Tip your server.
Please, can we all hold hands and send out some positive thoughts to all those servers who will be working their asses off at IHOP on Tuesday July 7th? That is the day that participating IHOPs will be offering their guests a short stack of buttermilk pancakes for the price of 57 cents. Yes, some corporate head of bullshit came up with that idea in order to celebrate the 57th anniversary of IHOP. As he (you know it was a “he.”) was sitting in his glass tower surrounded by Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity posters and sipping his bottomless cup of crappy coffee, he sharted out the idea when he sneezed too hard. (Technically, a “snart.”) As he was cleaning his underwear, he noticed his poo had formed into the shape of a “57” and a lightbulb went off over his head. (Dr. Oz wants our poo to be in the shape of an “S” but at IHOP, they settle for the shape of a dollar sign.) Mr. Corporate quickly sent out an email that filtered down to every server who now looks at July 7th as the day they will literally work until their asses fall off and they are flatter than an order of Harvest Grain ‘n Nut Pancakes. And you know what kind of customers will be in their restaurant that day? Too many cheap ass people who don’t want to leave a decent tip.
Look, we all know you’re supposed to tip 20% of the bill, but when there is some promotion that makes the bill practically non-existent, you can’t go with 20% anymore. The rules change. Imagine that some cheap asshole and his five cheap friends all order the 57 cent short stack and five glasses of water. They take up a prime booth and they stay there for 45 minutes. They run their waitress ragged and ask for refills and extra butter and extra syrup and extra napkins and then they even ask her to take a photo of them. After taxes, the bill will be about $3.09. 20% of that would be a 60 cent tip which is beyond crappy, but we all know it will happen because it’s IHOP. When people see they can get a cheap meal somewhere, they will crawl out of the woodwork like roaches crawling out of bag of beans that has been in dry storage for too long. And who pays for it? The servers that’s who.
Hurrah for IHOP for coming up with such a great promotional tactic, but please let us know that the folks on the front lines are going to be making some money that day. If you are one of the thousands of people who can’t resist a breakfast that will cost less than a roll of toilet paper at the dollar store, please remember to leave your server a decent tip. Factor in what the meal would have been had it not been National Cheap People Day. Look at your server and see how hard she is working and let that reflect in the tip you leave. Working at IHOP can never be easy, but on a day like July 7th, it has to be even more challenging. If your meal is only $1, can’t you just throw some extra money down for the tip? After all, it wasn’t the server’s idea to hand out almost free food all day. They have bills to pay and they don’t want to do a day of charity work.
Tip your server. Eat your cheap pancakes, enjoy your free water but take care of your server. It’s the right thing to do. If you’re one of the people who thinks it’s okay to only leave 20% even when the bill is less than a dollar, I want you to order a Stuffed French Toast and stuff it up your ass.
Here is IHOP’s Facebook page in case you want to add this blog post to their page.
James Baker
Sorry I will tip acording to the service.
James Baker
I will tip not acording to the service NOT the bill total ,I could not care less what they make an hour , dont like it then find another job period !! Is like the people that bitch that the minimun wage should be increased -Jim Rohn said if yiu are planning to live in the low wage braket forever then sure by all means do complain about it but otherwise find a way to move up !! I’ve paid more than 20% at time and no tip at other times like I say the service is what matters to me .
TANYA
First off, what god forsaken restaurant would celebrate a 57th anniversary????? Oh yeah, IHOP!! Really? A 25th anniversary, a 50th or 100th…maybe I could understand but 57?? Geesh!!!
Seriously though, I have never liked restaurant “promotions”. Although I understand an occasional one for, let’s say, a grand opening, my belief is that if a restaurant is good enough, they do not need promotions to get people in the door. The place I work has their own “loyalty club” and, of course, members get coupons in the mail or via email. America has been overrun by “Reward Cards” & “Loyalty Clubs” so I guess I should be used to the idea by now. However, I wish I would just get the best price automatically, not because I have some stupid card on my keychain.
And, as far as the tipping goes with promotions, all I can say is F%@k!! Why is it so difficult for people to understand that they are supposed to tip based on the total of the bill BEFORE the promotional discount??? Every time I see one of my restaurant’s coupons sitting on the end of a customer’s table (which they always put out there before they are even greeted by their server), I have to hold back my desire to ask if they will be tipping me based on the full bill or on the discounted total. At least if I knew ahead of time, I could decide if they will be receiving my excellent service or my “promotional” service. It is very unusual at my place of employment that guests actually tip on the full amount of the bill. If on the rare occasion I am tipped for the full bill, I think that the guest must have been, or still is currently, in the service industry because WE know what it’s like. Prime example was this past weekend. At the start of a shift, I had a small party of 6. As soon as I walked up to greet them, I see coupons and their loyalty cards everywhere. I quietly sighed and thought to myself that this was just going to be a wonderful way to start my evening (heavy sarcasm here). However, as it was my first table for the evening and I wasn’t covered in sweat & mayo, I decided to make the best of it. The guests all received great service, had no issues with their food, I kept their drinks constantly filled…you know, all the things that we are supposed to make sure our guests experience. They wanted separate checks (so they could use all their coupons, of course) and all together their total came to $110. After applying all the discounts, and using the points on their cards, the total for my party ended up being $44 and some change. I was pleasantly surprised when I ended up being tipped a total of $30. As the guests were leaving, one of them told me that the group had a great evening out and that they would be requesting me in the future. She also told me that she used to be a server and her son is currently a bartender so she knows how crappy many people are, especially when they are using coupons. I laughed (while thinking “Hell yeah, sister!!”) and said that yes, it can be difficult but that it is the people like her group (or at least her) that make waiting on the idiots more tolerable. Needless to say, I’m glad I didn’t give the group my discounted service because there are at least a few people out there that know the correct tipping procedures. So, a BIG THANK YOU to all of you that tip correctly. To the rest, I ask that you learn what is proper before you go out, PLEASE!!
