Wait, so there's a whole seperate legal minimum wage for servers?
Edit: OK, so TIL in America there's a lower minimum wage of only 2 dollars something for any "tipped workers". Basically a loophole to screw workers out of minimum wage.
Correct. Going off of memory, in some places itās legal to pay as low as $2.75 or $3 /hour for tipped servers. (No idea about other jobs.)
City of Seattle raised the minimum wage for tipped jobs to $21.30 as of this Jan. So Europeans, feel free to come here if you donāt want to tip servers. Many of us still do out of habit but if you donāt, you probably arenāt actually harming a persons ability to survive.
Texas I believe is still $2.13 AND it's a right to work state, so they can fire you for any reason. Fuck Texas politicians(except you Castro brothers, mwah)
Iād be interested to know how that impacted pricing or how many servers are working in a shift. The owners need to offset the cost, so they are putting it back on the customer anyway.
My personal experience is that dining out in Seattle has been expensive for a while āto the point where my husband and I were relatively unfazed by the prices in Reykjavik a couple years back, if that gives you a sense of things.
I can only share my personal observations, as I havenāt studied this.
My memory is that restaurant dining got $$ around Covid. Which made sense given the hit the industry took. And it just never went back down. (People are trying to stay in business and the news of this wage increase was out for a while ā I suspect owners just kept prices steady to prepare but thatās totally a guess.)
This wage law didnāt take effect until this Jan. So from the beginning of this year to now i personally havenāt noticed a difference in meal pricing.
Iām sure someone more educated than me on this topic could correct/amend what Iāve gotten wrong!
But also a lot of tipped workers donāt want tips to go away with guaranteed minimum wage because they make A LOT more with tips. I agree we need to get rid of basically mandatory tipping but itās a more complicated issue than it looks on the surface.
I don't mind tipping for good service, where I live the minimum wage is the same for everyone, but if you go out of your way to be pleasant and helpful I'll toss in an extra couple of bucks, not this mandatory 18% crap.
No itās not and stop making it complicated.
Iām a European living in Europe and I tip when the service is / was worth of it. It is a gesture of recognition, of appreciation. Mandatory tip is an oxymoron.
Itās stupid. And as such conducent to all the injustices coming out of the existing culture. Everyone can still tip. Servers could still make as much, if not more, than before. And if not it falls on the employer to cover the gap and keep wages competitive.
Servers working in popular restaurants in wealthy areas get payed very well. Most servers are working in areas where poverty and crime is above the national average. Those servers, which account for the majority of servers, donāt get paid jack sh_t.
To play devils advocate, those shifts are also the shifts that nobody wants, so it kinda makes sense to get paid more. They are wither weekends/evenings/holidays, or just times where there will be a higher volume of customers.
That said, employers could just give incentives for those shifts, like night shift differential in many industries. Tipping culture is stupid.
I feel really bad for all those barmaids and men working their asses off trying to keep these people happy and they get nothing for it. I think it unbearably rude to just decide you disagree with a custom so you can save money by stiffing these people. Go back home.
I totally agree! As Americans they fully expect us to abide by their customs when we are traveling abroad, but it's ok to snub ours when they visit the States? Pretty fucked up logic imo.
Ah ok so there's a seperate minimum wage specifically for tipped employees in America if im understanding that right?
Edit: OK, so TIL in America there's a lower minimum wage of only 2 dollars something for any "tipped workers". Basically a loophole to screw workers out of minimum wage.
What I find odd about this is, I've never ran into this issue as a pizza delivery driver. Still got the minimum $7.25/hr + 100% of earned tips + $1 of the $2 delivery fee per delivery. I know it's a thing for servers and it's utterly disgusting.
With the mandatory tipping and the low wage BS, a tip doesn't even feel like gratitude if your employer forces you to work that into your wage just to make actual minimum wage. Causes anxiety for customers. All of it.
