Some days, you end up on the left side of the bell curve in a stochastic system.

Today, I made two dollars in tips. And that was my tip-out from the server. Over the entire day, there were a total of four tables, each with two people, for a total of eight covers. Apparently, each of them spent an average of $25; the tip-out to the bar is 1% of sales, so Ted presumably did about $200 in sales. Presumably, he therefore made somewhere between $30 and $40, for the four hours he worked. Not a particularly impressive day: he probably made over minimum wage.

Me, I had nobody at the bar, for either food OR drinks, so I didn't get any direct tips, just the two dollar tipout from the server's sales.

But that's the way it works. On average, one does fairly well. But there are enough things out of one's control that you have to think of it as a statistical system with significant randomness. There are things which one can do that change your odds, but, nonetheless, some days, you're gonna walk out of work having made all of two dollars.

That's just the nature of stochastic systems.