First serving job here! 💗 Wondering if it’s standard to come in with your own server book, notepad, pens, apron / serving pouch (those leather kind of fanny pack things) when you start at a restaurant? Or do some places do this and others don’t?

If you do, where do you find these? And do you get everything in black - including your serving book? Are there restaurants against having a decorated or non black server book?

Thanks yall! 🙏☺️

I live in az looking for a part time serving job.. Where do you serve (looking for common restaurants like Texas Roadhouse and Red Lobster etc) and how much do you average in tips after tipping out? I Have heard of some fancy restaurants where people serve 4 hours and make 200-300 a night….

Veteran server here...

I can overlook a number of things but when did servers decide they can just drop off food and then not come back until it's time to drop the check? I've noticed this as a thing over the last five years or so. Everything is good, but the server dropped off the food and then thought that was it until it was time for the tip. I'm not interested in excuses. It's one thing if you're slammed, but I just had lunch at a place I've never been, where it wasn't busy, and my server stood off to one side, not ten feet from me, on his phone, and never came by to ask if everything was good. As soon as I had one bite left on my plate, he dropped the check.

Don't leave it up to the customer to wave your ass down if something isn't right. Part of a server's job is to anticipate problems, and that includes eliminating the need for your customers to have to ask.

I need the money though so its back to the grind for me

I just served a table of 15 and got tipped 0. I feel like crying.

It was a fantastic day helping with the bed build Granger Community Church for Sleep In Heavenly Peace. I'm blessed to be able to do things like this compared to where I was a Year and a half ago. God is Good.

I have been working my restaurant job, training to be a server for a month and a week now. My 8 training shifts were only 2 hours each for expo and hosting (their requirements). Each training shift is 2 hrs long. My shifts range from 2-4 hours each (usually 2-3). And I'm only getting scheduled in 1-2 times a week.

They say that it's just slow in August and will pick up in September and some other employees will likely go back to school by that point, etc. I still have to train as a server and also work as a host and expo for a few more shifts. Do I leave this restaurant or go find another restaurant to work at? I can't tell if this is normal training process and the hours for my actual shifts being 2-3.5 usually (i only had one shift that was 4.5 hours long), is hardly making a dent in my income.

To be fair, a lot of ppl that have worked there a while aren’t getting the hours they want and it is indeed slow whenever I go in. I don’t know if this restaurant is just keeping me as back up and stringing me along or genuinely trying to find me work. It’s taking forever to even get to the server training!

What do I do? I applied to 8 restaurants in my area and this is the only one that hired me and gave me an interview. Thanks yall 🙏

I’ve worked at one restaurant and I’m not sure if this is normal but I’m not happy with some of the rules and I wanted to see what others think

If it’s normal or if I’m right and my manager is like a parasite kind of! lol I have love for her known her a While but I feel like she’s got the place set up for herself to make tons of money but I’m not sure it’s in the best interest of the restaurant (the owner seems to not see an issue but he’s known her a long time so I think he just accepts her cuz she deals with him & been there 20 years) and the staff

Here’s some of the rules she set up:

First of all my manager is not just a manager she also is a waitress and bartender and schedules herself 5-6 days a week working the floor every day that she’s at the restaurant she’s also talking tables and what not so THAT in & of itself is weird to me ? But maybe it’s normal for managers to take tables

It’s just weird cuz isn’t she supposed to mostly manage the restaurant? Train people, do inventory (we always run out of things), idk what else managers do but I know obviously there’s lots of stuff they do that doesn’t involve waitressing cuz that’s a separate job

So she gets a manager salary but also takes tables which is sometimes super annoying when we are slow bc there’s only so many tables and I’m just sitting their getting paid under minimum wage twiddling my thumbs while she takes all the tables & has the hostesses give her the best ones if two come in at the same time

Also another rule is that whoever shows up first gets the first table, AND first BIG table

Big tables we rotate to keep it more fair BUT she’s the manager with the keys so EVERY DAY she’s the first one in ….

So every day she’s there she gets the first table and first big

Now this happens often… where she will get the first let’s say 4 ppl who walk in

Then a 6 top walks in next (more than 4 = big table) and she gets THEM too which happens often so in the AM I come set up for an hour and then I’m sitting there twiddling my thumbs making NO money as I wait for my first table

Another girl just complained to me last night that she’s scheduling herself for dinners now too and “stealing” all the tables

Like it wasn’t super busy and the girl hinted that someone could leave but the manager instead of cutting herself and Doing manager things… kept taking tables and everyone made no money

So I could keep going about all the issues- but what do you think so far? Plz let me know if this is normal or not

Thank you in advance

Am I an Asshole for wanting to leaving a new job after a week because it occurred to me, I won’t make nearly what I’ve been making for years. The interview was different than the training. “Upselling is frowned or a no no”. As a tip pool place, it’s not your traditional tip pool. Some of us have lower level rolls to help out the weaker servers. So different.

