I get great tips!

This is another one of those topics that some of you may already know about, and others won’t.

I talk about my day-job – without going into excessive detail – quite a bit in my blog. But I don’t talk about my second job quite so much. But I do have a second job, one I do more for love than for money, although the little extra bit of cash does come in handy to support my ten years of accumulated credit card debt and my shopping addiction. ;-p

I work in a pub / bar two evenings a week, and every other Sunday. It’s not much, I generally work 4 hours on my evening shifts and 5-6 hours on my Sunday shift, so it’s only 8-14 hours per week on top of my 38 hour p/w day job. And it’s practically minimum wage, so I don’t earn much from it. Like I said, it’s more about love than money. I know it sounds strange to “love” a job as a barmaid/waitress, but it really fits in with my personality well. While the office job lets the intelligent numbers-geek side of me shine, the bar job lets my fun, bubbly flirty personality have its moment in the sun. I like meeting people, and an office job doesn’t give too much opportunity for that when you stare at the same 4 walls and the same dozen faces all day every day.

I especially love the shifts I do. From a financial point of view, most people want the busy nights, because firstly the rate of pay is slightly higher for Friday’s and Saturday’s, which I don’t work unless I have to, plus the tips can be higher as you’ll generally serve 3-4+ times more drinks on a Friday night, compared to a Tuesday night for example. I disagree with the tips theory overall though, as the Tuesday night crowd that I get won’t be as big, but they’re more likely to tip better as they generally aren’t the early 20-somethings out to get as much drink as possible for the few pounds in their pockets, it’s more 30-50+ aged more mature type people grabbing a bite to eat and a few glasses of wine in mid-week. Some of the other girls call Tuesday night “Dirty Old Man” night, because of the leary 40’s/50’s crowd who spend all evening hitting on you, as they get a bit over excited, ’escaping the old ball and chain at home for a few hours’ as they put it. But they’re harmless. The fact that nobody really like’s working that night is one of the reason’s why I got it when I started working there as they needed somebody to do that shift, and it was perfect for me as I just wanted a couple of quieter mid-week nights. So it’s more than fine by me to have to do the Tuesday, it’s my favourite night to work, and I’m more than happy to handle a few “dirty old men”! lol.

Like I said though, I don’t agree that you necessarily get more tips on the busier Friday and Saturday shifts... we generally pool our tips and they get divided up across everybody who worked that day. Anything you get given as a tip goes into the jar. And anybody who pays by card and chooses to add a tip at that point, that will get added on by management when they work it out too. But anyway, the average that each person takes home on Tuesday for example is about £10 if that, it’s been known to be as low as £2 or £3 per person, whereas you’re probably looking at £25 quite easily for the busier nights. So yes, the theory is right, but I think the lowest amount of tips that I’ve personally put in the jar on any of my shifts is £25, so I think that if we took our own tips home rather than pooling and splitting evenly, I’d come out better on my “crappy” shifts than many would on the busy shifts. The most tips I can remember putting in was £143 for a four and a half hour shift or so, and I only got given £25 tips for that night after it was divided up. The jar got pooled between 6 people that day, as it’s split between everybody on all shifts for that day, that means the tips total was about £150. If you like your numbers like I do, you’ll note that my share would have been 95% of that total, compared to the 16% of it I took home. I think everybody did very well out of me that night! I felt a bit aggrieved I must admit, as if everyone wanted to make good tips that night they should have barely worn the outfit that I did! Lol. Nobody knows who puts what in the jar though, unless you add up your own tips as you go along (like I usually do!).

That big tips day was back in February 2011, the day after Valentine’s Day, and the place was almost dead with only about 12-15 people max in at any point that I was there. But I was wearing an outfit that combined being very short with also being exceptionally low cut as my C-cup breasts spilled out of my top, and it mostly came from one group of 5 cheeky guys around their late 40’s who were there on their semi-regular Tuesday boys night out. I see them there a lot on Tuesday’s and we’ve built a friendly flirty relationship, I let them get away with lewd comments that many of the girls wouldn’t, and I’m often a bit of a tease around them, bending over unnecessarily a few too many times with a seductive smile and a twinkle in my eye. And I think they all appreciate having a fully grown-up woman waiting on them rather than the barely out of nappies 18 or 19 year old Uni students that is what a large chunk of the staff is made up of. LOL.

