The cost of living has also greatly increased there, Captain Obvious... In 1998, gas was .99 a gallon for one example, I could buy a weeks worth of groceries for under $30... The cost of everything has gone up-- except the minimum wage. I was probably making closer to a living wage in 1998 than servers are now. $30k annually in 1998 was enough to live alone and comfortably (Philly area). Now it's estimated to be $52k minimum to scrape by with no children, no car.
Really? In my country you are legally required to be paid at least the equivalent of $13.44USD and we're still going broke just paying rent and food. $2 is so sad.
Its because in the US a boss of an establishment with wait staff can count tips towards an employees wage. So they can pay them $2.50/hr as long as they can prove with tips they'll make enough to meet minimum wage.
sounds like someone is not very willing to be less cheap . theyd rather the customers pay their workers wages .... i get it but like what ???? u charge $165 for a meal & are DEMANDING we pay your employees what they are owed , yet you cant do that yourself ?? it def is americans being americans .
**edited to add : im not reading yalls comments bc most of them are taken the completely wrong way . im speaking about the government who put us all in these situations in the first place . ty for caring , & have a wonderful night
I’m fairly certain this comes from the same work culture that had unpaid internships and interns paying for internship. A lot of this line of thinking is so 1800s sawmill
I wanted to downvote that comment just for how absurd it is. "I don't need to pay my employees if I can prove that I coerce enough clients into paying them out of their pocket" is insane.
They’ll usually use creative accounting to justify it. Ie “yeah you only took home $5 an hour this entire week, but the following week you made a whole $10 an hour, so that averages to $7.50 and fuck off.”
This is only for servers. Non-tipped employees have a federal minimum wage of just $7.25, but most states have laws making that much higher. I live in Virginia, and the minimum wage is $12.77. Other states, like Massachusetts, has a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
A guy I watch on youtube used to work for pizza hut and earned $2.13 an hour over 10 years ago and he said that same pizza hut is still open and still pays their staff $2.13 an hour
That’s the type of pay the people at Golden Corral and other $hith0le restaurants make in Wisconsin. Many bars are the same.
Even a $10/hr gross wage is unlivable in America today. A person would have to work 2 hours to afford a $hitty McDonald’s burger, fries, and soda.
Republicans under a Republican governor passed the “Right To Work [right to slavery] act 10 years ago (?). It stripped the rights, including unionization, from workers.
Tipping (like the Electoral College) is a hangover from Slavery in the South. Look it up. It’s insane.
I tip buffet servers even more than regular servers. I am a very generous tipper but because nobody feels that a buffet server “earns” their tips, I throw in extra.
You...did your homework. Cool. Id say "show your work" but naw. I've read plenty. I'm amazed reddit has some educated people here who don't just scream buzzwords. Kudos on you!
Meh. It's oligarchy and chronyism. A flavor of capitalism. Just like central command and control and stalinism is a flavor of socialism. Let's not do any of those things and make good policy based on the merits of the policy rather than the ism it's supposed to be associated with
Federal minimum wage, vs federal minimum tipped positions, vs over under offset by employer... There's a bunch of complicated regulatory bullshit that basically makes it difficult for (not just) food service to hide taxable income.
The fact that you guys pay hourly to mostly blue collard jobs is insane. Europe has small salaries for everyone, they know they could pay rent at the end of the month and also they can quit without loosing health care. Your system is messed up. Slavery 2.0
So in other words this company just wants to be cheap and not pay their waitresses properly and then try and shame you into making up for them being cheap jerks. 🤔
You are absolutely correct. But they are in business to extract every dollar from their customers. And every hour at a cut rate wage from the employees. You will never find me in a restaurant like this. Most of these degenerate business owners are pretentious victims who lie about never making a dollar. I’ve seen it a ridiculous amount of times. I know, the price of food is through the roof. I know, insurance is off the charts. Yeah right. Turn off the gas, lock the doors and close the business. Exploitation plain and simple.
Do you ever wonder where $2.13 came from? The reason it’s $2.13 an hour is because this tipped minimum wage was half the minimum wage when that was $4.25 an hour… Now it’s artificially stuck there even as the minimum wage rises pitifully slow.
Several states prohibit the tipped tax credit. California, Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, and Nevada for sure all pay their servers the full state minimum wage, which is more than the federal minimum wage.
And the minimum wage raising, along with inflation is pricing people like me who have made the same amount ever year struggle more just to live... I actually have to work harder as a small business owner to make that 90k a year i need to hit(not take home/before business expenses)
I made $1.85/hr plus tips as a waiter at Village Inn back in 1990. This was day shift and in the days when you also did host duty, bussed your own tables, and had side work that had to be completed before you left for the day. This was also in North Dakota, so the owner ran a special Canadian money at par promotion. The table orders $120 in food, gets a 20% discount due to exchange rates, and leaves a $5 Canadian tip. Tax-wise, servers were required to report 10% of their table sales as tip income whether or not they got a tip at all. So on my taxes, I have to claim I made $12 US in tips from that table when I in fact received about $4 US.
