American service, particularly suited to banquet service means that all the glass and silver, plus napkin and perhaps a service plate are on the table when guest arrives.  Plate service (means waiters serve only plates, which are plated (prepared) in the kitchen.

French service- (The last propagator of this style was the Lausanne Hotel School) Large pesentation dishes by cooks, service was simply to present tray etc. to guest at the table, while the guest served themselves, as often as guest wanted.  (The signal was how the guest placed silver on plate, knife and fork together at top of plate usually signaled guest was done.)  The service kept on coming until guest indicated he was done.  Essentially this was appropriate for banquets in private homes of the aristocracy and rich.  Restaurants did not find this service apprpriate due to money, time and employee constraints.  Russian service became the norm for fancier service until the 1970’s use of large dinner plates that were elaborately prepared for presentation by the kitchen.

Russian service is essentially a derivative of French service.  Main feature is the preparation of the large platter in the kitchen and served by the waiter to the guest, using usually a fork and a spoon in the right hand while holding the platter in left hand.  Presentation of the platter is part of visual presentation by cooks.  Also “handy” to help control food costs- an innovative idea when it appeared.

Golden Throats Now Have an Easier Time Locating Places to Sing.

America loves to sing and with popular talent shows such as American Idol becoming the topic of the day, karaoke is as popular as ever. For the musically inclined finding good spots hosting karaoke both locally and while traveling has been a tough challenge. There is a website that can make that search quite a bit easier by listing karaoke locations and their hours searchable by state and city. HotKaraokeSpots.com is essentially a directory for venues to post their karaoke hours of operation and consumers’ benefit by having one consolidated online resource.

Karaoke is as much the rage today as it was when it was first introduced to the country back in the 1970’s. Karaoke is very popular in both big city and rural bars and now with much lower prices for home equipment it is becoming popular at parties and weddings.

“When I would travel to the Twin Cities form St. Cloud I would want to go out and sing some karaoke but I never knew where to go or what their hours for karaoke were. HotKaraokeSpots.com made this much easier for me. They even provide a map right to the club.” – Tim, St. Cloud, MN

Until now, the only ways to locate the best locations to unleash your vocal talent to the public was to stumble upon a bar or club that happened to be hosting karaoke that evening or to find information through local advertising or often outdated venue websites. HotKaraokeSpots.com has an easy to use directory and a discussion forum where consumers can participate in “K-talk” about their favorite spots, favorite songs and contests they may have participated in. The site also building a directory of “KJ’s” (Karaoke Jockeys) for those who like to follow a favorite host or need a KJ for a party or event. HotKaraokeSpots.com is particularly useful when traveling to another city where you may be unfamiliar with the local venues.

New York Times
By STEVEN A. SHAW
Published: August 10, 2005

WHEN Thomas Keller, one of America’s foremost chefs, announced that on Sept. 1 he would abolish the practice of tipping at Per Se, his luxury restaurant in New York City, and replace it with a European-style service charge, I knew three groups would be opposed: customers, servers and restaurateurs. These three constituencies are all committed tipping - as they quickly made clear on Web sites. To oppose tipping, it seems, is to be anticapitalist, and maybe even a little French.
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But Mr. Keller is right to move away from tipping - and it’s worth exploring why just about everyone else in the restaurant world is wrong to stick with the practice.

Customers believe in tipping because they think it makes economic sense. “Waiters know that they won’t get paid if they don’t do a good job,” is how most advocates of the system (meaning most everybody in America) would put it. To be sure, this is a seductive, apparently rational statement about economic theory, but it appears to have little applicability to the real world of restaurants.

Michael Lynn, an associate professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, has conducted dozens of studies of tipping and has concluded that consumers’ assessments of the quality of service correlate weakly to the amount they tip.

Rather, customers are likely to tip more in response to servers touching them lightly and crouching next to the table to make conversation than to how often their water glass is refilled - in other words, customers tip more when they like the server, not when the service is good. (Mr. Lynn’s studies also indicate that male customers increase their tips for female servers while female customers increase their tips for male servers.)

What’s more, consumers seem to forget that the tip increases as the bill increases. Thus, the tipping system is an open invitation to what restaurant professionals call “upselling”: every bottle of imported water, every espresso and every cocktail is extra money in the server’s pocket. Aggressive upselling and hustling for tips are often rewarded while low-key, quality service often goes unrecognized.

In addition, the practice of tip pooling, which is the norm in fine-dining restaurants and is becoming more common in every kind of restaurant above the level of a greasy spoon, has gutted whatever effect voting with your tip might have had on an individual waiter. In a perverse outcome, you are punishing the good waiters in the restaurant by not tipping the bad one.

