Everybody Into The Pool

Does anyone pool their tips? I've done it at a couple of a restaurants and it can be a really great thing or a really awful thing. Of course it all depends on who you work with. When I worked at The Marriott, we would pool tips on Mother’s Day because it was the easiest thing to do. That was The Holy Grail of busy days and we would be sold out from the second the door was open until we closed. People would claw and scratch their way inside to get a piece of that $38.95 buffet. God that was an easy job. Why did I ever leave it? When we would pool, it meant that one person had to be in charge of all the money at the end of the day and that person was none other than yours truly. Contrary to my surly attitude, I am completely trustworthy and very often I would have over $8000 in my pocket by the end of the day. I was the one who decided how much we would tip out the bar, food runners and bussers and then divide the rest amongst the servers. Equal parts tip for equal parts work. Theoretically, anyway.

There is always someone who wants to take advantage of the pooling situation. You know the type. When it’s time for the ice bins to be refilled, you look around and that one lazy ass bitch has gone to the bathroom again. Or at ketchup cleaning time suddenly two or three people went to have a cigarette break. But when it comes time to pass out the tips, those are the first ones who have their greedy sweaty palms out ready for their piece of the pie. The only piece of pie I want to give those people is a piece of the moldy ass apple pie that was on special last week. It pisses me off. I worked with this one girl once who never wanted to do shit. Even though she had worked there for a year, she would come in every day and ask the same pathetic question: what do you want me to do? Bitch, wipe some tables, roll some silverware, fill the sugar caddies or change your tampon. The same fucking things we do every goddamn day. And then when it came time to put our tips in the jar to be divided, she always wanted to know how much everyone was putting in. And if you mentioned that you got stiffed, she was the one who had to be like, “oh great. Why should I lose a portion of the tip just because you got stiffed? Waa Waa Waa, poor me. That’s not fair.” But then if she got a really big tip she had to make sure we all knew that she was making extra money for everyone. She was a real pill. Personally I think she was just bitter because she had a big ass and a smushed in face and never got cast in anything even though she went to an audition every day before work.

Pooling tips is not easy. You have to trust your co-workers and share responsibility. Everyone must work as a team because there is no "I" in team, you know. There are, however, two of them in Bitchy Waiter and if I spy with my little eye someone who is pocketing a portion of our tips, I will poke that person in the eye with an ice pick and I will not feel bad about it.

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