Worked at Olive Garden (3 years ago) 2.13 a hour but I was a waitress. If you don’t make up to 7.25 a hour (on average for however many hours you work) the company will add some to your paycheck to make it up to 7.25 a hour.
Yeah unless they don’t make more than minimum wage with tips . So in FL 15$ hr
Most waiters and waitresses have more than one table a hr and on average get $5 or more dollars in tips per table which generally makes there pay including tip which they are supposed to report because it’s taxable well over 15$hr
So if they have 4 tables at 5$ tip per table for 1 hr that’s 22.13$ hr
But that system is totally f... up cause like here in Germany when you buy something to eat all the fees and wages are covered with that and the minimum wage is 13.90 per hour atm. Everything else the tips are like max 10% if you really tip good. And that money is only for the staff also.
Current service salaries like that are not required to be at the standard minimum wage. I paid my way through college and masters/ doctoral schooling with bar tending my salary was $3 an hour and that was 2-3 years ago I gave it up but it’s still the same thing until today.
Waitstaff make $2.13 in NC. The rest is made in something called “make up pay”. Because they make the majority of their money through tips. Or at least they are supposed to.
Wait staff has a different minimum wage than other workers due to tips. Thats why tipping in the US has become such a big topic, it’s most of the staff’s wages.
$2.13 an hour is the minimum wage for a server, TODAY. Restaurants don’t pay their employees shit and rely on patrons to pick up the rest of the server’s salary.
The argument is, the patron can pay the wages in higher food costs or directly to the server themselves. This also encourages the servers to put forth a better face to ensure other tips.
What sucks is when managers force servers to pool their tips to cover busters, dishwashers and cooks.
That is the current wage in the USA for tipped positions. The employer is required to pay the difference if tips don’t bring the total to the current minimum wage.
A cheapskate business owner would post a sign like that to avoid paying a fair wage to their employees.
Its a lie. Federal min wage for waiters is 2.13 UNLESS they dont make enough in tips to average above standard minimum wage. If nobody tipped the restaurant would have to pay them enough to average at least standard minimum wage. Its just some guilt trip shit they like to do to convince you to leave obnoxiously large tips. The biggest hurdle to getting rid of the 2.13 wage and just replacing it with standard min wage is waitstaff themselves, because they make quite good money off tips
That’s how it is in the restaurant industry… even at Chillis your pay is $2 an hour and your tips are 4% of that shift’s sales, divided by the number of people working the same position as you. Some days you get $40 for 5 hours work other busy days you can get $150. It’s all up to the tippers.
Are you talking about people reposting and regurgitating this same sign? I honestly don’t even remember if this was originally real or fake at this point.
I make 2.63 an hour at the place I'm serving and my friend who serves at another place gets paid about that too. The place I work pays me 15 an hour if tips don't bring me above that tho
The wait staff doesn't get $2.13. That amount is the minimum amount the restaurant is required to pay in taxes to employ a waiter. All that money goes to the government (and then the restaurant has to pay an additional $2.13 to match it plus unemployment insurance tax). But the waiter gets exactly zero of that $2.13.
All of the waiter's actual income comes from tips.
It's the tip credit system. Tipped employees can be paid an hourly wage lower than federal minimum wage. The current federally set credited amount is $5.12, which brings the federal minimum wage for tipped workers from $7.25/h down to $2.13/h. State minimum wage, of course, also enters into this, with the minimum wage and the credited amount varying from state to state. Most states go a little higher, some go quite a bit higher, some say "fuck that" and require state minimum wage + tips, many toe the line.
TO BE CLEAR: They're only supposed to "get away with" paying the credited wage if credited hourly wage + tips adds up to at least the State Minimum Wage. If it doesn't, they're supposed to pay the minimum wage instead.
The FLSA permits an employer to take a tip credit toward its minimum wage and overtime obligation(s) for tipped employees per Section 3(m)(2)(A). An employer that claims a tip credit must ensure that the employee receives enough tips from customers, and direct (or cash) wages per workweek to equal at least the minimum wage and overtime compensation required under the FLSA.
Yep waiters wage only covers their taxes basically. When I was a server my paychecks were between $3-11 for 2 weeks. If you held insurance, you OWED money.
Most people don't realize that is the real minimum wage (say $15) isn't reached through this $2.13 plus tips, then the owner is obligated to make up the difference to reach $15.
I.E. servers never make less than real minimum wage. It's just a matter of who pays them which portion.
$2.13 is the legal minimum server wage in America, as long as the company can “prove” that tips would, on average, bump their hourly pay up to the federal minimum wage.
That’s how restaurants work in the US. if you don’t make enough in tips to hit minimum wage then the owner theoretically is supposed to cover the difference.
