Dear Friends,

As you may or may not know, Ellie has begun her first go at being a waitress. Hopefully, you also see that I roll with the punches, do my best at anything I do and take it for a good long while before I start complaining.

Look at what I did today:

I served tables. Fine. That's my job. I get paid $2.38 an hour. The rest of my money comes from tips. When there is downtime, I clean floors, pull booths and sweep, wipe the little ridges on the side of the table with some "sun glow" shit and scrub. I wash the cashier stands. I make tortillas. I stock cups and silverware. I fill up salt shakers. I roll silverware. I make iced tea and lemonade. I prep the food if the rush lunch hour has passed. I make the salads, do the garnishing. I restock salsa and what have you.

While I'm doing all that: I'M GETTING PAID $2.38 PER HOUR!!

Please consider that the next time you tip your waitress. Not only are you paying him/her for being fast, accurate, and mindful and hopefully--happy!--but you also are paying her/him for having his/her table clean, the chairs wipes, the cups clean, the silverware rolled, the full salt and pepper shakers, the tortillas, the salsa, the clean fucking ridges on the side of the table--and being fast, accurate, and hopefully HAPPY!

Dudes. I've always been a 20% tipper. Always. I know many who are strict 15% tippers. I will never tip less than 20% ever. In fact, I may up it, because when I eat, if I don't notice that the floor is dirty or the table is sticky or the silverware is icky or there's no salt--then my server did their fucking job and Don Pablo's food is fucking cheap because the SERVERS ARE BUSY. So please. Please!!! Be a good tipper. Appreciate your waitress today.

Some tips for kindness:

TIP IN CASH whenever you can. Pay in credit card, but tip in cash. This is why: At the end of the night, I print out my report. I automatically give 1.5% of my total sales to the bartender, whether I served alcohol or not. He gets it. Then I tip out 2.5% to support (bussers) who get paid more than servers, but for the rush hours, they clean off the tables. Then, if we had someone roll silverware for the lunch servers, we all tip ourt $4.00 to them.

Now: the computer calculates your total sales. If your total tips on your credit card charges equals less than 10%, you hand in cash to make up for the missing percent. You MUST CLAIM AT LEAST 10% for taxes and get those taxed tips in your paycheck. The reason why it's good to pay tips in cash is because I once had 20% of my total sales as tips through credit card. All well and good: great tippers! But sucks, because an added 10% of tips was taxed and I have to wait to get those taxed tips. Whereas if people tipped in cash, I could hand in only the 10% and no more, thus keeping more money.

Okay. In the end, the final decision is yours. I just wanted to show you the forest from the trees. I love you all!!!

Thank you, Sean, for giving me foot massages. I will promptly pop all blisters.