You tip your server, she pockets the money, and goes home with it at the end of the shift.

But that's not how it works.

In a recent phone interview with a reporter from a major national newspaper, I was asked about the current economic situation and how it was affecting San Francisco restaurants. In relating my own experience, I told her roughly what I sell on an average night and what my tips are like. When I told her where exactly that money went, how I am taxed on my sales, and what I actually walk out the door with, she was surprised. She explained to me that, in all the years she had been covering restaurants, she had never even thought to ask about the process of tipping out. I respected her for that admission. And it dawned on me that, if she didn't know, how many diners do?

If I am given a $50 tip, on a $250 bill, that's wonderful, but it's not exactly all mine to keep. In most restaurants, especially high-end places, a server is not simply working for his own tips. In my place of business, the gratuity I receive from any given table goes towards supporting nine other employees. Ten, including myself.

Here's an illustration of what is occurring with ever-increasing frequency in our restaurants. Possibly just a bad turn of luck, but it illustrates what really happens when a good server receives a bad tip:

I'll use the example of a fellow waiter who took care of some regular guests and four of their friends. The waiter in question is extremely professional-- fun and chatty at the right moments, formal and efficient at other times, or any combination of the above-mentioned, as each case necessitates. And, above all, he actually cares about what he's doing. He puts his heart into his work.

The regulars and their guests were treated to a few complimentary appetizers and were well taken care of, as usual. When the bill arrived, it was not the regular guests who paid, but one of their tablemates. On a $500 check, the guest left the waiter a $20 tip. Needless to say, the waiter was upset, but could say nothing, except to his co-workers and manager. Vent it, shrug it, face it, let it go. Hopefully do not repeat-- that is often our sanity-saving mantra.

His tip may have been $20, which is insult enough, given his high level of care and service. The financial damage, however, is far worse in such cases.

The Break Down

Granted, the "tip out" (what a server tips out to his support staff) varies from restaurant to restaurant. Some houses pool tips, others ensure that the kitchen staff receives a percentage. The permutations are endless, but all enacted with the goal of supporting the other, no-less-important members of the service team. This is how it works at our place of business:

Tip outs are often based on sales, not the total amount of gratuity.

On a $500 sale, the waiter must give, at the very minimum:

Busser: $15 (3% but usually closer to 4% since a busser is a server's chiefest ally)

Food Runner: $5 (1%)

Hostess: $5 (1%)

Bartender: $6.25 (1.25%)

Our stocker receives $5 per waiter as a flat fee every shift, our barista receives $10.

We do not ever decrease the amounts given to our support staff.

Having been given $20 for his services, the waiter actually lost about $12 taking care of these guests. And that's just on the surface. The IRS calculates roughly 8% of a server's sales as taxable income, owing to the variability of tipping. 8%, in this instance is $40-- more than twice what the waiter was paid.

Clearly, I am biased. I have a vested interest in people tipping properly. And by properly, I mean 15% at the very minimum for basic service. Good service deserves 20%. That is our custom.

The goal of this post isn't to shame people into tipping more. My readers are, by and large, pretty savvy in these matters. I just have the feeling that, if more people understood where that tip money goes and what the consequences are to those who bear the double brunt of lowered sales and lowered tips, they might think twice about saving that extra few dollars by leaving less money to the people who take care of them.

If you are well taken care of, take care of your caretakers.

Amen.

And pass it on.

Today's post is directed at my waiter brethren, should there be any reading. The rest of you, of course, are most welcome to read.

The other night, I waited on a rather handsome European couple. Spanish. First time in San Francisco. They were youngish, well-dressed, and very polite. They ordered wine, three courses of food, and bottled water. So far, so good. When I checked in with them at each course, they seemed happy. The temperature of their wine? Excellent-- they even thanked me for asking. My dessert suggestions? They took them and loved them. These were not menu-pointers, miming their way through a meal because they lacked the local language skills.

When I brought them their check, they examined the bill, slipped in some cash and said, "Thank you, that's fine," indicating that they would not need change.

I examined the cash inside the bill folder. $130. Their meal was $126.25. I rushed to the bar and rather hurriedly asked one of our bartenders to make me some change, and quickly, because "I'm about to get "f---ed by table 10," I said. In front of my boss.