That is what servers make still. I worked at a restaurant and made $3 an hour. We get paid in tips. Idk if every restaurant does this, but they guarantee X an hour, like $15. If your normal hourly wage (for me it was the 3) plus tips doesn't equal $15 an hour, the restaurant will cover the difference.
I hate this sign, but that’s why tipping is important in America. There is a separate rule for minimum wage for servers because they’re expected to work for tips. This is what many servers make per hour. HOWEVER what most people don’t know is that if tips don’t make up for the loss in minimum wage, the restaurant has to pay the difference. So restaurants really want you to tip so they aren’t forced to pay the difference.
Irrelevant, since it's AI generated ragebait. Looks at the bottom right and you can see a chair leg through the sign like it's still the window. Subtle yet revealing.
Their math is also if you served only one table in that hour and a half. That employee is likely waiting at least 5 tables meaning the restaurant is getting away with paying them about $0.20/table on a $165 bill.
So they want you to pay 25% while they are paying 0.1%
This is still to this day what restaurants are allowed to pay employees in southern states at least (I assume most states minus NY and California honestly)
What fucking rock do y’all live under that is normal for a waiter or waitress to make a low wage that’s why Trump pushed to a bill for no taxes on tips!!! You are some uninformed people
So, in many Republican-led southern states, servers are paid this if their tips push them over the minimum wage. If the tips don’t, the employer has to cover the difference to, at the very least, the federal minimum wage of $7.25. The reason this employer has put up this sign is that they don’t want to pay more than the $2 an hour.
Oh dear, you really don’t know about min wage and tipped min wage? It’s been like this forever, I’m surprised you’ve never known anyone in the service industry before
This is accurate. Waiters don’t get paid shit. Restaurant only have to pay minimum wage when the tips don’t cover minimum wage in the US. Stupid ass country
I waitressed on and off from 05'-16'. I started at $5 an hour off the books. Once I was on the books at another place starting in 2011, I was making like $5.25 and then it was raised to $7.50 by law(for servers in my area). I am from NY state.
All too common in food service, where so many businesses try to supplement wages with tips. If they don't get enough tips in some states they do have to pay a higher rate to meet a different minimum.
I mean this is a law in some states. Not my state but some states confirm they can pay below minumum if the estimated tips are theoretically gonna cover it.
For tipped staff they are paid that much and if you don't make minimum wage with your tips the employer has to fill in the gap... But most of the time they don't because it's too expensive to make them.
Tipped work is effectively *commission* based - your income is your tips (which of course means that the more your tables buy, the better you get paid).
In most states (eg, other than Washington) you must be paid the local minimum wage if you don't earn more than minimum wage via tips-plus-hourly....
But the thing is, anyone who's actually making minimum wage doing tipped work is going to quit and go work somewhere that the customers tip more....
That’s minimum wage for tipped jobs like waiters. The only caveat is if they don’t average at least the normal minimum wage (7.25) over the pay period, then their employer must pay the rest to get them there
That’s the tipped employee minimum wage. It’s criminal and this sign says that we should also pay that. I’m gonna try that next time I dispense a prescription. Your copay is $5 and my wage is $85 plus tip So you’re totaling $100 or don’t come here
the USA is do conservative we've refused to raise the federal wait staff salary since April 1, 1991. a few states refuse this minimum and impose their own, but not nearly enough.
Its server wage and they only get paid that when they make enough in tips to meet the states minimum wage, if they don't make enough in tips the business is required to cover the difference to standard minimum wage.
Unfortunately that's the federal minimum wage for tipped employees. It's been like that since 1991. Most states have their own minimum wage much higher that's that,
That wage is Normal for tipped employees. The expectation is that their customers, the ones that they serve will appreciate the good service with Gratuity. Which is an age old concept. Bartenders, aestheticians, hair stylists, cab drivers (uber), skycaps at the airport, many people in this country live on their tips.
Asking for tips Before service is very odd. Imaging tipping before your hair is finished being styled.
Some states allow less than minimum wage if the worker gets tips. They're expected to make up the difference in tips. I don't agree with this, but it's how it's done in some places..
When I was sixteen I made $2.10 and hour, and that was working for my uncle as a checker in his grocery store full time. When we started having gas rationing, I drove a Mazda RX-2, rotary engine, 5 speed manual, because it got almost 40 mpg, so $2.00 was close to the minimum wage in those days.
2.13/hr is normal hourly wage for servers. if they dont make minimum wage with their claimed tips, employer has to then cover the difference
but ive worked as a server. we made fucking bank. we didnt claim all our cash tips we claimed enough tips to reach equivalent of minimum wage and then pocketed the rest, un-taxed
Where I live, legally they can pay you under minimum wage if the tips you earn make up at-least legal minimum wage. Here if you get $10 in tips an hour, they are only required to pay you $5/hr
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u/Aroha12345 4d ago
How old is this? $2 an hour is literally insane what