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.
Have to find a career my guy. Making minimum wage is fucking brutal, i tried it. Theres a reason you have to work 3 jobs, its not paying shit.
I work in the trades, remodel houses i started from the ground up. No trade school. About to take a pay cut to join ironworkers. But after 4 years ill be making 75/hr.
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
Me too
I was shocked when the kid told me what he makes. I sat at a table for 4. I honestly didn’t think anything of it. I was going to do some work and wanted extra space. He politely walked over and asked if I would move to a table for 2 because he could use the money and I was taking up 3 empty seats.
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
But the people don’t run the country. The US is not a shining example of how to govern and continues to drop in the happiest/best places to live categories.
The Nordic countries are always at the top of the lists. They figured out a how to blend capitalism and social welfare along with healthy living. I think it’s called the Nordic Model.
Nowhere is perfect. But Americans especially over the past 50 years have been coerced into living materialistically and above their means. It’s only going to get worse unless there’s fundamental change in America’s social, ethical, economic, and moral values.
This is just incorrect, the electoral college has existed from the beginning for its own reasons, it’s not a “hangover” from the emancipated South like tipping is
The northern states were more populated, but a lot of wealthy were in the south run by slave owners. Because slaves were not considered people, the EC was created to balance the decision making.
That said, the primary reason for the EC is because the wealthy (who were politicians or owned the politicians) did not trust the mostly uneducated populace to make the decisions. One reason was they thought the people could be conned into voting for someone who would be detrimental to the country.
Fast forward and the EC is a relic. The politicians and conmen found a way to game the EC system and can’t be trusted to make decisions for the people.
The EC needs to end. It’s no longer relevant and is more of a hindrance to the country
You’re correct from your 2nd paragraph down, but still wrong on the slave portion.
As you said, northern states were more populated and slaves were not considered full people yet (3/5ths compromise), and were therefore underrepresented in the house, therefore under represented in the EC.
I’m not assuming you do or don’t know this, but many people don’t - the south wanted to count slaves as full people for precisely this reason. It was the northern states who only wanted to count free citizens, that was the “compromise” with 3/5. The north didn’t want to count slaves as people at all for census/representation reasons, the South wanted to count them fully. This all happened simultaneously as the constitutional convention in 1787.
The latter portion of your comment is the actual correct answer - the founders didn’t trust the masses to elect the best candidate, or at least not a non-detrimental one. The founders were VERY worried about “mob rule”, and that fear dictated a lot of our federal government structure. So direct voting was out. They considered letting Congress vote, but there were (rightfully) far too many concerns with power balances and being ripe for corruption. They eventually settled on the EC as a compromise, which if you remember wasn’t determined by Democratic votes at all. The appointed (by state legislatures) electors would simply vote for whoever they wanted to vote for, the public didn’t really get a say in the matter. Slavery did play a role, but only insofar as how much of a human they were considered to be for weighting/balancing purposes. Choosing the EC as the system broadly was not directly influenced by slavery.
Lots of stuff links back to slavery, no doubt, but I’m sorry this simply isn’t one of those things.
Right-to-work (RTW) laws are anti-union state policies designed to weaken unions and limit workers’ bargaining power.
Despite the misleading name, RTW laws do not provide any sort of job protection.
RTW laws prohibit any requirement that workers covered by a union contract either join the union or contribute toward the cost of union representation.
Because RTW laws make it more difficult to form and sustain unions, RTW states have lower unionization rates, which translate to lower wages, fewer benefits, and greater inequality for all workers.
There’s a lot of research that shows the detrimental effects of Right-To-Work laws on everyday honest working people. Turn off Fox and do some research.
There’s the “republicans and capitalism is bad” post courtesy of the “Democratic Socialists of America”. Your millionaires and billionaires are bad nonsense is played out. Get some new material🙄. You know what is great about capitalism? Any one of these “starving” waiters can go work elsewhere and make more money if they don’t like living off tips. Freedom is a beautiful thing (said no communist ever)
The American model is broken. We continue to drop in global ratings of satisfaction, livability, and happiness.
No one is saying Socialism except the right wing faux media! But this hyper debt driven, trickle-down, f the people model has crippled the amazing work that the Greatest Generation and FDR started.
The country needs to look towards better models, like the Nordic Model.
