When we go out to eat or drink at a sports bar, we usually find that a majority of the servers and bartenders are females. Why is this, one might ask. The most obvious reason is that they draw in more male customers to drink beer and eat food. If a male patron were to walk into a sports bar, he would stay longer and spend more money because he would tend to be checking out a server that he considered attractive. Servers usually know this so they tend to expose themselves more and dress accordingly to attract more guys and hopefully to receive larger tips. One bartender interviewed for this project, who works at Buffalo Wild Wings, would climb on ladders behind the bar, to draw attention to herself. She hoped that her actions would result in the customers giving her a larger tip than they would otherswise. Based upon the tips received, this strategy worked. Seeing this interested the writer to look into the topic of how servers use their physical appearance for a better tip. With further research, this was proved true for almost every restaurant investigated. Waitresses go above and beyond from simply applying makeup to changing their hair color, and changing the way they would serve an average customer to fit their needs. The customers also play a role in the tip given, which can usually be determined by the gender, race, age, and connections to the waitress. If customers would tip based on the service provided, then the female waitresses wouldn’t have to flirt or make the guest feel like that need to tip better.
Background Review of Literature
Many of the sources address the way the waitresses change their physical appearances and the outcomes. However, some also discuss the emotional side of the server or the pr...
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Works Cited
Gatta, M. (2009). Restaurants servers, tipping, and resistance. Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 6(1-2), 70-82.
Guéguen, N. (2012). Hair color and wages: Waitresses with blond hair have more fun. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 41(4), 370-372.
Guéguen, N. (2009). Menstrual cycle phases and female receptivity to a courtship solicitation:
An evaluation in a nightclub. Evolution and human behavior, 30(5), 351-355. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.004
Jacob, C., Guéguen, N., Boulbry, G., & Ardiccioni, R. (2009). Waitresses' facial cosmetics and tipping: A field experiment. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(1), 188-190. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2009.04.003
McCall, M., & Lynn, A. (2009). Restaurant servers' perceptions of customer tipping intentions. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(1), 188-190.
People slave for a number of hours of work and find themselves with minimum wage salaries and working with people they don’t want to be around with. In her article Serving in Florida, Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as a low-wage worker for various jobs to expose the working conditions of working class Americans. Throughout her essay, she discusses how the employees are fearful of losing their jobs even though they are forced to work in inhumane conditions such as long hours, with no breaks between shifts. While undercover, Ehrenreich attempts to make an argument on how the upper and middle class can find it difficult to survive under minimum wage jobs and allow readers to figure out what can be done to change the restaurant business.
There were two major issues that Ehrenreich has with working in the restaurant. The first one is the management and the second issue is the amount of money she makes. The management is views as the enemy to the employees; making new rules for the staff and the endless accusations about the employees behaviors. The salary for restaurant employees makes it hard to secure housing, prescription drugs, and any unexpected expense. “Serving in Florida” written by Barbara Ehrenreich is a reflected recap of her time working in the restaurant industry.
The idea of tipping has always been normal to myself, as I was a kid and still now I see my parents leaving tips for the waiter/waitress when we go out to eat. It never occurred to me until I got older that it was hard for these workers to get by as their salary depended upon their tips. Once I read Saru Jayaraman’s article on “Why Tipping is Wrong” I was unsure of what I was getting myself into. However, it brought light and told how we should be getting rid of tips and giving the workers a fair and decent salary.
Working for a low profit margin restaurant can be difficult. At times, it can seem like your hard work isn't being fully paid off to your satisfaction. Some restaurants allow employees to recieve tips whether it's added to your pay check, or through the hands of the customers. On the other hand, there are restaurants that don't allow employee tips. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, servers at the Waffle Now restaurant are petitioning to have their pay raised to the federal minnimum nontipped wage, while still keeping any tips offered. This can have many negative effects on a business and can create overwheling changes.
Tips are generally a small amount of money given to a person as gratitude for a service that has been provided. There are many times throughout our everyday lives in which we are put in a position to leave a gratuity. Whether it be dining at a restaurant, getting your hair cut at the salon, or having a few drinks with friends at a bar. In each case there was a service provided to you, now you have a decision to make, how much of a tip is considered acceptable and should you tip everyone that provides a service to you? There are many guidelines for consumers to follow. With modern technology there are convenient tip calculators available as features on most new cellular phones. When deciding on the tip amount the service is one of the major determining factors along with whether or not you plan on visiting the establishment again , and how the tip will play a role in your further dealings with said business. Michael Lewis explores a few interesting reasons why tipping is getting out of hand in a recent essay. I strongly agree with many points and examples he provides.