Indeed, there appears to be little connection between tipping and good service. The best service in the Western world is at the Michelin three-star restaurants of Europe, where a service charge replaces tipping. As a customer, it’s certainly pleasant to dine in France, where the menu prices are “service compris,” representing actual totals, including the price of food, taxes and service.

Tipping is hardly the essence of capitalism. Actually, it would seem to have little to do with capitalism at all: it is - supply and demand be damned - a gift, a gratuity decided on after the fact.

Waiters and waitresses also believe it is their right to be tipped. A tip, while a gift, is a strange sort of gift in that it is a big part of the server’s salary. In most states, servers don’t even get paid minimum wage by their employers - there is an exemption (called a “credit”) for tipped employees that allows restaurants to pay them just a token couple of dollars an hour (as low as $1.59 per hour in Kansas and $3.85 per hour in New York City). They are instead largely paid by tips, to the tune of $26 billion per year.

When you talk to servers, you’ll find that most believe they make more money under the tipping system than they would as salaried employees. And that’s probably true, strictly speaking. The tipping system makes waiters into something akin to independent contractors. And in most any business the hourly wage of a contractor is higher than that of an employee. Yet in most businesses, people choose to be employees.

That is because those who wish to guarantee their long-term financial security sacrifice a little bit of quick cash for longer-term benefits like health insurance, retirement plans and vacation pay. But, of course, most servers see themselves as transient employees - waiting tables before moving on to bigger and better things.

Still, this may not always be the case. The large number of waiters I see in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s put the theory in doubt. While kitchen workers trade low wages and no tips for a future in the business - the opportunity to rise in rank, to one day run a kitchen - what calculation do waiters and waitresses make? Under the tipping system, it seems, they’re trading a little extra now for the promise of nothing later. With his announcement, Mr. Keller has sent a signal to his culinary colleagues that there just might be a better way.

For their part, restaurateurs believe it is their right to have consumers pay servers, so they don’t have to pay their employees a living wage. They prefer the current system because it allows them to have a team of pseudo-contractors rather than real employees.

But that too is shortsighted. Over time, as in any service-oriented business, waiters loyal to the restaurant will perform better and make customers happier than waiters loyal only to themselves.

In this, the world’s most generous nation of tippers, most restaurants don’t even offer service as good as at the average McDonald’s. While it lacks style, service at McDonald’s is far more reliable than the service at the average upper-middle-market restaurant. This is not because the employees of McDonald’s are brilliant at their jobs - it’s because they are well-trained and subject to rigorous supervision.

And come to think of it, at McDonald’s there is no tipping.

Steven A. Shaw is the author of the forthcoming, “Turning the Tables: Restaurants From the Inside Out.”

Tipping Points
By Brian Farnham, Originally Published Aug 14, 2000

I recently heard of a woman who’d perfected a surefire method of getting her airline tickets upgraded. En route to the airport, she buys a gaily dressed fruit basket. At the check-in desk, she sets it down on the counter in front of the boarding agent. When the agent invariably comments on the basket, she says in a cheery voice, “Oh, yes, isn’t it wonderful? My co-workers just gave it to me as part of a big send-off. But I don’t know how I’ll manage it on the plane.” After a pause, she suddenly gets an idea: “Why don’t you take it and share it with the other agents?” She holds firm through some polite oh-I-couldn’ts and are-you-sures before the basket is accepted. And when her boarding pass is returned to her, it almost always reveals a bump to business class.

This is a classic example of an inducement tip (also known as a bribe). Most tipping is not of the inducement variety but a simple reward for good service. But the two forms of compensation are similar in that they reach beyond the prescribed standards of payment. It’s up to you to decide how much to give and how to give it. Such ambiguity can cause many people to whine like a Woody Allen character after sex: Was that good enough? Should I have done more? Do you think they liked it? But situations that call for a little something extra should be looked upon as opportunities, not traps. And as with anything else, it helps to know what’s expected of you.

Bars and Restaurants
This may come as a surprise to some, but the old standard of 15 percent for servers hasn’t been standard for some time now. The Zagat Survey began asking people about their tipping habits a couple of years ago and found that the average restaurant tip in major U.S. cities is just over 17 percent. That means doubling the tax to figure your tip leaves you on the chintzy side. (New Yorkers aren’t the most generous tippers in the country. Although we beat the national average, Philadelphia’s 18.5 percent puts us to shame.)