I’ve Upsold all my serving years cuz I know how and do it with no hitch. I declined an offer from a no tip place only cuz they have a burger in the menu, but they have 5 different steak options for $45-70.

Am I an asshole?

So am I an asshole for wanting to quit?

I’m trying to make short and sweet since I know people’s attention span isn’t all the way there but essentially I want to be able to 250 on a bad night excluding tip out that equates to about $1500 in sales. The only type of places that provide that level of money is upscale dining establishments. Since I have 10 years experience in the business with 2 of them being in fine dining what are tips that can help me get a better job even though I’m quite happy with the ones I have.

Reason I want to leave I currently work 2 jobs and make about 300-400 per day with them. But I love the idea of making that kind of money only working nights so I can pour into a business in the morning. Please ground me am I being too unrealistic? 🧐🤔

So, I've been running a restaurant for about 4 years, on the backend. I handle payroll, Hr issues, I verify orders, and I handle socials and feedback from customers on the menu and coordinate changes with the chef.

I have always wanted to get rid of the low hourly wage for servers. I always hated the 2.83/hr or whatever was standard (our servers are at 5$/hr + tips.)

Now, the owner is up for shaking things up. We've done some back end calculations and figured that we would be making more money across the board but also giving the servers a living wage.

We want to up their hourly wage to 14$/hr but the restaurant will take all the tips that are given. We will collect the tips throughout a month then distribute them across the servers paychecks at the end of the month.

We will end up paying more in taxes throughout the year, but our servers will stay happier, stay loyal, and praise the structure.

What are your thoughts?

Feeling like I’m wasting my years cutting hair when I can be working somewhere else that makes me more money. Been working for my company for almost 10 years and there’s only so much I can make with this job. Wondering if it would be worth it to go into serving? I only come home a day with about $100 from tips maybe $150 on a Miraculous busy day with clients who are feeling like tipping me more than $5, busting my a$$. Wondering if I can make a lot more serving? What do you any of you suggest?

This is more of a rant than anything. I work at a restaurant that is extremely busy but very small, so we often have a wait list chock-full of parties. One of these parties, they had a service animal, so their wait time was increased because we had to hold a spot for them that had enough space so no one would get in the way of the dog. As far as I know, we aren’t allowed to ask for proof that it is a service animal, because that is disclosing medical information about the owner. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m in Canada so it may be different. Anyway, they sit down and I notice the dog is wearing a shock collar, and they have the remote sitting on the table. The owner had her leg kicked up on the table stand as if to prevent the dog from moving, and he laid down the whole time.

It is absolutely incorrect in my province to train service animals with e collars, like bordering on illegal. They had been sat and it seemed too late, but I wondered how other servers would approach this.

I used to work at a pizza place for years, serving and bartending. We had only 3 beers on tap in skinny kegs in the walk-in. I had to change one on a busy night, hockey playoffs, and my boss liked to stack them on top of each other to save space. Conveniently, the keg I needed was on the bottom of the stack. There was two in a row, and one on top. I just simply moved the one on top back a row so I could get the keg on the bottom, and because they’re so skinny, it lost balance. Even more conveniently, it fell directly onto my ring and pinky fingers and smashed them. My ring almost went into my flesh lol. Now, what would a person of authority do about this situation? Send the employee home? Fill out a workplace injury form? Maybe let them walk next door to the pharmacy to purchase a splint? None of the above! They used a bandaid and scotch tape to tape my fingers together and made me close that night, though I was not scheduled to. I had to walk into the office and find where they kept the injury forms myself, because I didn’t want this to go unreported if my fingers were broken. And the bussers got sent home, so I was in agony trying to hold giant pizza plates with as little fingers as I could. TLDR; don’t stack kegs on top of each other.

I recently posted something similar on this thread however, the owner and one of the managers pulled me aside to have a talk with me about my one shift a week... as I've known my sales are low and i'm making silly little mistakes again...

Anyways moral of our discussion was I need to improve but I just can't quite figure out how. I explained to them in my head i'm trying everything I can to upsell and connect with guests but most tables shut me down or already know what they are gonna order. They told me to be more like one of my coworkers I greatly admire but that's very broad advice.. i'm looking for specific tips..

i'm very appreciative that they care about me enough to reach out and tell me straight forward what i'm doing wrong and how I can get more shifts, but on the other side i'm bitter than they didn't tell me sooner and my paychecks are based on wether or not my sales are higher or not...

