Saw a post where it said “You don’t tip on pickup.” Do you think that order just magically put itself together? The second someone picks up the phone to take your order a service begins and it ends with your food packaged with all the extra sh*t you aksed for. You would tip a bartender for cracking a beer but yet where I work it’s routine for corporate douchebags to leave the goose egg on a $100 order that personally took me 20 minutes to put together. Putting together takeout is part of my job as a server (which pays $2.89 an hour) so when someone does not tip on a pickup order I am providing that service for free. I would like to walk into a lawyers office and ask them to work on a case for free.
Submitted by Richie
This is a really iffy one for me. It ultimately comes down to personal preference at this point. I tip everyone, but I don’t tip on takeout the same way I’d tip a server or delivery person. I leave a buck usually. Plus it’s hard to tell who is putting together that order. Is it the host or the server? If the host, do they get tip share? They’re already making at least minimum wage, so how much more should they earn for this? Is it the only thing they do? These things vary so much from restaurant to restaurant that it would be difficult to set a standard.
I worked for a restaurant where this one woman did nothing but takeout. She was supposed to host, but she really just bossed all the hosts around and bitched at everyone (lol, maybe her being a bitch kinda skewed my judgement on this, but bear with me). She made at least a buck over minimum wage, but this was all she did. I don’t think she deserved tons of tips. Maybe some spare change, or a buck here and there. But if every single person was tipping her a buck or more, she’d be making bank on top of her minimum wage, for doing a relatively easy job. She only had to get the order together, she didn’t have to make it, deliver it, or provide continuous service. So how much did she actually deserve? By the way, she never shared her tips with the other hosts, even though we helped her out a lot and busted our asses a lot more than she did, and we didn’t get tip share from the servers either. We were actually the only position that didn’t earn tips. It was a crock.
I have also been a host who took takeout orders at another chain. I can say that most people didn’t tip. I really loved the ones who did. We would split the tips between the hosts at the end of the night, and it wouldn’t add up to much. Again, no tip share from the servers for seating. I would’ve liked to have gotten more tips seeing as how we did the whole “bring it to your car” routine. I certainly would’ve appreciated it on rainy days. But we were rarely tipped. I’d say it would’ve been nice to add a couple extra bucks an hour to my salary, but I didn’t think I deserved the same types of tips a server got.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that, again, the circumstances vary so much, it’s hard to set a standard. So tip if you want to tip on small orders. Definitely tip on large/bulk orders. Use your best judgement, but it’s always better to be giving than stingy when it comes to appreciating service workers.