Some restaurateurs wish their patrons didn’t have to tip at all. Danny Meyer of Union Square Cafe has long favored switching to a European-style gratuity-included system, but for now he recommends his customers tip according to how they rate their service on a five-point scale, from poor or fair (10 to 14 percent) to extraordinary (21 to 25 percent). One thing you should never do, he says, is completely stiff a server, not even if service reaches Kafkaesque proportions of incompetence and neglect. “There are so many things outside of the control of a waiter,” he says. The best thing to do is leave a bare-minimum tip and speak to the manager. “And then you make your next reservation with that same manager, and you’re going to get exactly what you want.”

Bartenders are a different story. The point of tipping bartenders isn’t so much to reward the service you’ve already received as to insure promptness (supposedly the seventeenth-century English origin of the word: t.i.p.) the next time you order a round. Expectations vary: A buck a drink is generous at the Blarney Stone, an insult at the Bowery Bar. “At dive bars, they make great money, because they’re banging out drinks,” explains Rich, a bartender at Lotus. “But at a place like this, it’s more about presentation, so it takes longer.” Rich concedes that a dollar is okay if you’re ordering a Bud, but for a $10 Cosmopolitan, the fair tip is $2 or $3.

Rewarding bartenders and wait staff is a bunny slope compared to the double-black-diamond run of trying to grease your way into a fully booked restaurant. For starters, don’t even bother trying to tip for a table at the Le Bernardins and Daniels of the world. Tom Piscitello, the St. Peter at the gates of heavenly Babbo, has been offered everything and the moon by diners unable to wait a month to taste chef Mario Batali’s beef-cheek ravioli. “One night somebody just started naming numbers and going up as if it were a bidding war,” Piscitello recalls. “They got up to $700, just for a table. That’s sickness.” Piscitello politely reminded the diner of all the needy charities in the world and turned him away.

The odds get better at restaurants that are more about scene than about cuisine. The hip and pretty gatekeepers you find behind the podiums at flavor-of-the-week restaurants are, by nature, more disposed to accept a subtly proffered bribe because they’re young and trying to afford a TriBeCa apartment.

Apartment Buildings
A random survey of doormen around the city revealed a wide range of expectations. Depending on the priciness of the address and the size of the building, assistance with a heap of packages, cat-sitting for a day, or keeping an eye on a double-parked car can run you $5 to $10. Since most of these services fall under the doorman’s job description, you can get away with not tipping, but don’t expect him to drop everything when you’ve really got a problem. Then there are those delicate situations where not to tip is to court disaster. “What happens all the time is, a guy’s wife is away and he’ll come in with his mistress and hand you a fifty,” says one Park Avenue doorman. “That’s a you-didn’t-see-nothin’ tip.”

For the staff in New York buildings, the holidays must feel like a Mafia wedding, what with the number of cash-filled envelopes that come their way. A super at a luxury building of 200 units who averages $50 per tenant is pulling in a cool five-figure cash bonus — tax-free, if he’s disinclined to report it. Gifts are welcome, too. The doorman gossip circuit is still buzzing about the lucky stiff working a York Avenue building who received a Nissan 300ZX for Christmas a few years ago.

There are two things to consider when you’re determining how much to give. The first is building size — the smaller the building, the larger your bonus should be. The second is the level of luxury. Lawrence Vitelli of Insignia Residential Group, which manages some of the highest-priced properties in the city, says supers at its big buildings routinely get between $100 and $300 from each tenant, and at small buildings, $500 to $1,000 is not unheard of. But chances are you won’t have to shell out that much. For most buildings, $30 to $50 is appropriate for doormen, $50 to $100 for supers. Support staff like handymen and elevator operators are in the $20-to-$30 range. Adjustments should always be made according to seniority, and if you’re planning on doing any kind of renovation in the upcoming year, it’s in your best interest to give the super more than usual.

Beauty Salons and Barbers
The multitasking hierarchy at beauty salons can make tipping a tangled prospect. The general rule is that the more time someone devotes to you, the bigger the tip. “A lot of assistants do the entire blow-dry, so if they spent 45 minutes, that should be more on the $10 side of things,” says Connie Voines, a stylist at Bumble & Bumble. “But if it’s just a hand-dry that takes three seconds, then of course you should tip accordingly.”

Many salons provide tipping envelopes and a secure place to deposit them, to save clients the time of walking around the salon trying to find everyone who worked on them as well as the discomfort of handing out money. Put each tip in a separate envelope, and don’t forget to put your name and a little personal note of thanks on the outside. If you’re paying by credit card, you should still tip in cash via the envelope. And don’t feel guilty about not tipping the receptionist.

