Bite Me Oprah!

One thing I hate more than being sick (which I currently am), is when I hear influential people say stupid and preposterous things. Today's ridiculous statement was by the fabulous Oprah Winfrey. I will admit right off the bat; I'm not a fan of Oprah. She can be fabulous, but she thinks that she's Jesus. Congrats to her for her rags to riches story, getting a black man elected President (whom I love), building a school in Africa and giving away a hundred cars (that she didn't pay for), but leave the encouragement of American ignornace to the Kardashians. The last thing we need is for you, dear Oprah to start blabbing your mouth about things you obviously know nothing about, therefore dictating the future actions of your loyal followers.

Case in point of this is the statement she made on her show about it being acceptable to tip your waiter (or bartender) 10% in this time of economic hardship. Well, I don't know what planet Ms. Oprah lives on, but she just officially fucked with my livelihood. It was bad enough that I had to worry about the minimal to no tips one encounters while waiting on foreign patrons, but now I have to worry about the Mid-West 10. This is BULL! I would like to know where Oprah got her information from. I'm pretty positive that she has never waited a table in her life, though I'm sure she's circled many a buffet. But seriously, where does she get off making a comment that directly affects the paychecks of thousands of Americans.

Though I think it's retarded, millions of people watch her show and take what she has to say as the Holy Grail. I'm not sure why, but people do. She says "buy this sweater", people do. She says "only drink this beverage", people do. She says "do this" to lose the weight and keep it off...ok, well people might think twice with this one. But who would question the most influential person on television when it comes to 'dining etiquette'?  I mean, we all know the parties that she is so famous for hosting! Under any other circumstances I don't know if I would, but this 10% tip shit, is shit.


In case you are like Oprah and completely unaware as to how finances in a restaurant work, here's a little info. Waiters, bartenders, bussers, runners all make their livings, at least here in the United States, from tips. Base salaries exist because it's the law, but it's not minimum wage that we are collecting it's roughly $4.25 an hour. And that's if you are lucky, in some states it's far lower. This hourly base rate is what our taxes come out of; though it's still not nearly enough therefore we all owe thousands of dollars each year while most people are collecting a return check. and in case you don't pay attention, your waiters, bartenders, bussers and runners get to work early and stay late to set up, clean up and organize the restaurant so you have a nice, cool, fun place to go to. And while you are sitting at your table or on your stool they are running around to fulfill your ridiculous requests. Of course we are going to say it's not a problem to get you that fourth basket of bread that we don't even offer in our restaurant. Of course we will run upstairs to get you a band aid for the cut you endured from ripping off your trashy fake nails. Of course it's not a problem to ask the chef to create a new dish especially for you and your dietary limitations when he's got a line of 50 tickets and is missing his fry and sauté guys.


Please don't misunderstand that we are doing these above and beyond things because we like you, or that we think you are special, or that we are just that fabulous. We are doing these obnoxious tasks because we are poor and need money, and if we don't do these things we will lose our jobs and will then be unable to pay for our therapy, and by therapy I mean alcohol. So like I was saying, these tasks that you are throwing at us are usually NOT in our job descriptions, but if we don't follow through we will be unemployed. You need to appreciate our skills, our hard work and our ass kissing, and this appreciation is in the form of a tip. 15% is satisfactory and should be considered the bare minimum, even if your service sucked, someone put in an effort to take care of your needs. 20% is preferred, especially when you know that you have made their job even slightly more difficult than it needed to be.


If you agree with Oprah that it is acceptable to leave a 10% tip, then I ask you to do any of the following:

A. Move to London where this is the standard in tipping.

B. Stay at home, order in, it's cheaper and doesn't require tipping, accept to maybe 3 bucks to the delivery guy.

C. Come right out and admit that you are an ignorant asshole and have no intention on leaving a decent tip. This won't make me like you, but it will at least save me a tad bit of mental sanity when I count how much you've left.  But at least I won't care because I know that I did the bare minimum to meet your needs from the start!