Musings from the top of my soapbox

Welcome to my brand new endeavor.  Let me warn you first and foremost that I am not the writer in the family, nor do I pretend to be.  My husband has this amazing talent for putting his thoughts on paper in a beautiful, flowing, easy-to-read format.  He is also super obsessive about grammatical and spelling errors.  I'm more of a free spirit.  I write the way I think and it always (OK, most of the time) makes perfect sense in my head.  So I apologize in advance for any errors you may find or if you have problems following my train of thought.  Please don't feel the need to point it out to me.  That's what John is for (at least until he gets frustrated and quits reading).

I've thought of starting a blog for some time now but figured I didn't have anything interesting to say.  I still don't have anything interesting to say, but I do feel the need to express myself occasionally in more than a Facebook status or my 140 character Twitter limit.  Which brings me to the issue of the day.

As many of you know our oldest daughter is in her third year of college and is a server at a restaurant here in town.  Hearing her stories from the food service industry has been an eye-opening experience.  Until she took this job I had zero knowledge of anything restaurant related with the exception of where I did or did not want to eat.

The first thing I've learned is that these men and women literally work for tips.  They do not make minimum wage and the couple of dollars an hour they do make barely covers their taxes.   If you go out to eat and don't tip, your server doesn't make any money.  I've always been a fairly generous tipper, but I am even more so now.  When you see your daughter come home after working all day long for $20 you think twice before you skimp on your next tip.

The second nugget of knowledge that I have recently acquired is the most disturbing.  Servers don't want to work on Sundays.  When I questioned why I was told that it is because they don't make any money on Sundays.  Now, this perplexed me because if I went to a restaurant at lunchtime on a Sunday and it wasn't crowded, I would assume something was seriously wrong with the food.  All decent restaurants are jam packed on Sundays after church so how could they not be making any money??  The answer was very distressing to me.  Apparently, those going to lunch with their families after church don't tip.  Yep, you read that correctly.  I was told in no uncertain terms that church people don't tip.  As a Christian and a "church person" I find it very upsetting that we have this reputation.  After hearing this from my daughter, I was talking to another family member who is also a server although in a different state.  Without repeating her comment, I asked if some days were generally more profitable than others.  The response was, "Most days are about the same....except Sundays.  We never make any money on Sundays because people coming from church are horrible tippers".

This just baffles me.  Not only does it baffle me, but I find it very distressing.  If I go out to eat on Sunday afternoon, obviously straight from church, and refuse to pay someone for their service, what message is that sending? And how sad is it that an entire industry wants to avoid us like the plague?

So, the next time you go out to eat, be kind to your server.  Keep these things in mind and be considerate. Plus, I have a theory that it is never a good idea to be rude to someone who is handling your food. :-)