Taxis and Town Cars
Tourist guidebooks usually advise tipping cabbies 10 to 15 percent, but the best formula I’ve heard came from a magazine editor who takes a lot of taxis for work. If the fare is under $5, round up to the next dollar and add 50 cents. If the fare is between $5 and $10, round up to the next dollar and add $1. For fares over $10, round up and add $1.50 or $2.

I ran this by some drivers, and all declared it reasonable. They were surprisingly forgiving of low tips, perhaps because, with an unsympathetic TLC and a high-risk job environment, cheap tippers are the least of their problems. Says a three-year vet named Joseph: “A bad passenger is the one who doesn’t tip, a worse passenger is the one who doesn’t pay, and the very worst is the one who sticks a gun in your ear.”

If you often work late and take a company-paid car service home, you probably don’t tip, figuring it’s somehow included in the price. It almost never is. And if you use vouchers and have been writing in a tip, you may be wasting your time — many companies refuse to pay such tips when the monthly bill comes around. An optional $2 to $5, depending on distance, should do.

Creative Tipping
The first lesson to learn about bribery is that flattery works. “Compliments are absolutely amazing pieces of communication,” says Dr. Kelton Rhoads, a social psychologist and persuasion expert who offers influence consultation through his Website, Influenceatwork.com. “If I compliment you, even if you know that I’m kissing up, amazingly, studies have shown it will still affect your behavior on my behalf.” The second thing to remember is that rare is the situation that can’t be improved by a discreet show of appreciation. One Upper East Side mother, upon learning that her kids’ private-school bus stopped six blocks away from her building, wondered how stops were assigned. It remained an open question until Christmas, when she tipped her children’s driver $50. At the start of the new year, the bus suddenly had a new designated stop right on their street.

Then there are the situations where bribes are practically a tradition. Next time you’re stuck in cumulus-level seats at the ballgame, stroll down to the lower deck and explain to the usher or security guard on duty that you forgot your binoculars, and might there be anything open in his section? A tenner folded against your ticket will usually do the trick.

But the most important thing to remember about bribing (or tipping, for that matter) is that, just as on Dance Fever, you get points for style. Not long ago, a friend of mine was waiting in line at a chichi SoHo club behind a gorgeous woman and her frumpily dressed date. The bouncer waved the knockout right in but stopped her companion with a curt “Sorry, no jeans.” Rather than throw a fit, the man coolly produced a fifty and said, “I think if you look more closely you’ll see that these aren’t jeans. They’re blue cotton trousers.”

Tips anyone?
From Hattiesburg American
Article published Mar 28, 2008

HAIR ISN’T THE ONLY THING being trimmed at Head Bangers The Salon in Pendleton, Ind. Customers searching for ways to fight high gas and food prices are doing some trimming of their own - in tips.

“Even the regulars are cutting back,” stylist Joanna Anderson said. “Usually they are apologetic and say they wish they could give more. But they just can’t right now.”

Lisa Barnes of Purvis agrees. For 18 years, she has worked at Designing Hair in Hattiesburg and said there’s been a definite drop in the number of people who tip.

Two reasons: Customers are tighter with their purse strings, and the price of hair products has gone up because of shipping costs.

She said she doesn’t expect clients to tip and doesn’t blame them for tipping less.

“We don’t fault them for it,” Barnes said. “It’s just hard for everyone right now.”

Many workers depend on tips for a substantial part of their income, and those hairdressers, bartenders, cab drivers and food servers have been among the first to be hit hard by the slowing economy, experts say.

Those workers are feeling a pinch because talk of a recession has consumers putting the brakes on extra expenses.

“It’s simply panic, and people cut back in anticipation of what may or may not come,” said financial commentator Lila Rajiva, co-author of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics.”

When the economy slows, dining out is the first area where people cut back, said John Livengood, president and chief executive of the Restaurant & Hospitality Association of Indiana.

“People still eat out because they have to, but they find ways to cut back on how much they spend,” he said. Namely, the extras, such as appetizers, desserts - and tips.

In the Pine Belt, the news is pretty much the same.

Brandon Christian, a junior majoring in psychology and sociology at the University of Southern Mississippi, works 20-25 hours a week as a barista at Java Werks in Hattiesburg.

He said he has noticed a slight decrease in tips.

“During a six-hour shift, we used to make $10-$15 each in tips. Now we struggle to reach $10,” Christian said.

This has led to more effort being put into the level of service.

“We’ve had to up our game in order to reach gas money,” he added.

