(For my previous posts on Tom Emmer, click here)
For those of you who haven’t been following the Tom Emmer story in the last week, let me bring you up to speed. Last Saturday in one of the most patronizing publicity stunts I have ever witnessed, Tom Emmer “waited tables.” I put this in quotation marks because all he really did was shadow a server around a restaurant for a couple hours. He did no sidework and probably did not even spend the evening living on the $60 his trainer made. He followed this up with a townhall meeting on Wednesday where he faced a room of angry servers and sycophantic supporters who clearly were not servers. He faced some pointed jabs, a bag of pennies, and expertly dodged some question.
Here are some of the points Emmer attempted to make at this meeting:
Read the full post at Tips For Improving Your Tips
Tips on improving your Tips 
Jul 17, 2010 @ 15:30:19
The guy is clearly an idiot. Every server knows management’s mantra of upsell and how increased ticket prices mean more tips.
All of his political mumbo jumbo is hurting servers now. The more it’s in the news, the more greedy servers seem. ‘Why should they make that much money? They are making more than I am! I’m not tipping them!’ will be the mindset of many diners until this issue is resolved. Meanwhile, he’ll still rake in his 6 figure income and sleep well at night.
Jul 18, 2010 @ 22:50:27
Love your blog! I am a server in the Minneapolis area, who attended the Tom Emmer fiasco at Ol’ Mexico last Wednesday.
It was my first attendance at any type of political anything, and how unsatisfying it was! Nothing but back pedaling, and denying. And his moderator couldn’t have been more annoying, what with her continual plugs for the restaurant’s happy hour at inappropriate moments. The room was filled 2/3rds with Emmer supporters and media, and maybe 1/3rd with servers. Still, it felt good to be there!
It ended abruptly a full half hour before it was scheduled to end, I’m sure mostly due to the guy who dumped pennies on Emmer’s table. Which was really too bad, considering his stunt was not really related to the minimum wage/server issue anyway.
Keep up the good work, and thanks for supporting your brothers and sisters up here in MN!
Jul 19, 2010 @ 09:57:45
The whole thing was more for headlines than for substance. He met with servers to have a headline that said “Emmer meets with Servers.” He had already dropped the tip credit idea and was never serious about the tax exemption. It was a publicity stunt pure and simple. Now he is going to run from the issue. The real challenge is going to be how to keep all of the servers fired up to vote until election day.
The Index « Tips on improving your Tips
Jul 29, 2010 @ 13:06:31