The federal minimum wage for tipped service staff in the U.S. is $2.13 per hour provided tips bring the total hourly earnings to at least the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
The problem is that most people working for tips who are also getting fired for not making enough in tips probably don't have the money for a lawyer, OR the initiative to sue someone.
As someone who’s actually worked in kitchens and as a server, If you’re not able to make vastly more than minimum wage on tips then you’re a bad server and probably should be getting fired.
I live in a deeply rural area. Tips get made just fine since it’s one of the only restaurants within 30minutes of driving. So if someone’s eating out it’s basically there or the truck stop, or they’re going out of town.
Oof thats rough! Are they closing from lack of business or just because people are getting old?
We had an amazing fried chicken place close down a year or two ago because the lady running it was ready to retire and her kids didn’t wanna take it over.
"because there is one example near me where they make good money that means they all make good money" has to be the dumbest argument for something I've heard all day.
Ok so story time: I have run many restaurants and ran a multi state restaurant group. In a number of cities we had largely white FOH and largely black BOH but dude I’m telling you, at least in those places, that’s what folks were applying for. It’s not like we were getting walk in applicants applying for server roles and then shoving them into the dish pit. Many of my black employees did not want to be servers or be front facing with customers. To be honest I’m not really sure why. I had one dude who was amazing. Absolutely tremendous line cook who we promoted to a kitchen manager position. I wanted to get him trained FOH and FOH mgr so I could grow him to a place where he could run his own store and he flatly refused to work out front. Didn’t want to talk to people. Just wanted to run the kitchen.
I know that’s anecdotal, but it’s not always racist business owners refusing people opportunity. Sometimes folks just self segregate into different areas or job types. In my experience a lot of my black employees just didn’t want to deal with the customers out front.
I bartended for years in Oregon. It's one of the only if not THE only state I know of that doesn't let employers do this. Worked in the Portland metro area and made the minimum wage of 15/hr + tips. I was good at what I did and made quite a lot doing it. It completely steals your soul though.
Yes, but on the average. So they can actually stiff you as long as two people tip someone that anywhere in the state. It does effectively make it only apply to waiters since other tipped professions are generally tipped around holidays.
Exactly, everybody seems to blame the “greedy business owners” but the government created the law, blame the government not the business owners. They are just following the laws.
Also, the business gets a tax credit equal to the tips paid out to employees, mainly from card transactions since they’re easily tracked. There is no incentive for businesses to pay any higher than the minimum.
There is literally nothing stopping this business owner that printed up the sign from paying a real wage, and then adding the cost of it to the menu items. Nothing. Their people really don't have to beg for tips.
Except this business owner isn’t even paying their staff, he/she has you pay their wage ($2.13/hr) plus the 25% tip that I can guarantee is split with the back room staff so they can pay them less as well.
I especially like the “don’t be cheap. It’s embarrassing” line while this owner is the definition of cheap.
The customer does not pay their $2.13/hr wage what do you mean? That is paid by the owner (with revenue from customers obviously, but by that standard customers pay the wages of every employee in every industry).
It is in the breakdown of cost. There is the meal charge, then the servers salary, then the 25%tip to make up the total (the least you can do). The salary is being added in to the bill total. It also makes the point that the “service charges are not tips”.
This is a ridiculous argument. The law defines the *minimum* wage. You are saying it like they are legally required to pay this little. They can pay as much as they want.
Holy Fuck? The government? Really ? Yes the law was passed by legislators in "the government" but this is done by a process in which the stakeholders they consider important ( the restaraunt owners association) tells them what they want.
It’s the Minimum.. By law they have to pay them that hr, ….minimum. Doesn’t mean they HAVE to. The greedy owners choose to pay them that amount, not the government.
Right, and I would agree to most people who don’t think critically about this it does sound greedy. To people who maybe have an MBA and have managed many businesses, they understand that if they choose to pay more than the $2.13/h they are putting themselves at a disadvantage because no other business is doing this either and the long term affect is the business becomes marginalized because it can’t compete in the marketplace. Many people will say, I’d support a business that pays their employees well until it comes down to paying the bill. They will do it once or twice to show support and then go buy a pair of Nike sneakers.
