"WaitingTables" news and stories

Photo: Jason Reidy/Flickr

Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the first in a series of posts.

The first time I saw a fellow server settle into a booth with her customers while taking orders, I was seriously concerned.

I was a veteran of both high- and low-end cuisine, but had never seen such a thing. I immediately assumed she was too tired to carry on, and never suspected she was angling for a better tip.

As folks who ate out in the early 1990s may recall, researchers discovered in 1993 that sitting down with customers -- like drawing a smiley face on the bill or wearing a flower in one's hair -- was a sure route to a bigger tip.

Read on, plus a poll, after the jump.