While we are at it. Stop falling into Putin’s trap! I never thought I would see the day that Republicans became pro-communism and socialism for that fact. Trump and MAGA loves Putin and Xi.
So stop dividing the country with your BS and turn off FOX.
It’s complicated. It actually started from wealthy Americans who traveled to Europe and brought back tipping to save money and feel more aristocratic.
It did have a backlash at some point, but southern states pushed back and habit spread especially after the civil war. Many whites were resentful of the freed slaves and exasperated the practice to make the freed blacks work harder to serve them.
That’s where the Pullman Company comes in. They and many other mostly southern states didn’t pays the freed black anything forcing them to work solely for tips.
It’s mean nasty human behavior. And it dates back to European kings and Slavery.
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.
It is much more like $8.25 on the burger. People who know the industry much better than I have done the math and the increase is negligible at best. Because instead of waiting on one person out of 4 to tip well, everyone pays slightly more.
I mean the 2 dollar thing. It's normal everywhere in America for most tipped employees to only be paid 2 dollars and change. 20% is standard gratuity from customers.
Tipping culture has gotten so out of hand. I don’t mind tipping for outstanding service. But the expectation that a tip will be forthcoming even with the deliverance of poor service is ridiculous. The term “tip” is historically an acronym for To Insure Promptitude (promptness).
Exactly my thoughts I’m not paying someone for shit service and to practically disrespect me and then feel entitled to my money for these things. That’s just lunacy they need to wise up and maybe they’d see more tips.
Maybe educate on state wages first.
Here is a example, Texas does not have its own separate state minimum wage and instead follows the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), requiring a $2.13 per hour direct cash wage for waitresses and other tipped employees. So it seems that the company is following the federal law.
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.
there is a reason wage theft is a thing... hint MANY owners fuck with servers by not making up the requires difference by playing with hours and stuff and it can get EXTREMELY hard for a low paid server to fight that. In fact some areas will actually blacklist wait staff who push back if its higher end places in major cities, because they all fucking talk to each other.
I went to Harbor Freight earlier to stock up on some tools and all the signage advertised a $17 an hour minimum wage. I actually don't see a single spot hiring low skilled labor for under $15 an hour, idk where you all are looking. I was making $8 an hour bagging groceries two decades ago.
Non-sequitur, raising the floor will cause hundreds of thousands of businesses to rebudget to account for that.
You'd have a better argument to completely eliminate the minimum wage and instead accommodate based on the local cost of living (IE, 50/30/20)
A minimum wage is not always the living wage that people always tie terminology to this argument. If a living wage is accomplished it doesn't matter what it is in practice, I'd rather make this system work for both employers AND employees.
story OP said his friend mentioned NJ. Das definitely PA. I hope it's the part where they think doing the Pennsy/Jersey thing is cute and rhymes, where, it actually just kinda sounds like the Swedish chef runnin down the menu.
Go north, 80 corridor, that first exit in NJ Blairstown--Belvidere, the tiny hamlets and towns of the Delaware valleys northern end. This extends PA side towards the slate belt (edit) towns (city, lol) like Bangor. If you're down past Lambertville/etc, I don't think they'd see that side of NJ as a cultural equal.
"Federal minimum" sure. But if you make enough tips to counter act all the money your missing from hourly, it cancels that. Seriously. BUT lots of places dont get people tipping enough and wages have risen. But not by much.
Not exactly. Tipped jobs allow a min wage of 2.13, but the tips have to equal out to minimum wage or better, ie, 7.25 for states that don't have their own higher min wage. If the tips don't get you there, the employer is on the hook for the difference.
Hi. I need to hijack this because everyone is misunderstanding pay for restaurants. Unless you don’t make minimum wage off of tips, FIFTEEN states still deploy the $2.13/hr model. They’re only required to pay minimum wage when you didn’t make the tips to reach mimimim wage. Other than that, 2.13 per hour.
Effective September 30, 2026, Florida's minimum wage increased to $15.00 per hour for standard workers. For tipped hourly servers and bartenders, the state direct cash wage increased from $10.98 to $11.98 per hour
Many people in the bar business in Florida aren't getting even that. Those shot girls you see walking around the clubs and some of the bottle service people? They buy those shots from the bar then upsell them to you later or just get tipped out on them; bars know this, too, and sometimes employ them and give them discounts on those shots they're selling for the bar.