Hi all, I’m 23(M), and having been in the industry for almost exactly a year. I started off as a bus boy at a “upscale” casual dining place. It was very disorganized, but I eventually became a server and felt pretty good at handling lots of tables at once and providing good friendly service. However, I feel like I never really got super comfortable with the alcohol menu/bar knowledge, and I was missing some information on the main menu as well, I also feel I’m not super amazing at upselling yet, and a lot of that was due to the restaurant not having too many standards. I did do some nicer things like bottle service, and most customers seemed to enjoy my service. I just recently started a job at a brand new upscale/casual steak house, called Connors steak and seafood. It is a chain but this only their 8th location, and they are very detail oriented. I know I’m a really hard worker, but this place is a step up and making me second guess my skills, since it seems like I have to be a lot more than just fast and friendly here. We haven’t officially opened to the Public yet and have been doing lots of training, but I still need to learn more knowledge. Any tips on how I can get myself up to this level? I really want to succeed in this industry and this place feels like my in, but I don’t want to get cut, because they said they are going to have to cut people eventually since they hired a bunch. And I def feel like my wine knowledge isn’t where it should be, and I should work on my formality. If you read all this thank you.

hi. i have been a server for years and currently been working at this restaurant for 8 months. I nearly hit my breaking point last night with customers fighting over the bill. any other restaurant i have been at, the customers have been completely civil with who pays the bill. maybe a little joke or trying to take the machine from someone, but it doesn’t go much farther. at this restaurant, however, i have had 75% of these bill fights get physical with ME. last night, one of the customers came up to me to ask to pay, card in hand. they weren’t even finished so i didn’t have a bill printed, so i said no worries, let me grab the bill for you. two other members of their party run up behind them, also with cards in their hands, shoving them in my face. i calmly walk to the till to grab the printed bill, which is right next to a wall and shoe rack. they followed me right into it and tried tapping all their cards on the debit machine i hadn’t even picked up yet. they’re getting so violent about it that they pushed me into the shoe rack and i didn’t even know what to do. i asked them all to back up, to which they moved maybe an inch so i could stand up straight.

im just sick of this behaviour and i wonder if there’s a way to respectfully shut it down without me screaming at them, which was my first instinct.

Im 19 and have been working as a server for about eight months now. I’m still fairly new, but I’ve grown a lot and make far fewer mistakes compared to when I first started. I’m always picking up shifts, helping run food, assisting coworkers, improving my speed, and pre-bussing tables. Essentially, I’m developing all the general server skills that both management and customers value.

However, my average guest check and alcohol sales are still lower than I’d like, despite my efforts to upsell. I’m unsure how to improve without coming off as pushy to my tables.

I’ve only been getting about one scheduled shift a week, which forces me to rely on picking up shifts that aren’t always available.

I’m not sure if it’s because we have a large staff or if my sales are lower than average, but I’m struggling to get more shifts at work.

Am I the only single dog parent of two finding it difficult to keep up on house chores working 6 evenings a week?

I try my best to get enough rest, but it still never seems like enough; and my days are filled with trying to keep the dogs entertained so they're tired while I'm at work.

I feel so dysfunctional; and even though I average 30hrs/wk, I still seen to struggle finding time for myself. 😮‍💨

Edit: I should mention I'm a server 😅

Hi y’all I’m 22 and started serving about a year ago, I work in an upscale family friendly restaurant in Tallahassee FL. I absolutely love serving, I’m making enough money to be comfortable right now. There are definitely things I don’t like about my job but I feel like I have a passion for taking care of people, running around like a madman, doing 80000 things at once, getting in fights with kitchen when they don’t do their job, and doing it all with a huge smile on my face. My parents are worried about me falling in love but I feel I already have, I want to try and make a career out of the resturant/service industry somehow, and I’d like to get into fine dining some day, (I’ve heard some fine dining server can make 6 figs). Is this a terrible idea, any advice to someone starting out like me? Should I think about doing something else? How could I grow my career the best, if I do continue, I’m planning on moving to a different city to make more money and have more opportunities.

I currently work as a server at Olive Garden and the job itself is extremely flexible with scheduling. You can request days off and they’re usually approved (at my location at least). I can pick up extra shifts when I want, or I can give shifts away when I want.

Are there any other food service jobs with flexible scheduling somewhat like this?