BusinessReport.com

Valet Timothy Gorbett works between 40 and 42 hours a week, in shifts of eight to 10 hours with a 30-minute break. Making barely above minimum wage, he works in the heat, the rain, the cold—all to save Belle of Baton Rouge patrons a quick walk from the parking garage to the casino.

“My usual tip is a dollar, if that,” Gorbett says. “I’ll get five dollars very occasionally.”

Though Gorbett has heard of coworkers getting anywhere from $15 to $100 in tips, he’s never gotten anything that sizable. Working against the valets are two looming factors: the sign and the environment.

The valet sign also reads “free parking,” which Gorbett says leads customers to think they don’t have to pay any money tip-wise. If a customer asks how much valet costs, employees say it’s free, but tips are accepted.

Then there’s the gambling.

“You can definitely tell if people have won or lost,” he says. “Sometimes they’ll even tell you they shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place.” Those, he says, usually won’t tip.

Gorbett says others will leave without tipping, citing a lack of money, only to return to the casino later in the day and not tip yet again. This environment makes him feel like he’s at a disadvantage to being properly tipped.

“People who go to restaurants, they know there’s a tip. They don’t have anything that happens while they’re eating where they’ll lose their money,” he says.

Working in a restaurant environment for tips can be a gamble, too, though maybe not as great of one.

Jessica Edwards is a bartender at Juban’s Restaurant, having worked previously as a hostess and back waiter. She has also worked at Calendar’s Restaurant as a bartender and waiter.

“There’s an excitement when people leave the table,” she says. “You want to see how much you got.”

In more than three years in the service industry, she’s often seen that excitement dashed when she gets nothing. She remembers two female customers who frequented Calendar’s during two-for-one margarita time who never tipped.

“I’d wait on their table and try to smile, but it was hard,” she says. “Maybe it’s worse when you know it’s coming.”

Working 30 hours a week with wages of $2.13 an hour, Edwards estimates her take-home after taxes averages is $10 an hour. Any cash tips the bar receives are divided among the bartenders that night. Any credit-card tips are pooled and split in various percentages between hosts, back waiters and bartenders and placed on paychecks.

Some nights she’ll walk away with $3, while others it’s $10 to $15. Even though she and others may complain when they make nothing or next to nothing, Edwards says it all evens out.

At Juban’s, she says, the tip is consistently at 15%, if not more. At Calendar’s, she says, tips ranged between 10% and 15%. Her findings are in keeping with estimates by Tom Weatherly, senior vice president of the Louisiana Restaurant Association. He says fine dining sees between 15% and 20%, casual dining rests between 14% and 15%, with diner or family-style at 10% to 15%.

“You love them [tips]. You hate them,” Weatherly says. “By and large it works out well for people. The customer can gauge how much they enjoyed the experience or not. And the tipped employee can make good money.”

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act sets the bare-bones rules for tipped employees, who may be paid $2.13 an hour. If cash wages do not equal minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference. Weatherly explains a tipped employee is “one who generally comes into direct contact with a customer that is not management personnel” and “one who regularly receives at least $20 a month in tips.”

But, Weatherly says, the definition of a tipped employee can be somewhat tricky. “It’s kind of like the Supreme Court definition of obscenity,” he says. “When regulators go and look, they know who the tipped employees are.”

Recent debate in the industry, he says, circles on whether America should move from a tipped economy to a service charge, where a percentage is already charged like when restaurants charge for large parties. He thinks tipping will be around as long as the American public wants it to be.

“People want to be able to tip for good service,” he says. “They want to be able to withhold if they get bad service too.”

In Gorbett’s case, however, he may still be out of luck.

“Tips aren’t any indication of how good a job I’m doing,” he says. “They already have their money out. If you get it to them faster, they won’t reach back into their pocket and get more money out.”