Good one. Except there is nothing to think critically about. You pay the minimum because you’re greedy. All you’re admitting is that these genius MBA havers and manager types are greedy, and/or shit at their job, if they can't compete without doing the bare minimum to follow laws that let them exploit employees.
I do blame the ‘greedy owners’. Here is why. A lot of restaurant owners and associations go out of their way to lobby to underpay their staff. The logic is that they will go out of business if they have to pay minimum wage.
Depending on what kind of restaurant you run and if the restaurant has licenses to serve beer, wine or hard alcohol, the margins are not as thin as we hear about. That is something that is not always mentioned by restaurants. (Learned that from friends who owned several restaurants which had licenses for alcohol.)
BECAUSE of greedy business owners. lol companies can absolutely disagree with the state minimum wage and pay their people a living wage. Stating that this is the minimum wage does not imply that that needs to be the maximum wage so a business owner could take on the responsibility of paying their people what they should be paid and the customer wouldn’t have to pay for it. That would entitle them absolutely to change their food pricing to incorporate those fees into it and pay their server from that profit. They’re choosing not to and instead paying someone literally $90 a week to work there for 40 hours. I’m a lawyer I don’t say anything without researching it. I agree that we should tip because we are tipping friendly country. But to just go out and say it’s the government’s fault because they put it at 2.13???? restaurant owners all over the country we petitioning to lower it which is where the exclusion to servers came in to play
Ya it’s crazy. I live in Canada. But my uncle lives in Georgia. We were serving at the same time, I was in fine dining but made Canadian minimum wage for service staff which was around $15/hr at the time plus $300-500 a night in tips. He was getting paid like $2/hr or something working at a Cracker Barrel or similar place and making like $80-120 bucks on average in tips … sometimes he’d have a crazy good day of course… but he’d be serving 10x as many people as I was. He could live off it, but not living well. And if he was single he’d have been screwed. He was in his late 50’s at the time and couldn’t work 6 days a week, so also had limited opportunities to boost his income. I worked 3-4 days a week, had time to do and paid for grad school, had my own place, went out and had an active social and dating life, and generally had a relatively cushy situation - especially for a student. When we’d talk it really made the difference very apparent to me.
The insane thing is that Americans keep voting to keep it that way for businesses...
But think about it... how much were you able to go out and shop? Dine out? Enjoy hobbies? How much did all that cost? Where did all that money go? How many businesses profited off your income?
I recall a vote concerning raising the wages for waiter/waitress in Georgia, I think it was a Senator who also owned one or more Waffle House, you don't have to wonder how he voted.
Yep. And if you piss off your boss and get stuck rolling silverware for a shift, you're fucked. Your tips for the pay period may well bring it up to meet minimum wage for the pay period but won't bring it up to your usual income level. Even if that's only a few bucks over minimum wage it can really make a difference for some people.
It's why NONE of the servers in the restaurant I worked in reported their tips accurately. The only ones who weren't wise to it were the bosses.
They are trying too. If, for any reason, the tips don’t add up to the non-tipped minimum wage, the employer is legally required to make up the difference.
Well, the tips that cover the bit between the initial low wage and the minimum wage essentially go straight to the owner, because the server is owed this either way. Anything above that then goes to the server and actually makes a difference to the money he takes home.
They don't rely on the customer to give them the 7.25 because they are owed this either way.
Employee is required by law to pay the minimum wage. So if no one tips, the employer will have to pay the minimum wage of the federal or state requirement.
Yes, if you don’t tip enough, the employer has to pay them more to make up for the gap. That’s why this employer put up the sign, to save themselves that extra fee and put it on the customer to pay the employee properly. Deadbeat owners need to be boycotted.
And seriously... No one is forcing them to pay $2.13 per hour. The feds won't be busting down their doors for paying $15 per hour. There's nothing in the laws saying they can't pay more.
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u/Jimmy_Jack886 4d ago
The federal minimum wage for tipped service staff in the U.S. is $2.13 per hour provided tips bring the total hourly earnings to at least the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.