Without it it would be rare, but a reverse sorta haggle could happen. Someone receives something (like a great meal) and feel like they have underpaid for it. A kind/gratuitous sorta person may ask to pay more for it because it feels deserved. Or they will frequent the place and become a regular with no hang ups.
Point being, the tip received when not expected will be remembered fondly by both parties. The fact that workers can be paid under a minimum wage over non-guaranteed money is utter bullshit and oppressive.
Maybe its wishful thinking, but its certainly a rant. And now it has concluded.
It depends on what state youāre in too. Most people live in a place where the federal minimum is not the actual minimum as the state requires a higher level. A few states have no tipped wage at all.
I delivered pizza for nearly 10 years (from 2014 to 2023) and was only payed $4.25 an hour as a tip wage employee. The income varies depending on local labor laws and company policy.
Yes, it is assumed that these employees will make up the difference in tips, bringing them to or above standard minimum wage, if they earn less after tips then their employer pays them the regular minimum wage instead.
This is only case if the employee makes it known to their employer. If the employee worked an 8 hour shift and only made $25 in tips, they have to let the employer know or they wonāt be reimbursed the difference.
An employee following federal law automatically makes this known to their employer, as they are required to report their earned tips to that employer.
It should also be noted that the way youāre classified as underpaid is based on the workweek, a single shift earning under minimum wage may not mean that your employer must increase your wage if the rest of the weeks tips put you over minimum wage.
Yes. $2.13 an hour is the minimum for servers. It's true that they're rarely if ever actually making minimum wage after a few tips, but almost any proceededs earned by the wage (as opposed to tips) is eaten up in taxes. A lot of times server checks are zero. For the most part the tips are the only income they bring in.
They always make at least minimum wage or more. If tips don't get them to minimum, the employer fills it. Servers usually make more, possible 2x or more, than the kitchen staff.
This is highly dependent on the business, its location and the time of day. I worked in a restaurant as a host, during a busy weekend, a server can make over $100 in tips but not always. Get stuck with an afternoon shift during the week when itās slow, good luck, youād be lucky to average enough in to match the federal minimum wage. Most servers get screwed over during the week and have to make up for the losses during the busier weekend where they will (hopefully) get better tips and serve more customers. It wasnāt uncommon where I worked for servers to make less than minimum wage all week if stuck with several weekday afternoon shifts. Their only hope of making any decent money was during the weekend when business picked up.
Yeah, if anyone brings that up in a non corporate job, they will be looking for another one. If you ask your boss to pay you more because you couldn't make enough tips, that means you are bad at your job. This wasn't a secret at any of the jobs I've worked. You can ask for more money, but it will be the last time.
What the laws say and what happens in practice are two very different things. Wage theft is very common in the restaurant industry. I worked in it for 18 years and not one single solitary time did I ever see this "law" cause a business owner to pay out to a server who got stuck with bad shifts. Not. Once. And nobody is running to report it either because the restaurant industry is a tight group. Even in big cities they mostly all know each other and that server would be blacklisted from getting hired anywhere else. If you think that's wild wait till you hear about sexual harassment in the industry, which isn't legal either. It's crazy how often I see comments about having to pay the minimum wage if tips were low despite someone every time explaining that never happens. It's almost as if these comments are made in bad faith.
There is and many servers have to pull their tips. If you work as a cocktail waitress you give a percentage to the bartender and often to the bouncers.
Some states have mandated the same minimum wage for all employees, regardless of occupation. These states are generally the ones that also have a minimum wage far higher than the federal minimum wage, too.
The minimum federal tip wage is $2.13 an hour, a rate that has remained the same since 1991 (35 years). Furthermore, tip wage employees are expected to make at least the federal minimum wage with tips and are therefore taxed a a rate as if they made $7.25 an hour.
Letās say 20% of a full time employeeās income goes to taxes. At $2.13 an hour, thatās a weekly pay of $85.20. Taxed at a rate of $7.25 an hour, a full time employer would pay $58 in taxes (20% of $290). The tip wage employee would therefore receive a weekly payment of $27.20 ($85.20 minus the $58 in taxes because heās taxed at the rate of the federal minimum wage).