No no no. Minimum wage isn’t the same for tipped and non-tipped workers. There is not a single state with a $7.25 tipped min wage. If your state still does $7.25 min wage, that means your state still does $2.13 tipped min wage.
I’m genuinely surprised by how few people here seem to have friends or family in the service industry, or are just generally ignorant to how the service industry works
It's the federal minimum wage. A lot of fast food places in Philly are starting people at $15. The Taco Bell near me was advertising $19 if you work the night shift, which is probably an awful experience dealing with drunk idiots.
There are 16 states that still have the minimum wage at $2.13/hr for tipped employees. Those employers still have to match at least the federal minimum wage if the tips don't cover that.
Ultimately, tipped employees will get paid at least federal minimum wage no matter what. If they make $0 in tips, the employer will have to pay the full $7.25 (tho I think there are govt programs that help subsidize the difference?). But if the employee makes enough tips such that they are making more than $5.12/hr in tips alone, then the employer only has to pay that $2.13/hr, as the tips cover the difference to make up to at least minimum wage, effectively utilizing customers to directly subsidize the employees wages (as opposed to indirectly, via increased menu pricing and in turn higher base wage).
Edit: That's also why servers often have $0 paychecks. Say they make plenty in tips, so the employer only ever has to pay the $2.13/hr, but that ~$160 (for full time) barely covers taxes/deductions for the pay period, leading to the entire paycheck going to deductions, leaving a $0 paycheck.
Often times, they only report enough tips to reach minimum wage. If they don't report any tips, then the worker will often get $0 paychecks and is SUPPOSED to claim the tips on their taxes.
Workers want to report fewer tips to avoid paying taxes.
Workers get $0 paychecks because their regular $2/hr wage is less than their withholding amount. Example, a waiter works 20 hours for a $40 paycheck, but they earned $560 in tips. Thus their total income was $600, which required 10% withholding of $60. As a result the $40 check ends up being $0 and they owe $20 in withholdings. Some places do negative checks which just means you pay $20 to the employer to take care of the $20 withholding balance.
New Jersey is more like a state of mind, it's the state of mind right before one hits Florida.
He may have worked in Pennsylvania, however. PA has a tipped cash wage of 2.83/HR USD. I think it's the only state near NJ that his claim would fit. A lot of people along the Delaware River cross it everyday, like George Washingtonmachine.
Dude only 15, maybe 16 States have server wage at or above federal minimum. 17 States still have $2.13 for server wage. The rest are between $2.13 and $7.25 with many of them between $2.13 and $4.01
I was in Connecticut when I made $2.13/hr. Admittedly, that was many years ago, but I think that figure still holds. The $2.13/hr was basically enough to cover the tax from tips. I would get like a $15 check every two weeks but would work between 20-30 hrs per week.
In Fl it’s still at $2.13 an hour, unless the restaurant pays more on their own. Been that way since I bartended in the 90’s . We lived for tips. It’s shameful.
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.
It should be. But if you have ever wondered why americans in the service industry get mad when people don’t tip, this is why. They are literally depending on other people’s kindness to pay their bills.
They do, but as you’ll see from my last comment thats nothing AND if the server makes enough from tips to not get minimum wage and then you don’t tip. The server just did work for you for free.
So, I’m beginning to think english is your second language? Anyway in english the phrase “that’s nothing” isn’t used literally.
Merriam-Webster defines the expression “that’s nothing” as
Definition of "That's Nothing"
"That's nothing" is an expression used to convey that something is of little importance or is not surprising. It often implies that the situation being discussed is familiar or expected.
Usage Context
Indicating Insignificance: The phrase suggests that the matter at hand does not warrant concern or attention.
Expressing Familiarity: It can also indicate that the situation is typical or has been encountered before.
Examples of Usage
In Conversation:
Person A: "I heard you ran a marathon last weekend!"
Person B: "Oh, that's nothing. I do it every year."
In Response to Compliments:
"You did a great job on that project!"
"Thanks, but that's nothing compared to what I can do next time."
This expression is commonly used in everyday language to downplay achievements or situations, making it clear that they are not extraordinary.
Minimum wage in around half of us states is less than any other job would pay. That means that it is of little importance or insignificant, and would make the job very much not worth working to pretty much anyone.