Alan
This is almost as bad as when Denny’s used to give away Grand Slams the day after the Super Bowl. Don’t know if they still do that; probably not, though. I can just picture staff doing walkouts at various Denny’s locations if this yearly clusterf#%k continued…
MadMike
You forgot the most important part – IHOP doesn’t even pay their staff any money at all. First – they pay only 2.00 and hour, and they keep that 2 dollars an hour “for Taxes”. The servers get a paycheck with a “0 Net”. The Servers make only TIPS, that’s all they make. If you sat there an hour, and left a 1 dollar tip, they made 1 dollar that hour.
If you are too cheap to leave even the dollar, they made 0 dollars that hour. If you cant tip, don’t go out to eat. Go to McDonalds. Most important of all – don’t support this business model!
Gilbey
That certainly isn’t true. IHOP would have to pay the difference. They don’t pay $2, they pay 2.13 to start with. And if you made $1, IHOP has to take the min wage of $7.25-1-2.13 = 4.12 and kick in 4.12 to make up the shortage. A server can’t make below $7.25 per hour, and if they do, it’s because they allow themselves to be taken advantage of by an employer. Same as the fools working at your beloved McDonald’s, everybody’s going to make at least $7.25, still have to pay their taxes, but the only difference is the tipped server has a chance at making more.
The flawed thing about this is that each individual hour is not considered. You could be at work for 40 hours, and for 10 of those hours, you make really great tips. For the other 30, the hours drag on and you barely get $3 an hour because they are slow weekday afternoon shifts. You stayed at work in order to make $5 an hour, and it didn’t pay for you gas to get there, your childcare or the meth you needed to get through the shift, but you’re not getting extra because IHOP is going to take a total of all your tips and your $2.13’s and divide by the hours you worked…and it will come out above $7.25 because you had a couple of great nights.
That’s not fair. Obviously if I were a server, I’d say I’d only work weekends when people tip and say screw you on the slow days. But someone has to work those shifts…So maybe they should only be allowed to average your earnings on a per day basis, not a per week. Maybe any restaurant that is a shitty chain like IHOP, Waffle House, Chili’s etc. should be forced to pay a wage, just like other shitty fast food chains. You know no server at IHOP is getting more than the obligatory $1 or 2 per table or person. Going to a living wage for them would not make the good servers lose tips, because fantastic tips there are simply very rare. If your restaurant doesn’t use actual glassware, and linen for tablecloths and napkins, you should have to pay a real wage. For real restaurants, it could be optional and left to be revised later.
I go to nice non-chain restaurants, where they have low turnover and you’ll repeatedly be served by the same people over the course of months, if not years. I tip well because those people will remember me when I go back. Silly little chain restaurants, by the time I go back to them, the staff has turned over or it’s a location in a city I am merely driving through and I know I won’t go back before they have new staff–I give them 10%, and sometimes nothing if they give me a good reason. The staff at chains are bound by corporate and not allowed to do extra for me, or make substitutions or give me a little extra. Real restaurants can, and if they have attitude about strict rules, I don’t have to go back there. And there’s nothing for them to do about it. They’ve already given me the service, and I won’t be back for them to “remember” me. I’d much rather just have the cost of the staff included on the cost of the food. Then I could decide if I’m willing to pay it. And if the service is shitty, I can still talk to a manager or call corporate. After all, we sure do call McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, et al. with our complaints and we don’t tip those bastards, do we?
Eliz
You seem confused. Tips aren’t meant to help your servers remember you for next time, they are literally your servers’ salary. Even servers at chain “non-real” restaurants need real money to buy real food and pay real bills.
Gilbey
I’m not confused. Not when people on here have basically stated that they remember customers and treat them according to how much money they were able to extort from them on their last visit. I need real money too, and if I can get away with it and half-assedly justify keeping more of it in my pocket, then that is what I will do. Give me great service hoping for a great tip, but then you get nothing or only 10%, what are you going to do about it when I never come back? I’ll keep my money, because I don’t know you, don’t give a damn about you and you can do nothing about it. Now the neighborhood bar and eatery I go to every week or so, different story. They can do something about it the next time I come back, and be shitty, be unaccommodating and short me on drinks or be unwilling to make substitutions. No confusion at all. Tipping is a bad system and $15 an hour is a fine wage for waiting tables. Not everyplace is NYC. It might not be so great there, but for most of America, we’d all be working and off welfare if waiting tables was a guaranteed $15 an hour.
Mangler
A friend is a mgr at an IHOP. There were certain locations around town that chose not to participate because their typical clientele would be the type you wrote about. It wasn’t what I would have thought though. The locations in the lower income and/or working class areas participated. It was locations in the more affluent areas that chose not to. I thought that was interesting.
April
I think, a lot of times, people who have less income realize they aren’t the only ones struggling. Not all of them, by any means, but the ones who work hard and are trying hard. Those people, will make sure they can tip well, because they know what it’s like. I remember being dirt poor. When we scraped together enough money to go out to eat, we always remembered the server. Both of us have served. Both of us know what it’s like to run your ass off for a little bit of pay.
Gilbey
I stayed home. I figured the waitress could just use the time to hide in the bathroom sexting with the Mexican cook and make nothing.
Emily
I was always taught by my mom (a former hair stylist who lived on tips) that if you receive any discounts on a bill you should tip based on the full price. After all the product was discounted, not the service you receive.
Carol Burge
Left a comment plus a link to this post on the iHOP FB page. I just couldn’t resist! 🙂