Oh, I don't know. Perhaps I don't think that I should tip someone who is knowingly bringing me crap?

Are you really trying to say the restaurant is "throwing away good employees" if they don't tell this business account that gave a low tip to F off and never come back?

I'm sorry, but no reasonable owner would do that.

Whatever they're doing, they deserve minimum wage. I'm assuming they're legal Americans, and we've set those standards. They should be met one way or the other.

From what I can tell, they turned away what were likely regular customers for a one-time deal from a large group. I don't know that there was any type of 'corporate relationship' going on here.

The tip is meant to cover the difference between the waiter's shitty wage and what a human being should expect to make for decent work in this country. The tip has nothing to do with the quality of your food (unless it was prepared wrong after a specific request, as covered in previous posts) nor the restaurant's general atmosphere. If you chose to ignore this and tip on a different basis, that's your prerogative. That however, doesn't make it right.

Hope that helps.

GADS!

Must've struck a nerve.

Sucks getting called out for your juvenile horseshit. It's okay Hootie, I will survive.

And once again - I take a spectacular amount of pride in being the one that facilitated you popping the cherry on your ignore feature. For as much shit as has been flung your way, to be the guy that finally cut deep enough (read: hit close enough to home) to set you off....well that just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Good employees don't contact a restaurant's clients over personal grievances. Hoottie is a shitty employee.

A business should be happy to lose shitty employees.

I don't know that anyone is suggesting that they tell the company to f off. I'm not sure where that came from.

I was. But I forgot that there is always the option to add that gratuity for future visits. Restaurant owners do that to protect valuable employees. Basically, I was wrong. They took a calculated risk and it backfired. Don't do it again. Add the gratuity, and keep your mouth shut in isolated incidents like this. That's really not arguable. It's just not.

They deserve exactly what they accepted when they were hired. No more, no less.

Taste is very subjective. If you don't like it, don't come back. It's not the waiter's fault you didn't like the food.

Well I have no idea what kind of employee he really is, but I do agree that contacting them on his own definitely shouldn't have been his first course of action.

People who deliver good customer service get more pay, more hours, and scheduling preference. People deliver bad service get replaced. Customer service IS their job. It's all you have to do.

Maybe taking some lame stand might have bought you credibility with a couple of high school students serving pizza for a week or two, but it is absolutely not a long term perspective for anyone involved. In a year if anyone even remembers that incident it won't be helping me anymore, but the revenue is still gone.

Again, good customer service all the time is a basic expectation for waitstaff. If someone can't handle that, there is a stack of applications with people who want the chance.

Hootie's restaurant is in the Champaign area, i.e. University of Illinois. BDO came for a university recruiting event, like they probably do at least once every semester. It would be reasonable to assume that if the experience was enjoyable, they would make it a habit of coming back to this establishment for all of their corporate events in the area.

Flop,

I'd fire him, too. At the very least I'd send him on a month long vacation to think about it. If the person I train to work for him in the interim does an acceptable job, I Wally Pipp his ass.

The problem isn't the consternation, but how he went about addressing it. In the event that my employees (my employees at my establishment who are ****ing with my livelihood) feel wronged, that comes to me. You don't act unilaterally, you bring it to me and I make the decision as the man who's name is on every business loan, every mortgage and every contract attached to the business.

If I'm a good manager, I work with my employees to make it right while also attempting to salvage a business relationship with the 'client'. If, on the other hand, I'm reckless as hell, I allow my mid-20's bartender with a HS diploma to go badgering the CEO of a company that just dropped $500 at my establishment the night before.

C'mon - how could you, as a business owner, allow that? It's an absolutely putrid business practice and it reeks of the inmates running the asylum. You don't hang your employees out to dry, but you absolutely cannot condone a line-employee making that decision without consulting you.