I wasn't a waiter because it was easy, on the contrary it was anything but. I've worked since the age of 13. I've done heavy equipment body work, house painting, landscaping, facilities management, serving, and cooking all before I graduated college. Waiting was the worst of them all IMO. I have guys in my kitchen who have done grunt work / "man-jobs" their entire lives and think they want to go up front and work with customers. Not a single one has lasted more than a week before they literally BEGGED me to put them back in the kitchen again. There are very few jobs that I consider boy-jobs or girl-jobs, especially when you are trying to support a family. Today I would do anything I had to to support my daughter. I would mop up cum stains in a gay strip club, shovel horse **** off the road if I had to. There are guys who are waiting tables who are supporting kids for better or for worse. Maybe they made bad choices to get there, maybe they are just dealing with an economy where 50% of the population makes under $30,000/year and jobs are hard to find. I get depressed sometimes by the people that come to work for me. As I type this I have a 55-year-old kitchen guy working for min wage + tips who used to own a restaurant. he has 2 kids and a wife. Just recently I paid for the funeral of an employee who died at the age of 58. He worked for me for 9 years up until about 3 weeks before he died. He just got the shitty end of the genetic stick. Mostly deaf, mostly blind, diabetes, liver cancer (never drank a day in his life), some other ailments. Unlike most men, his career declined as his genetic short-comings started disqualifying him for jobs. Grown men who are recovering from failed businesses they owned are a very common applicant for me. Point is, you never know why a man might be doing a "girl-job." Furthermore, its none of your business. You should tip equally no matter male / female / black / white. Anything else is just a cheap-skate making assumptions to justify excuses.
Lastly, restaurants don't just wait for one dude to come be served by a single chef and server and then close down shop for the day. The kitchen staff gets there very early in the morning, probably earlier than most "man-jobs" start. They prep endlessly to get food ready for customers once they open. There are multiple shifts throughout the day where teams of people come in and prep, cook, pre-cook, clean, etc. Then around 10:30am the servers roll in to get ready to work with customers. 11:00 the place opens and customers flood in, eating everything in sight. The first time the server touched or saw the food that you ate was when they brought it to you. And by the time it enters your mouth at least 3-5 people you have never seen and will never see have had their (hopefully) gloved hands on it. If there is a "chef" he's most likely in charge of the kitchen, bosses underlings around, and has little to nothing to do with the food you ate. So by the time you've tipped the server, and if you are so generous as to hunt down a "chef", and tip him, you've now tipped the two people who have had the least to do with making your food. The restaurant closes around 10pm-12am and the servers clean the dinning room and jet by 1 at the latest. The kitchen staff is still there cleaning the kitchen until around 2 or 3 am before they finally get to go home. There's only a few hours a day where people aren't in the restaurant doing something. Some places never shut down. The morning shaft arrives as the night shift leaves and they start the day over again. Yes, a small percentage of the server's tips will go to the kitchen at the end of the night, but not the "chef's." It will just be up to the goodness of his heart if the staff sees any of that. If you really want to tip the people who actually made your food, tip the server and tip him / her well because that's the only way they are likely to see any of it.
;D
