The Reddit community r/ServerLife is a place where servers, waiters and waitresses can come to vent about entitled and frustrating customers. Fellow restaurant workers come here to relate to their fellow brothers and sisters in aprons.

It currently has 209k members and is in the top 1% of the largest communities on Reddit. It's not easy moderating a community of that size. Officially, the subreddit has 8 moderators, but, as wheres_the_revolt tells us, only several actively carry out their duties.

wheres_the_revolt agrees to tell our readers the story of how she became one of the moderators. At first, they were just a member of the community like everybody else. But a sudden increase in spammy posts encouraged them to take some action. 

"I have been a member of the sub for a couple of years now," the Redditor tells us. "About a year ago, I noticed an uptick in trolls from the end-tipping community. And 6 months ago, there was an all-out brigading campaign in r/ServerLife that made it almost unbearable."

"There were only 2 active mods," wheres_the_revolt continues. "One was brand new, so I asked them to add me as a mod and they agreed." Their mission then was to address the problem around discussions about tipping. "The first thing I did was create a zero-tolerance rule for anyone expressing end-tipping sentiments," the Redditor tells us.

wheres_the_revolt tells our readers more about the changes the new moderators made. "I also created a couple of auto-moderators, to flag and pull posts. Then I created 'Tips-y Tuesday', to focus all tip-related posts (that weren’t legal questions) onto one day so that we could actively moderate those types of posts."

This moderator isn't afraid to exercise stern authority for the good of the community. "This is the only place in my life I’ve become a complete authoritarian," she laughs. "I actively enforce the zero-tolerance policy and have probably banned several hundred accounts since I’ve been a mod for about 3 months."

Other than that, it's important to be present on the subreddit. "Moderating mostly just requires us to pay attention and also to participate in the sub," wheres_the_revolt explains. "I try to coach the active users in here to not engage with the trolls, to report them and we will get rid of them.

In her professional life, the Redditor is a veteran in the serving sector. "I’ve been in the restaurant industry for almost 30 years, have worked almost every position, and have owned my own restaurant." 

As a seasoned restaurant worker, she has knowledge about the inner workings of the industry. That's probably why she's so adamantly against posts on no-tipping. And the members of the community generally agree, given how positively they received the changes.

That's one of the reasons this moderator joined the sub – to help other fellow restaurant workers. "A lot of folks don’t know their rights when it comes to labor laws (in the US) and I realized a lot of people are getting taken advantage of by unscrupulous bosses," wheres_the_revolt adds.

When we ask what's the hardest part of the job, the Redditor says it's how time-consuming it is. "Really there are only two of us that are active moderators. So I end up spending much more time on here than I would actually like to!"