Restaurants, where workers rely on tips, are seeing an overall downturn in business. Fifty-four percent of Americans are eating at restaurants less, according to a survey of 1,000 people by RBC Capital Markets. If they do dine out, many are going for cheaper options such as fast food.

Luigi Armao, a waiter at La Fiesta Brava in Hattiesburg, said some weeks his salary including tips has been cut in half - from $400 a week to as low as $200 a week.

“It’s been rough since January. …Tips are going down,” he said adding in some cases he’s had a table of eight leave only $1 or $2 tip.

Armao who works full-time said he earns a base wage of $2.50 an hour, so he relies on tips to make ends meet.

He said at this time last year, the restaurant was usually packed during the lunch hour until 2 p.m. Pointing to the empty seats at 1 p.m., he said that is no longer the case.

Waitress Janet Roush, of Anderson, Ind., also is fighting for what money she can earn from those who do go to the restaurant where she works.

She said customers don’t seem to be as generous as in past years, no matter how good the service is.

“We’ve got plenty of people coming in here, but they aren’t giving me the love, if you know what I mean,” Roush said.

That means she has to be more cautious with her spending.

“I’m not looking forward to spring. We’ve got school clothes to buy,” said the mother of a 13-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

Kayda Willis, who works at the RAM brewery and restaurant in Indianapolis, said she has noticed fewer customers, but regular visitors continue to tip well.

She makes an hourly wage of $2.13 and said tips are basically her income. She said she tries to give customer service above and beyond the norm and hopes to make diners forget about $3-per-gallon gas prices.

“You’ve got to put in to get back, and that’s how you work the economy,” she said.

After watching customer tips slip into the 5 percent to 10 percent range, Yakub Ulutas, an Atlanta restaurant manager, started a Web site called fairtip.org. Its mission is to educate people about the importance of tipping, especially in a sluggish economy.

The site urges consumers to remember those workers who don’t earn a steady salary but work for the generosity of customers.

Scott Lowe said his tips are fine from the customers who show up at the Broad Ripple Tavern in Indianapolis, where he tends bar. He just wishes there were more customers.

“You can look down Broad Ripple Avenue on a Friday or Saturday night, and it used to be packed,” he said. “Friday night has just been kind of a ghost town around here.”

For one, Lowe has noticed fewer college students coming in.

“Parents must be putting the clamp down on the credit cards,” he said.

From the Tip20! Forum

Question:

I personally am a smoker and respect the rights of non smokers. This pertains to a very close friend of mine that also is a waitress but does NOT smoke.
She works in a small family owned Pizza Rest. but is a minority and treated as such just because she does not smoke. Her co-workers decide when they need to take a break to go have a cigarette and feel they can just leave her alone during the lunch rush, to still expect their tips from tables left inside while they are MIA for approx. 20-30 minutes. ok now she did confront the owner/boss of the business and her reply was,i feel sooo unfair, “Your just being predijust against the smokers”. now to me this seems WRONG. how would anyone else handle this situation i really want to help her out. how does one go against the boss for your non smoking habit?  Please help me with this!!this woman has been at this resturaunt for 10 yrs, the other girls have only been there for maybe 3… any advise will be greatly appreciated  thank you for taking the time to read this.
Tere’ a concerned friend

Read/Post Responses

by Carole Hamlin - The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG)

This is an article about tipping in restaurants. It occurred to me that this subject needed to be addressed among vegetarians because I had noticed so many times that waiters (both men and women) serving vegetarians were being shortchanged.

I have seen it happen both in vegetarian restaurants, and in non-vegetarian restaurants when people ordered vegetarian food. What spurred me to write something was a recent experience on a New York trip when I had dinner in a vegetarian restaurant with two middle-aged couples (with comfortable lifestyles), who got up from the table and left a total of $2.00 as their tip. We had had a pleasant and inexpensive meal, and we had occupied the table for over an hour.

It costs waiters in vegetarian restaurants just as much for living expenses as people serving food in any other restaurant. I have thought for a long time now that it did not seem fair that these waiters, who are willing to work in a place that promotes good health (and, intentionally or not, compassion for animals, and a healthier environment), should end up with less compensation for their labors than people working in places which do not promote such values.

If we want to encourage the proliferation of vegetarian restaurants, we should not expect the service people to become economic martyrs. If the average dinner in a traditional restaurant costs $20 - $25 or more, and a waiter can earn a tip of $4 - $5 (and up) for serving such a meal, we can understand why many waiters would want to (or have to) work there, rather than in a vegetarian restaurant, where a meal might cost $8 - $10 (or even less). If people use the traditional 15 - 20% rate for tipping, then many of these waiters end up leaving because they can not support themselves.

