Daily Waiter Tips Board

A restaurant types in the cash tips each waiter took home at shift close, and everyone sees the month's standings on their own phone.

Who this is for

Irfan Shaikh runs a chai stall on the lane behind Sadar in Nagpur, four restaurants on either side of him. Sixty cutting chais between four and five every evening, most of them for waiters killing the gap between lunch and dinner. He hears the same argument three times a week: who got how much from table nine, and why Rehan always seems to end the month ahead. He wants to rent them a small board for three hundred rupees a month.

How the job is done today

The cashier at Hotel Noor keeps the tip box under the counter and empties it at half past eleven. He counts, mutters, and hands out notes from memory of who was on which table. Nothing is written except sometimes a number on the back of a bill book that gets thrown out on Sunday. If a waiter thinks he was short-changed, he has nothing to point at, so he either shrugs or shouts. The owner has no idea whether tips at dinner are twice lunch or ten times, and the waiters have no idea either, though every one of them is sure he is the best earner.

The screens, in order

1. Set up the restaurant — Lets Irfan add a restaurant, its two shifts and the names and phone numbers of its waiters before the first evening he switches it on.
2. Shift close — The cashier picks the date and the shift and types the cash amount handed to each waiter, one line per name, and saves it once.
3. Tonight's board — Shows what was just saved so any waiter can check his own figure on his phone while the notes are still in his pocket.
4. Month standings — Ranks the waiters of that restaurant by tips taken so far this month, so the argument has a number behind it.
5. My tips — Gives one waiter his own shift-by-shift list and his month total, without showing him anyone else's detail beyond the ranking.
6. Who is paying — Irfan's own page listing his restaurants and which ones have paid him for the month.

What it keeps track of

• Restaurants — name, lane and area, who to call, what they pay me each month, paid up to which month
• Waiters — name, phone number, which restaurant, day he started, still working or left
• Shifts — which day, lunch or dinner, which restaurant, who closed it, the time it was saved
• Tip entries — which shift, which waiter, how much cash he was handed, a short note if the amount was odd

The one decision that matters

Who types the number. One way is that each waiter enters what he received and the cashier approves it. The other is that the cashier enters all the names in one go at shift close and nobody else can change it. Go with the cashier. The site cannot see the cash box, so it can never prove anything, and asking eight men to file their own claims turns it into paperwork that dies in a week. What it can offer instead is speed and openness: one person types, every waiter sees his line within a minute, and a wrong figure gets corrected the same night while the notes are still in hand. Any change after that night stays visible with the time it was made.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out the pooled-tip split. Every restaurant divides differently, some give a share to the kitchen, some to the boy who clears plates, some to nobody, and building a calculator for that means arguing about the formula before anyone has learnt to trust the numbers. Leave out any money moving through the site as well. The cash is already handed over by hand at midnight, and pretending otherwise only slows the entry down.

How you would know it worked

By the second month a waiter reaches the chai stall at midnight, opens the board on his own phone and says his figure out loud before the cashier tells him, and nobody at that restaurant asks for the box to be counted again.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a chai stall behind Sadar with four restaurants around me and their waiters keep fighting about tips, so I want a small website I can rent to those restaurants for a few hundred rupees a month. The cashier should log in at the end of a shift, pick the date and whether it was lunch or dinner, and type how much cash each waiter was handed. Once he saves it, every waiter should be able to open the same site on his phone, sign in with his number, and see his own amount for that shift and his total for the month, along with a ranking of the top earners in that restaurant. No money moves through the site, it only writes down what was already given in cash. Let me add the restaurants and their waiters myself, and keep a page where I can see which restaurant has paid me this month.