THE WAITER ROBBERY.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2148, 22 November 1875, Page 2

THE WAITER ROBBERY.

A new evil has grown up. You not only pay the attendance charged in the bill, but your especial waiter expects a " tip" on his own account, and any on© who has been in any way told off for your private service expects to be similarly recompensed. At restaurants this nuisance is rampant. You not only pay the. attendance charged, which is frequently in excess of the gratuity you used formerly to award to the waiter, but the waiter expects two or three pence on his own account, the individual in white who carves the joints cuts tempting slices in the hope that you may remember him, and if you do not give a few coppers to the man who helps you on with your coat and opens the door for you, depart-HE^JJuthe fixed impression on "your mind that y<3«. are without doubt a shabby fellow. It will be seen by this that the " attendance charged in the bill" has become.an extra tax levied for the benefit of the landlord, and that we are paying waiters more than we did twenty years ago, with the landlord's impost superadded. Waiters are without doubt a most excellent and hardworking and polite class of men, and there is no reason why they should not receive good wages, but their salaries should be paid out of the pockets of their employers and not forcibly wrested from the purse of the general public. Possibly the public itself is to blame for so largely feeing the attendants of restaurants; but it is a well-known fact that when a man has dined well he is generous and openhanded, and the waiters reap the reward. If the public would make up their minds to pay only the attendance charged in the bill, and never give any extra fees, it would lead in time to the removal of this landlord's tax, which, however good in its intention, seems in its working to be neither just to the waiters nor fairiewards the public.—Graphic.