I've only worked at high end restaurants; since I was a culinary student with hospitality management background, I pleaded my case and got in. (I won't lie, I'm sure tits and stilettos had something to do with it.)
That said, to the person who talked about low end restaurants, it doesn't JUST happen there. I don't know about the experiences at IHOP or whatever, but I find it's usually more rampant (from convos) in high end than low end. Most high end restaurants tend to not be chains, so if the food is good, with good wine lists, and personalized service, even if you have a shit waiter people are still going to come. With the chains, you know the food is relatively sub-par, but you balance that with better service. (IMO, that's not how it should be but often how it was.)
The whole system of wait staff is relatively fucked - your servers will tell you it's a huge issue to only be making 2-3 dollars an hour + small tips on a slow night. That happened. But it was offset by the fact on a regular night, especially one with parties etc, you were EASILY going to pull in somewhere around the $700 dollar range. Per server. When you have a sommelier running around with wine lists whose prices start going into the several k range (My entire time there I was waiting for someone to buy our most expensive bottle of white, dude walks in waving around $100s to everyone, THEN went back and tipped the cooks because he wanted us to stay open late, dude even bought me a cab ride home since I had waved my ride home away earlier...he bought that bottle...10k bottle of wine with a large party, so instant 18% gratuity for one server? Yea, fuck servers.) you know that by and large, even if you make shit all one night, you can make bank another night, having it come out relatively even.
Most servers don't live like that though; they live paycheck to paycheck, so when you might make 800 dollars a night, that's gone just as fast as 200, and what's more, when it's only 200, you're short.
If you haven't waited or been around the staff, it's easy to say they should get paid more, or that if we put them on minimum wage we'd get better service. We've done it like this for so long that it would be stupid hard to change.
I'm probably more bitter than most, because I had degrees in culinary arts and hospitality management, and when I was cooking etc, got paid way less than our POS servers, and I'd spent 70k on my education. That's the industry though. Breaking in to become a chef is one of the most ruthless things you can do, and we had servers who had dropped out of high school who simply learned to say "pinot noir" without fucking it up rifling 100s off.
ANYWAYS...
As far as tipping, the best tippers tended to be husbands with wives (Which is interesting, I think it's sort of the las vegas effect, where men bet more with their wives around? I know when my dad tipped a server heavily, if it was a chick my mother frothed at the mouth.), people from out of town (We had a group of australians who used to come in once a mouth that I always made time for - dudes tipped retardedly well, and were a great group of guys on top of it) or gatherings of older people. We obviously had the "high rollers" who tipped really well - we waited on the Pittsburgh Penguins one night, and EVERYONE made bank, including the bus boys.
The worst tippers were "older" girl gatherings. I recall vividly getting a woman banned from our restaurant. She grabbed my arm as I was walking by (We were super busy, but this is not something you ever say, you pretend every guest/table are the only people in the restaurant) and said "Why don't you go call us a cab?" No please, no "Could you do me a favor?"
I told her Absolutely I could, but it would be a few minutes before I was near a phone, and then it would be a minimum of 20 minutes besides, if that was ok. I politely suggested that if that wait was too long, she could walk about 5 steps outside of the restaurant where cabs swung by every 5 minutes because there were so many bars/restaurants/hotels in the area.
She gave me a look that asked if I was stupid, and I smiled, asked her where she needed to go and told her I'd call her a cab ASAP.
I get back to the desk about 3 minutes later, and I'M LITERALLY ON THE PHONE WITH THE CAB COMPANY when she walks up, looks out the door and says, so where's our cab?
I'm dumbfounded at this point. I tell her I'm on the phone with the company now, (I don't mention I had told her that it would be a 20 minute wait to begin with and I still have 17 more minutes) so I say, it's on it's way, but if you're in a hurry, there's still those cabs I mentioned.
She gives me another look, and says, "You know, the customer is always right. You said you would do something, and I expected you to do it. It's not hard."
My manager comes over and looks at the women and says, "Common decency isn't hard either. Think about that while you find another restaurant to eat at, because you're no longer welcome here."
I hated older bitches who came in without their husbands to keep them on a leash.
Disclaimer: Might just be Pittsburgh.
