Current Events > How much would you guess servers make on average in the diner I work at?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Including tips obviously. Min. wage for servers is like half of regular min. wage, so like $5.50/hour. I work in a little flyspeck mom and pop type place in the middle of nowhere. Dishwashers can expect around $11-13/hour while line cooks will likely be in the $13-18 range depending on tenure. I'm making $18 after being there 5 years. Curious what kinda money people think servers make, ideally just gut feeling without looking anything up.

---

depends on how many weak and easy to con customers they manage to serve that evening

---

depends on the Operating System, CPU, and tasks they perform like crypto mining.

---

Are they legal?

---

hmmm, looks like we're clustering toward the extremes

---

I went with 20-22. For a Dinner I would think that is a good day. But remember there are always great days, and complete shit days, so it all averages out.
That is possible, but you also didn't really say where it was, or the average price of a dish.
---

~20, give or take a few based on how busy it is.

---

At both of the restaurants I worked at when i was younger, servers made about double what the cooks/dish washers made. Tips add up when they're serving multiple tables at a time and and most tables are in/out in under an hour each. It was not uncommon for some of the good looking girls to make more on a Friday or Saturday night than I would make all week. Obviously they dont make nearly as much when its slow, so what days they work would really affect their income for the week.

In answering the question, first I have to state that the numbers are difficult to pin down exactly. Servers are notoriously shy about keeping records or fully claiming cash tips. But as an emergency waiter myself and from what I've picked up as a manager, I have a pretty good idea. In my stint as a waiter I tended to average around $2.5/customer, but that was mostly pre-covid (like $3 flat in my one stint post-covid) before a ~10% price hike. And if we're being honest, I'm fairly uncomfortable and awkward in social situations and not best suited to a job interacting with the public. Hence emergency waiter. It's also been my experience that women tend to see higher tip rates (and are literally the only ones employed by my diner in a non-emergency capacity in its 14 years in business), and attractive people see another bump. So as an ugly guy, I suppose I drew the short end of the stick. In talking with a server I trust who's more open than most (she's worked there for like 7/8 years now), she expects $3/customer or a little more. With no disrespect intended to her because I love her, she's a fairly average-looking 45-year-old woman. I use the $3/customer figure in my calculations, believing it to be fairly conservative. Also using server min. $5.50 as a base salary because I'm pretty sure they don't get much above that.

There are 3 basic shifts. We're open 7 am - 3 pm. A shift from 6:30-3:45 (average time servers leave) every day, a shift from 8-3:45 on weekends as a second server, and a shift from 9-3:45 on weekdays as a second server. The last shift is used every day during the summer, and drops down to 3 days during winter slow periods. These particular shifts are not made equally, and the different times of year affect things significantly. The overall figure I mathed out from customer numbers was $29.66/hour. The second shift on a non-summer weekday dropped all the way down to $21.06 (getting the short end of the stick there), while the main shift on a summer weekend clocked in at a dazzling $41.18.

---

And all this is to say that I'm confronted with a daily reminder that I chose a really stupid career path, doing more work that requires much more training for significantly less profit. And also that I die a little inside every time I see servers held up as an example of people who deserve better because the poor things have to rely on tips.

---

Depends on a few things. Like the kind of volume and revenue the restaurant does and how many servers they need for service.

They could easily be making over $20 or maybe even $30 an hour if there's a strong regular crowd and there's only 2 or 3 of them. But if it's not consistently busy that obviously means less money is coming through and every server you add on is diminishing the size of everyone's slice of the pie.

---