I received the change and gently placed the remaining $3.75 back in the bill folder with the three little bills neatly peaking out of the corner back on their table. Perhaps, I thought, there had been a mistake in their calculation. They might examine the contents and increase the 2.97% tip they were unwittingly leaving me. During the next half hour, during which I refilled their waters, folded their napkins, and asked if they had suitable transportation home, they never re-examined the contents of the folder. As they stood up to leave, I felt the anger swelling up behind my eyes. But I smiled, tilted my head and knitted my brow in such a way that would indicate that I was slightly perplexed to the marginally perceptive, and said, "Good night," with such a subtle questioning at the end of it I am uncertain as to whether typing a question mark is deserved.

They didn't so much ignore me as act oblivious to my words. I thought the best thing for me to do was walk away before I did something foolish, like stick my foot out as they approached the steps to the exit.

I stood by the hostess stand at the front door as they approached, giving them one more chance. I tried to obtain eye contact with the man, but he would not meet my eye. Instead, he held out his coat check. Fortunately, the hostess on duty took it before I had the opportunity to ignore his gesture or reply to it with one of my own. I followed her to the coat closet.

"Spit in it," I said. "I think you should spit in his coat." I'm sure she thought I was joking. "Or, at least, drop-kick it when you hand it to him." The sad thing is, I wasn't joking.

Well, that moment at the coat check served as a little reality check for me.

At our shift meeting earlier in the evening, my boss had warned us that summer was approaching. Our regular customers would be crowded out by out-of-towners, both of the American and foreign variety. Cranky travelers and people for whom American-style tipping was, well, a foreign concept. The announcement brought down the mood of the staff, but he was speaking the truth, and the point of his little speech was that we needed to basically suck it up and treat these new guests with the same warmth we treat our regulars. We needed to kill them with kindness, regardless of what kind of tips a Spaniard, German, or Canadian might leave. I briefly wondered which type of insecticide added to coffee would be considered kind.

He was right, of course. So what was I angry about?:

1. The money. My service merited at least another $20 in gratuity.

2. I let these two people get under my skin on the very night my boss had warned us, as though he had somehow jinxed me.

3. The fact that I let any guest get under my skin.

I consider myself fortunate in terms of my experience as a professional waiter. I work at a wonderful restaurant. It's upscale without being over-the-top, has a fun vibe, and is always packed with people-- it's not easy to get a last minute reservation, though we will bend over backwards to try to accommodate. The guests, by and large, are either affluent and willing to spend money or, at the very least, enthusiastic about dining with us. I almost never just wait on people, but act more like the host of a dinner party at every table in my station-- offering my suggestions, painting verbal pictures yet-to-be-seen food items, getting people to relax and open up. I work in a place where a handshake normally accompanies the "good nights", and a hug or even a kiss from the women is not at all uncommon. "Goodbye" is almost never said, but rather "see you again, soon."

And, normally, my tips reflect my service. Twenty percent is the norm, but twenty-five or thirty is not unusual, either. Am I spoiled? I don't think so. I work hard at what I do, and I am frankly very good at it.

But I allowed the two idiots who gave me a 2.97% tip to get to me. I had tied my own sense of worth to money. $3.75, to be exact. It colored my outlook for the rest of the evening. Fortunately, they were my last table, so I brought no thundercloud to my other guests.

I sometimes find working exclusively for tips a bit harrowing. There is a vagueness of income that is frustrating-- never knowing exactly how much one is going to earn in a month makes budgeting difficult. Waiters have nights when they're on fire and making money hand-over-fist, others when their sections are populated by women who bring photo albums with them and haven't seen each other in years-- splitting salads and making two hundred substitutions.

The fact that my income is wholly dependent upon how much a stranger feels I am worth is rather frightening if I stop to think about it for long. So I don't.

The fact that I sometimes allow my own sense of worth to be determined by strangers is even worse. I feel validated when a group of business guys leaves an extra hundred dollars on top of an automatic 20% tip. I feel utterly deflated when Spaniards screw me.

It's crazy-making. I do the same thing every night with mostly rave reviews. Sometimes, I get the shaft. And in my calmer moments, I can shake it off easily.

But the summer season is upon us, complete with the usual unprepared tourist who freeze their asses of in their shorts and hastily- Wharf-bought San Francisco sweatshirts in the middle of July. As a member of the hospitality industry, I need to remind myself that I cannot give lessons in tipping etiquette to the ignorant, but merely accept them as they are. I'm not a bad waiter if I receive a 2.97% tip, I'm a bad waiter if I am, well, inhospitable. In the meantime, I'll have to accept the occasional bad tip along with all the good ones and dream of the day after Labor Day, when our summer really begins and the tourists go back to the non-tipping lands from which they came.