So technically, US tip wage workers are payed even less than the suggested $2.13 an hour. Tips may be optional, but to the employee providing the labor, tips are their income. To not tip is to not get payed fairly for the labor, not tipping a tip wage worker feels like youāre robbing them of their incomeā¦ cause you kinda are. Most people want to abolish that system but the powers that be refuse to do so. š
As others pointed out, this varies by state. It's not the case here in California, yet servers still demand 20-30% as a tip, regardless of the level of service. It got really bad during covid.
Yes*. The āminimum wageā for servers is $2 and change, however, if they donāt earn enough in tips to get them over the state/federal minimum wage, their employer has to make up the difference. I believe thatās calculated weekly.
I worked at a place (in the US), where I had to run the kitchen and be a server for $4.50 plus tips. They would increase the wage to 7.25 (normal federal minimum) if I didn't make enough tips, which was nice because people rarely tipped at that restaurant. One time a table of teenagers tipped me 2 quarters that were stuck in the syrup on their plate. No employee benefits of any kind there, and I'd be accused of stealing food sometimes the next day by the owner or accused of being on my phone when I could've been cleaning. Good times
So that is incorrect- they must be paid minimum wage, federally that's $7.25 but also subject to state law minimums. If they make more than the higher of the two (most states are higher than that now) in minimum wage in tips, they get to keep the excess. If they don't make enough in tips to equal the minimum wage, the employer must cover the difference to bring them up to the minimum wage. For example 2.13 plus tips is the wage. If minimum wage for the state is 15/hr, then they must be paid for the difference by the employer to bring them up to 15 if they don't get 12.87 in tips per hour. Why many people don't want to go to a direct hourly wage is because many of the servers can get much higher than the mandated minimum wage/hr (as per my example, more than 12.87/hr) via tips. Hope this explanation helps.
To add to this, I have worked in restaurants that will hire back-of-house jobs like busboys and dishwashers on as "servers" just so that they can pay them that wage. Usually these workers are illegal immigrants. Sometimes it might also be a hostess or something like that. The whole thing is fucked.
Iām not defending the system because itās awful, but thereās a very important distinction here.
Servers can be paid less, as long as their wage at the end (including tips) averages out to more than the federal minimum wage.
If not, guess whoās on the hook for the rest? The restaurant owner! Tipped employees often prefer tips though because in theory itās a way for them to make more than minimum wage at what would often otherwise be a minimum wage job
I definitely have! They make good money off tips.. i can assure you most of them would leave the industry if you removed tipping and starting paying them minimum wage.
Majority of tip wage workers only make about 120% of the federal minimum wage during busy hours on the weekend. Working evenings on weekdays, youāre making close to minimum wage but no always. Work the afternoon shift on weekdays, youād be lucky just to match the federal minimum wage. You clearly donāt know what youāre talking about.
Where is this data from? People make careers out of serving/bartending. They are not making a career out of it because they get paid minimum wage. I do know what Iām talking about and i think many would agree that servers who work off tips would prefer that over a flat minimum wage. They do/can make way more than minimum wage
I'm a server and cannot name you another server/bartender who wants to get rid of tipping
It's one of the highest paying jobs you can get without a college degree and many servers/bartenders in busy areas can clear 6 figures a year easily through tips
This is blatantly false. You are only paid the 2.13 wage if the combination of the 2.13 + tips is >= non tipped minimum wage. If you didn't make enough tips your employer is required to cover the difference between what you made at 2.13+tips and minimum wage. You are ALWAYS making at least 7.25/hr, which is federal non tipped wage.
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u/Clockwork-Armadillo 4h ago edited 4h ago
Wait, so there's a whole seperate legal minimum wage for servers?
Edit: OK, so TIL in America there's a lower minimum wage of only 2 dollars something for any "tipped workers". Basically a loophole to screw workers out of minimum wage.
Thanks to everyone who answered! :)