Restaurant Horror Show: How Servers Are Abused

Life as a commodity

Nearly one in 10 U.S. workers is employed in the restaurant industry, a total of 13.1 million people,  according to the National Restaurant Association.

Yet of all employment categories  tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, restaurant employees receive the lowest wages.

According to  a ROC report, nearly 90 percent of restaurant workers don’t receive paid sick days, vacation or health insurance.

In this sense, restaurant workers are increasingly representative of the situation of American labor in the early 21st century: employed at-will, without benefits, for a wage that’s constantly shrinking in buying power.

Union representation for food service workers is very rare, except in hotels and casinos. Unite Here, the union that includes many of these workers, succeeded in a 2011 drive to organize employees at the W Hotel in Boston, including the hotel restaurant, Market by Jean-Georges.

Greg Roberts, a waiter  with 30 years of experience in the industry, described a sense of the tenuousness of his employment before the drive. “People would seem to disappear,” he said, the result of a single customer complaint or a manager’s pique. “There was a definite sense that no one was safe.”

Schedules would change every week, and management would distribute the schedule two days in advance. Employees were required to be available for on-call shifts one or two days a week, and given only a few hours’ notice if they would be needed.

“It gave them maximum flexibility,” Roberts said. Workers, however, saw it differently. “It makes it very difficult to plan the rest of your life around.”

Caught up in a large corporation’s relentless  Taylorization, Roberts felt dehumanized. “You’re a commodity that can be moved back and forth to maximize profit.”

Thanks to healthcare reform signed into law by Mitt Romney, Massachusetts employers have to provide insurance for their workers. But, before unionization, Roberts and other employees had a high-deductible plan that made accessing care prohibitively expensive. A colleague told him he opted out of the company’s health plan in order for his children to qualify for state-subsidized coverage.

Customer service suffered under the old regime, Roberts said. “If you’re unhappy, that comes out. You live and die on people’s perceptions of service. You can’t give good service if you’re embittered.”

Stiffed on the tip

“I don’t tip because society says I have to. All right, I mean, I’ll tip if somebody really deserves a tip, if they really put forth the effort, I’ll give them something extra. But this tipping automatically, it’s for the birds. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just doing their jobs.” –Mr. Pink, “Reservoir Dogs”

The reasons put forth for withholding tips for service are varied but fall into a few general categories. There are the ideological objections, often with a  libertarian slant. There’s the  misanthropic cheapskate defense. There are studies showing the influence of subliminal factors like  music choice, the customer’s genes, the weather, the proximity of the server or size of her breasts.

To a server at a chain restaurant forced to interact with customers according to a script (“Do you need a few more minutes with the menu?”) or to wear a  minimum amount of “flair,” or a waitress in a diner whose arms, back and feet ache as much as her smile muscles, these excuses will not carry a pitcher of margaritas.

Everyone who has worked as a server has a story of a tip deadbeat. The  infamous recent case of the St. Louis pastor who scribbled out the automated gratuity added to her Applebee’s check and wrote, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?” is an aberration only for the publicity it has generated.