And forgetting the sultry slutiness, I do my standard job very well too. As long as it’s not too busy I’ll always go the extra mile and offer to bring their drinks to their table rather than have them collect them themselves, which is the standard process, but I do that for everybody, they’re not that special! And they usually tip well, compared to their actual bill, for the great friendly service I give them.

And on this particular evening, they were practically half the customers in the bar, and were pretty much there for my entire 4 hour shift, so I spent quite a bit of time chatting with them just to pass the time. There were two of us working the bar, and the five guys came in shortly after I got there, and headed straight for me and we greeted each other with big smiles and the usual small talk for a few minutes, it had been a good 5 or 6 weeks since I’d seen them last as I’d missed a few Tuesday shifts in the previous few weeks for various reasons and they came in on Tuesday every few weeks, so our paths just hadn’t crossed for a while. I took their order and I told them to go sit down and I’d bring them over. They went over to one of the bigger tables on the empty side of the bar – there were only 2 or 3 other tables occupied, but they were on the other side of the bar.

After that we just kind of waited for more people to arrive and for things to get busier, as it normally does as we get closer to 9pm, but with the exception of a few people coming in, which was offset by a few people leaving during the same time period, it never got busy. By this time, as I served people at the bar, to be nice I’d already been telling them that while things were so quiet, if they needed anything to just get my attention and I’d come over. Some took me up on the offer, others must have felt a bit weird waving across the room, so still walked up to the bar regardless.

Of course, my bunch of guys took me up on the offer, and were having a bit of fun with it. “Waitress” they’d jokingly call out to me when I was in earshot. They’d also use my name sometimes too, which they knew because they were regulars, plus it’s on my name-tag! And they started calling me over regularly for silly reasons, such as refilling their glasses – they were ordering bottles of wine rather than glasses, so one of them would have an empty glass while there was a half bottle of wine sat on their table; usually people just top themselves up! They wouldn’t even wait until they all had empty glasses, they started calling me over individually whenever any one of them had an empty glass. I was almost in a constant walk to or from their table for a while there! They were enjoying me sexily sauntering to and from them, with my heels clicking sexily against the floor. But I was quite thankful for the entertainment as well, as it was so quiet I was getting immensely bored, and I was in a flirty mood, so several times I stopped and chatted to them for a few minutes, even pulling up a chair to join them briefly a few times. Joining them for some innuendo interspersed chat and they were telling me about a wine-tasting event they were going to soon and were showing me how to taste wine properly, by sniffing it and swilling it around your mouth, which of course led to some “spits or swallows” jokes as I swirled wine around my mouth. I swallowed, of course! ;-p

As the night wore on, I was bringing their change back to them after they’d paid for another bottle of wine, and while I was leaning over the table giving them an eyeful of cleavage while I poured wine into a few of their glasses, one of them picked up a £10 note from his change and just slipped it right into my bra, which was slightly on display as they gazed down my top. I didn’t really know what to say, but they all laughed, and I joined in. I went back to the bar with that £10 note sticking out of my bra and put it in the tip jar.

After that it became a bit of an ongoing joke, they were all tipping me £5 and £10 notes, providing I let them stick the money directly into my bra! A few times they copped a little feel as they did so, and I’m sure a couple of times they pulled my bra away from my breast to create some room for their money and potentially got a glimpse of nipple for their troubles. At one point they handed me a £20 note and asked if I could change it for four £5’s. I went to the bar, got them four £5’s and came back, only for them to distribute them amongst themselves so they could each slip a £5 note into my bra.

Not the usual way to act in work really, but it was quiet, nobody else could really see what was going on because of where they were sat, slightly away from everybody else, and I was bored and in a bit of a flirty and naughty mood, so it was all a bit of harmless fun! :-)

And it all earned me £120 to add onto the £23 of tips I got from everybody else that night for being a friendly hostess providing exceptional service, which is how I earned my £143 of tips that night. And no, nobody got to put any coins into my bra! lol

By deduction, everybody else combined in that whole day made a grand total of £7, giving the tip jar £150 to be distributed between the 6 staff members that worked any of the shifts that Tuesday. I walked away with £25 as did all the others, and the other staff members that day earned a massive £24 extra each purely because I let 5 guys feel up my boobs!

Isn’t life unfair! Lol