It makes me think of the 50 lives code for Donkey Kong Country on SNES B , A , R , R , A , L . <| sep |> Not sure why you ' re being downvoted , that ' s a valid point . I really only meant on the first water , unless you ' re getting an excessive amount of refills , and more from a nightclub perspective where speed is key and time is limited you ' re only open for 5 hours twice a week and only busy for 1 hournight . For the sake of argument though let ' s say it does take 30 seconds to make your water , which I think is fair , at 50 centsdrink that bartender gets $ 120 from the one busy hour and let ' s say an additional $ 30 from the customers outside of that time . Now they tip out their barbackbusserssecurity and they ' ve made $ 100 . Divide by the 5 hours and they ' re making $ 20 hour plus hourly minimum ~$ 30 hour . Also keep in mind that it ' s a sales position , so in the extreme of someone handing out waters all night they would be fired after not too long for not making the bar money or the bar will start charging for water . In reality maybe 1 in 200 customers tip on a water . I ' m not going to get into the million other reason servers deserve tips that can be found in top ten why servers hate their job lists . TLDR because service industry .