Time to get reacquainted...

Some things never change:

• I can still survive on a steady diet of classic Kraft Dinner and cheap Argentinian wine
• My colouring has never been better and I still maintain that if it were an employable job skill I would, in fact, have all the jobs. All the jobs
• I am the queen of procrastination and putting things off until tomorrow
• I hate cats but I love kittens
• I'm still up to my eyeballs in crippling student loan debt

I'd like to say, after graduating from post-secondary education, some things have changed for me but the reality is, with a few minor exceptions, nothing really has. 

I still work at (insert real name here). The New Shop, on the other hand, has ceased to exist. One morning this past summer the boss called me up to the office and told me, effective immediately, the New Shop was closing down. I wasn't at all surprised but I wish a there was some more honesty about the "decision" to close. 

For defamation sake, I won't say the New Shop closed because the boss wasn't paying the bills, but when you show up to work and the locks have been changed and the property management company won't let you in to get your stuff because the boss hasn't paid the bills -- I think it's safe to say that the boss wasn't paying the bills. 

I was sad. And not because I was out of a job. I was sad because I had some great times at that place:

• after hours drinking adult beverage consumption with some good laughs
• wall papering Chef's office with gay porn 
• working hard to make the place somewhere Winnipeggers wanted to eat and be a part of
• street cheese

It really was a shock to the system. It felt, and still does feel like all my hard work was for nothing It was demoralizing. At the same time, it was a wake up call. As much as I have fun working in the restaurant industry, it's not my calling. I'm not sure what I am going to do with the rest of my life but I know it's time to get back on track because my particular pursuit of happiness is forever going to be that, a pursuit, not a reality. 

So it's back to living on tips but this time, I'm looking for a grown-up job too.

The Gratuity.

A gratuity or tip is something the Oxford Dictionary describes as a sum of money given to someone as a reward for a service. 


Tipping is a practice that has been around for centuries, or so I've read on Wikipedia. It is amazing that such a long standing practice is so inconsistent. One would think tipping has been around long enough that it would be perfected by now, kinda like baseball. 


Generally speaking, a good tip is somewhere between 15% to 20%, at least it used to be. I have learned in the past six months at my restaurant that if I walk out with 10% in tips that means I've had a good night. 


Let's get personal here for a moment. As a server, I make minimum wage: $9.00/hour ($9.50/hr come October 1 when minimum wage increases) and tops on top of that. Tips can be lucrative or just plain shit or anywhere in between. 


Most restaurants have a tip pool or tip share, in fact it's extremely rare if one doesn't. Tip shares are for the other restaurant employees; bartenders, hosts, cooks. In my experience the amount we tip out to the rest of the staff is based on a percentage of our sales: 3%. 


So basically for every $100 worth of food and beverage a table orders I give out $3. At the end of the night if my sales are $900 I pay out $27 from my tips. You get the idea, I hope. The tip out percentage varies from restaurant to restaurant. 


Now in the event that a table doesn't tip, I still have to give some money to all of the other people who helped me get the meal out to the table. I still have to give the bartender some dough for whipping up those Bahama Mamas and extra spicy Caesars. The broil cook who grilled your steak and the fry side cook who dressed your salad are still expecting me to give them a couple bucks for doing so. 


Essentially, I have to pay to serve you your food.