There’s a Greek restaurant I sometimes patronize. When I do, I order a plate full of vegetables and grains (such as green beans, eggplant, potatoes, carrots, rice, etc.). Since they charge only $3.00-$3.50 for the platter (pricing each vegetable as if it were a side dish), I end up with a whole dinner’s worth of food for less than what many people spend when they go out for lunch. If I were to tip 15 or 20%, the poor waiter would end up with a 50 to 70 cents tip for serving my meal. I cannot believe that person would look forward to my return, or that she or he would encourage the restaurant owner to put a lot of inexpensive vegetarian options on the menu. (I also think these platters should be priced higher since restaurants count on selling more expensive entrees.) The problem is compounded by the fact that many, if not most, vegetarians do not drink much liquor, traditionally a big profit item in restaurants.

Even if we dine in non-vegetarian restaurants, but order healthy (and inevitably less expensive) food, I feel we should tip as if we had ordered an average priced meal in that restaurant. Otherwise, we will not be welcome as customers by the waiters, since they know they will have to serve us for the same amount of time as those ordering the more expensive food, but will receive a lot less money in tips. I want to encourage restaurants to offer vegetarians options without having to fight the waiters.

In my opinion, at today’s prices, someone should leave a minimum tip of $3.00 - $3.50 (per person) for dinner, no matter how inexpensive the tab. It is tough enough for vegetarian restaurants to afford rent and utility costs when they are competing with traditional places –let’s not have those willing to work there make half or a third of what someone makes at restaurants serving expensive, but unhealthy food.

Another thought — related but slightly off the topic — is the matter of tipping at banquets and conferences. When vegetarians do not tip the service providers, or tip them with minimal amounts, then the owners of the facilities have less incentive to have future vegetarian events. The irony is that often the service people working at vegetarian events must work harder to prepare food that they are not familiar with and need to spend more time learning about new dishes. They really deserve more in tips, not less!!! If we can afford to eat out, we can afford decent tips.

By MARY LYNN SMITH, Star Tribune

February 14, 2008

In Mark Benjamin’s view, every bar’s a stage and all the men and women merely smokers.

Benjamin, a former Marine, has a soft spot for VFW halls, American Legion clubs and small outstate bars he says have lost business because of the statewide smoking ban imposed in October.

In search of a loophole in the new law, the criminal defense attorney from Cambridge zeroed in on the clause that allows performers in a theatrical performance to smoke with impunity.

Wandering around the Renaissance Festival in Shakopee this summer, it hit Benjamin like the gun going off in Act III: “Theater is all around us.”

The resulting brainstorm, “The Tobacco Monologues” debuted at a Lake Mille Lacs bar last weekend when patrons ponied up a buck for a button that identified them as actors, with a license to light up.

More bars are expected to stage the performances this weekend.

Benjamin hopes his ploy will encourage lawmakers to seek a compromise that helps bar owners recoup lost business.

Not likely, say anti-smoking activists and state officials.

“This is pretty lame,” said Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association for Nonsmokers. “You know what they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” she said. “And if it looks like a bar, it’s a bar.”

Few participants in the lengthy battles that preceded adoption of the smoking ban in 2007 are eager to reopen those divisive debates. Been there, done that. The loophole, they pledge, will be closed. Soon.

Losses mounting

That’s not poetry to the ears of bar owners like Sheila Kromer, whose Barnacles Resort and Campground in Aitkin hosted the first smoke show.

Kromer said her January liquor sales are down about 26 percent from last year, in large part because of the smoking ban. The bar clears out by 10:30, she said, as smokers seek a warm place for a cigarette.

“They might go out once,” she said. “But when they head out a second time for a smoke, they just leave.”

But last weekend, the “play” kept the bar full until it closed at 1 a.m., Kromer said. “People had fun and they had a smile on their faces.”

A sheriff’s deputy showed up after someone complained but left without issuing a ticket because the bar seemed to be following the letter of the law.

Since then, Kromer said, she’s received about a dozen calls and e-mails from other bar owners interested in directing similar “theater nights.”

Kromer said she’ll be staging a repeat performance of the Tobacco Monologues and Benjamin, a Sunday school teacher, will be there in full garb: black velvet tights, white puffy shirt, black velvet hat complete with a plume and enormous black leather boots.

“All I can do is what seems reasonable to me, and this seems right,” Benjamin said. “This is a good cause. If we lose, we lose. I believe you do what you can even if the odds are stacked up against you.”

Kenn Rockler, executive director for the Tavern League of Minnesota, said he expects a half dozen bars will post playbills to bring smoking back this weekend.