Walker, J. R. (2013). Introduction to Hospitality (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/ Prentice Hall
People are consumed with their own reality that they didn’t even acknowledge me sitting at a table watching them. Each person seemed to have their own stories different from everyone else’s. For the most part, the employees seemed to have similar interests in wanted to produce the best customer service. The customers had the same goal of wanting to try a new popular restaurant they might have been unfamiliar with. Overall, the general consensus was that a majority of people wanted to get on with their day with as little human interaction as
Ehrenreich didn’t want to be a waitress any more than some waitresses, but she did it for her research. Ehrenreich once stated that, “Waitres sing is also something I’d like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen.” (13). Her first job was at Hearthside, a restaurant in Key West, Florida. She was hired as a waitress, starting at $2.43 plus tips. She worked the afternoon shift. Hearthside was being managed by a West Indian man by name of Phillip. The management wasn’t the best. They treated their employees disrespectfully. At an employee meeting, they were threatened by the management. Ehrenreich stated, “I have not been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusation-since junior high school” (24). When they were just standing around, the manager would give them extra work to do. According to Ehrenreich, “You start dragging out each little chore because if the manager on duty catches you in an idle moment, he will give you something far nastier to do. So I wipe, I clean, consolidate catsups bottles and recheck the cheesecake supply, even tour the tables to make sure the customer evaluation is standing perkily.” (22). They were hired at Hearthside to serve the customers. There are twenty-six tables in the whole restaurant. All the food must be placed on the food trays; small items were to be carried in a bowl, and no refills on the lemonade (1...
Carrie Packwood Freeman and Debra Merskin are the authors of “Having it his Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food TV Advertising”. They describe how fast food restaurants across America use masculinity in their commercials to target the male population and get them to buy their food. Although I concede that fast food restaurants do use masculinity to target the male population, I also insist that they are also used to target the female population of America as well. The masculinity not only appeals to the male population, but the female population as well. In the article, Freeman and Merskin analyze commercials for six different fast food restaurants that use masculinity to sell the idea of their food being good and manly.
4Internet. “Differences in Economic Characteristics Account for Most of the Measured Gender Pay Gap”. The American Workplace, 1998. www.nationalparternship.org/workandfamily/workplace.htm
What aspects of restaurant work are especially challenging to wait staff, and how does Barcelona’s approach to management help employees overcome the downsides of the job? The aspects of restaurant work that is especially challenging to wait staff would be poor management and customer satisfaction. In this profession of being a wait staff in many instances it is very difficult to please everyone one that you serve. The approach that Barcelona’s management took in helping their employees overcome the downsides of their job they gave them the green light in allowing them to do what was right in making the customers experience a happy one. In giving them this freedom, it made the wait staff feel like they were a part of the organization when it came to decision
These inequalities are accepted readily in today’s society and most fail to see that direct gender discrimination is still very much a problem in society today. In 1988, Bretl and Cantor conducted a study into gender representation in television programs and advertisements. It was found that women were more likely to be filmed in a domestic situation and portrayed as being unemployed, working part-time or in low paying jobs such as catering and sales. It was also found that 90% of the time a narrator would be male, and women were more likely than men to be seen advertising household goods (Furnham, A. Mak, T. 1999, 414). It...
In America, many are not aware of the inequalities that exist in the Food Service. The food service sector has at least 125,951 companies and approximately 12 million employees with almost 7 million foreigners. This sector includes individually owned restaurants, mid-priced chains, quick service (fast food), hotels, and beverage establishments. Food service plays a major role in institutional establishments like schools, hospitals, prisons and meals on wheels. They cater to the tastes of their particular customers and are often leaders of food innovation. In the food service, we find: bartenders, wait staff, hosts, busboys, chefs, cooks, managers, and dishwashers .The food service workers perform a variety of customer service, food preparation and cleaning tasks, all that which are very important to keep a business running. More concerning , some of the major working conditions that foodservice workers face with daily is no health benefits and significantly low wages. These employees working in the food industry make it possible for millions of people to enjoy food in restaurants but are not being treated or appreciated fairly.
In a business based upon service and hospitality, reputation and indeed, livelihoods are dependent upon the customers good will.
More specifically, the fundamental factors that contribute to customer satisfaction in restaurants include the food (hygiene, balance, and healthiness), physical provision (layout, furnishing, and cleanliness), the atmosphere (feeling and comfort), and the service received (speed, friendliness, and care) during the meal experience (Johns and Pine,