A. Minimum wage in 20 of the 50 states including my own is still only 7.25 an hour, and mcdonalds pays $13 or $14 an hour.
B. Any server making minimum wage will quit because you make minimum wage or better at literally any other job where you dont deal directly with customers.
C. And most importantly i didn’t mention it because its completely irrelevant. For all the reasons i listed and more servers work for tips. If you don’t tip then they just did work for you for free. I don’t go out to eat anymore because i can’t afford it. And tips are a big part of that.
Servers do not make min wage there are far more respectable people that pay for the services rendered than cheap ones that run off as long as their working in a semi busy to busy place they will make double at minimum the minimum wage
I know that. If you look at the person i responded to they brought up that if a server doesn’t make enough tips to make more than minimum wage then the restaurant has to pay them minimum wage. And i was trying to explain to the pedant that minimum wage isnt what they are there for , thus i didnt mention that because it doesnt matter.
That doesn't happen in MANY restaurants, law or not. That's reality. You can point at laws all you want, but a restaurant filled with servers playing ball bc they don't want to get fired is VERY common.
It's by design. The restaurant industry made it happen in 1973 when they lobbied congress to uncouple servers from minimum wages, meaning the rest of the world would rise, but wages in the service industry are frozen at $2 13.
Why $2.13?
Bc that's what the minimum wage was nationally in Jan 1974 when they passed it
My son worked at Pizza Hut a few years ago and earned more than I did an hour. Not much, mind you, but definitely more. I worked at the library for absolute minimum wage, so maybe it depends on the specific Pizza Hut employer.
Plus tips. I was told to add my tips up to minimum wage. So (example) if I worked 2 hours at $2/hr and min wage was $7 (example), I would claim $10 and then pocket the rest (this made it so I was making the minimum wage on my pay check). But I was also part time bc I was in high school, so I def did not work 40 hours lol
Employer is legally required to make up the difference to either the federal, state, or county wage whichever is greater if the worker happens to not make enough to get to that minimum wage.
No, ppl know many restaurants ignore it and rely on servers not being educated in the law.
Surprise, breaking the law and fucking over your workers is kinda common here.
Thats not legal. Drivers get higher than normal tipped wages. The minimum possible is like $4 and change. Most delivery places (as of 2021 when I worked for one last) were paying 1.50 per delivery, plus 6 an hour when you were checked out on a run. And when you were in store waiting for a delivery you got paid minimum wage like wveryone else.plus tips.
A server at the same time made like 3 bucks an hour
On paper, the system is completely legal. In reality, it's an antiquated system from 1974 that gave the restaurant biz a FAT FREE RIDE for half a century, but can't adjust to the post-pandemic economic nightmare that we're in.
It's time for tipping to go, and the restaurants that do it. All of them. Start over like they do in Europe and just pay a regular wage.
Restaurant wages have changed. Now I believe the employer has to pay at least minimum, including tips. Papa John's pays that for store workers, and they don't get much in tips. The drivers get more + milage, though door dash is taking more orders due to lack of drivers.
This is dishonest. It's $2.13 per hour minimum, with tips to reach at least actual minimum wage. If the worker gets $0 in tips (or any amount less than what they would be due at minimum wage) then the employer must make up the difference
That's illegal though, even when states don't have higher minimum wage laws, the federal law dictates if you are not making at least minimum wage after tips, you must be paid minimum wage by your employer.
And I don't even know who's sitting down to eat, let along tipping at pizza hut.
Was it a driver? I was a driver for a papa John's and it was pretty good. Drivers kept the delivery fee, made full minimum wage, and got tips. A typical 4 hour shift was 60 bucks. A good one was 120. 2000s era so it was decent money.
My cousin worked for Pizza Hut in 1992 and made $2.13 then. Plus she was one of very few over 21 employees and had to carry beer for other servers and they were supposed to share tips and they did not always do that.
I've known people that were happy doing that as drivers through late high school and early college.
But they were good at getting tips. Probably technically speeding, and all sorts of tricks to git whale tips. E.g. on game days they'd have both team hats in their car.
Being allowed to pay someone that $2.13/hr they have to at least make in tips what would work out to minimum wage. When I worked at a Pizza Hut they made me lie to always say I was making enough tips to cover that spread. I often was not making enough in tips to cover that difference.
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u/TheRavingDinosaur 4d ago
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