“It’s legal,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last … before someone puts a stop to it.”

Most of his members say they’ve seen sales go down since the smoking ban went into effect “And some of them are going to be broke if they don’t do something,” Rockler said.

Minnesota Department of Health officials don’t know exactly what they plan to do about Benjamin’s smoking “theater productions.” Tom Hogan, manager of the department’s Indoor Environments and Radiation section, said he’s waiting for an opinion from the Attorney General’s office.

Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, one of the ban’s major proponents, said she wasn’t surprised that someone would take advantage of an alleged loophole in the law. “We anticipated that people would try to find ways to not meet the spirit of the law,” she said. “I didn’t anticipate this.”

At first blush, said Doug Blanke, executive director of the Tobacco Law Center at William Mitchell College of Law, Benjamin’s “theater” provides people with a good chuckle. “But this is about health, and secondhand smoke is a really serious thing,” he said.

Critics of smoking bans in other states have made similar attempts to “squeeze” themselves into exemptions but they eventually lose in the courts, he said.

“I’m pretty sure that at the end of the day, we won’t have bars calling themselves street theaters,” he said. “How does that go: What’s in a name? That which we would call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?”

And a bar filled with smoke, he concluded, is afoul of the law.

From Rocktown Weekly
By Brooke Bates
It’s not an easy job. But they do it - balancing trays of burgers and drinks in one hand, keeping a dozen orders straight and maintaining a grin until their shift ends.

Servers are there to serve. But don’t make it any harder on them than it should be. Here’s your guide to being a good customer.

Use your manners
“Be nice.” It’s really pretty simple, according to Chris Howdyshell, who has worked at The Little Grill Collective for nine years. He says Little Grill workers, like all servers, try to make each meal a friendly, personal experience.

“A good customer is polite” in return, says Miles Miller, who waited tables at O’Charley’s for a year and a half. That means making sure your kids mind their manners, too.

“Some parents let their kids go wild … and just leave [the mess] for me,” he says.

Have fun, but not at the sake of other customers or your server.

Be sociable
Sometimes, when Rachael Morris, 22, introduces herself to a table and asks how they’re doing, they reply with drink orders.

“I hate when people don’t give me time to even speak,” says the waitress, who worked at Ruby Tuesdays for three and a half years before moving to Rocktown Grill a month ago. “I can’t stand when they won’t even look up at me. I think that’s just rude.”

She says she appreciates feedback, because she can’t tell if quiet tables are enjoying themselves.

Take your time, not theirs
Servers will give you plenty of time to decide. “I don’t want you to get something you don’t want,” says Miller, 23.

But don’t take up your server’s time while you ponder the options.

“People tell you they’re ready because they don’t want you to leave,” Morris says. “Then they sit there for another 10 minutes saying, ‘Umm, umm, umm,’ just because they don’t want you to walk away.”

Don’t expect special treatment.
Sure, the customer is always right, but be reasonable. Some customers send food back without even trying it, says Karin Bales, who worked at The Pub for almost a year before moving to Rocktown Grill.

Of course you can send it back if it’s not what you wanted. But if you customize an order, altering it from what’s on the menu, make sure it’s what you want. “[You get] a special order, then don’t like it?” she says. “You changed the menu!”

Some customers just want free food, Morris observes.

“They’ll eat everything but the last bite of a steak or burger, then complain that it’s not cooked right and they don’t want to pay for it,” she says. “You ate the whole thing!”

Don’t get personal
Try to call your server by name, says Jaime Woolf, a waitress at Cally’s.

“They don’t remember my name so they say, ‘Hey you,’ or ‘Hey, girl,’ ” says the 22-year-old.

Miller agrees that getting called “waiter” is grating. “I know you’re not trying to be mean,” he says, “but I have a name tag. I already introduced myself.”

But don’t get too intimate - with servers or with your date, Miller says.

Remember you are in public.

“I hate PDA,” he says. “I can’t stand it when people sit in the same side of a booth.”

Your server doesn’t want to know about your personal life, and they don’t really want you prying into theirs either, Miller says.

“I don’t like when people ask about my personal life,” he says. “I don’t know you. [People ask], “Do you have a girlfriend? How long have you been dating?’ ”

Bales draws the line at touching. “Any type of … grabbing, pulling you over into their lap” is going too far, she says.

Patience is a virtue
Howdyshell says his biggest pet peeve is customers’ coming up to the front counter for a refill.

“It’s like people are calling you out for not giving them fast enough service,” he says. But, he admits, he does it when he’s out, too.

Realize that a sit-down restaurant can’t offer immediate gratification.

Morris says she can’t stand customers who say they’re in a hurry and want a rush on their food.

“If you’re in a hurry, go to McDonald’s,” she says.

Miller’s patience ends when customers try to flag him down.

“They say no when I ask if they need anything, then wave me down to ask for it,” he says. “I’m like, ‘I asked you two seconds ago and you said no!’ ”

Don’t blame your waiter
There are some things that your server really can’t help - like how long it takes to grill a steak.

Morris says she apologizes to customers for the wait anyway, and they help ease her mind by understanding her position.

“They understand the kitchen is a separate thing,” she says. “They say, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re not in any hurry. It’s not your fault.’ ”

Customers expect servers to be “moderators” between the table and the kitchen, Miller says. They request extra portions for free, he says, and he can’t give handouts.

Clean up after yourself
“Leaving a complete and utter mess is not necessary,” Miller says, recalling tables showered with spilled salt and strewn with wads of paper.

A little effort, like stacking your plates before you leave, will make your server’s day, he says. It cuts their clean-up time in half.

But it starts with not being excessively messy in the first place.

“Pitchers are made to have things poured out of them, not to put trash in or dump ashtrays in,” says Joe Myers, a bartender at Rocktown Grill who’s been pouring drinks for 30 years.

Just because it’s not your house doesn’t mean you can trash it.

Say thank you with a tip
One of Miller’s tables once ran up a $100 tab, and the group was the last in the bar to leave. They ran him to death, he says, and left nothing in return.

“I don’t think people realize we only make $2 an hour,” says Miller, who’s working to fund his college education.

Morris says most customers just don’t know tipping etiquette. “They think $5 is a great tip, no matter what, even if you have a $40 check,” she says.

She says the bill isn’t the only thing that should determine the tip. “If you ran your server to death, take that into consideration,” she says.

They all recommend 20 percent.

Make a habit of it
“A good customer [is] the one that comes a lot,” says Howdyshell as he scans the morning regulars at The Little Grill.

“Regulars make the best customers,” he says. “If it’s possible for someone you don’t know to give you unconditional love, it’s when you’re feeding them.”

Any customer that comes at all is a good one, the restaurateurs agree.
Miller’s view, which he claims is more optimistic than most, is that “overall, people are nice.”

Morris says the bad seems to outweigh the good some days, but it’s mostly because customers just don’t know better, she says.

“Being a server definitely changed the way I see things from a customer’s standpoint,” she says. “I think everybody should have that experience. If everybody worked at a restaurant for a year, the world would be a happier place.”

Restaurant chain drops plan taking credit-card fees out of tips
By The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK - A restaurant chain owning Bonefish Grill, Carraba’s Italian Grill and Outback Steakhouse says it has dropped a new policy that would have taken some credit card processing fees out of waiters’ tips in Arkansas.

OSI Restaurant Partners LLC said Friday it would halt the policy and refund any money already taken from servers in areas where the program already started.

Joe Kadow, executive vice president of Tampa, Fla.-based OSI, said in a statement that “upon reflection, we realize this decision is inconsistent with our principles and beliefs.”

“It is no secret that all casual-dining restaurants are facing unprecedented cost increases and substantial declines in profitability,” Kadow said.

The tip plan, first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, called for passing along part of the debit and credit card fees — about 3 percent of tips on average. That would have meant a waiter would collect $19.40 out of a $20 tip.

Waiters and waitresses in Arkansas make $2.63 an hour plus tips. Gratuities come out to about $85 during a typical five-hour shift.

The credit-card fees would have been on top of a 3 percent “tip-out,” which goes to bartenders, hosts and busboys.

Tipping in cash meant the server didn’t lose money to the credit-card fee. At a Bone Fish restaurant in Little Rock, workers said customers have been scratching out the credit-card tip line, writing huge zeros and adding notes such as, “I will never tip through credit card again — it’s going to be cash for me, and you take that to corporate.”

“They did the right thing by retracting the policy,” said H.G. Parsa, department chairman of food service and lodging at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen School of Hospitality Management. “They shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” he added, saying it reminded him of a flip-flopping politician.

In an OSI guide obtained by the Democrat-Gazette, the company said there was a minimum waiting period of 14 days to instate the policy after the first meeting to inform the staff. All waiters and waitresses had to sign a document agreeing to the practice.

The guide listed 26 participating or designated states, including Arkansas, and about 1,200 restaurants. OSI operates in 50 states.

Shares in OSI traded down 2 cents Friday to close at $41.10.