I’m not into tipping when I’ve visited the US, since I come from a country where servers are paid the equivalent of Fr. 20-30 ($24-43) an hour so there isn’t an obligation to tip them, but that’s the opposite in the US. Am I allowed to hand them large cash tips such as Fr. 1000 ($1236) or 500€ ($583)? It gets weirder: as apparently fast food places demand a tip, like really? It’s getting out of hand, what’s the point then?
You don’t have to tip ever. For those who don’t know, if a server doesn’t make at least minimum wage off of tips then the employer must make up the difference. So at minimum they will get minimum wage, not nothing.
Not quite correct. We’re guaranteed at least a minimum wage over the pay period but we also tip out our own support staff based on sales. So if you tip me less than (at my restaurant) 7.5% of the pretax subtotal, I paid money to wait on you. Few people are that charming.
Report your employer, that’s illegal.
Depending on where you are in the country, the minimum wage can be as low as $7.25/hr. For tipped employees, that minimum becomes $2.13, with the intent that tips make up the rest.
So, that’s a $5.12 difference, with a standard 15% tip a server gets that waiting on a single table with a $40 about in a hour.
Needless to say, most wait staff here are relying on tips for the bulk of their income, and when you fail to tip it’s equivalent to making them work for free. I wish it wasn’t like that here. But in case you haven’t noticed, we have a lot worse problems right now. I don’t think fixing it will be on any politicians radar…
No it’s not, the minimum is $2.13 if they receive tips to get to federal minimum wage. If the tips do not get you to that 7.25 (or whatever it is in your state) then your employer must make up the difference.
In other words, even if you’re maybe $100 an hour off of tips, you’ll still be making $2.13 an hour from your employer. But if you only make $2 an hour from tips, your employer has to pay you actual minimum wage in your state.
It’s even worse than that sometimes. At my last serving job, I was required to tip out back of house a percentage of my sales. So when a table left me absolutely nothing, it actually cost me money to serve that table. I didn’t stick around at that job long.
Report that employer. That’s illegal.
Required by law, ignored in practice.
Report your employer. It won’t be ignored.
And I the meantime you can be sure to get really choicey treatment! And you can do it after working 4 doubles in a row that start at 745am and go until 1130pm each night.
The people who work these jobs (and I used to be one), aren’t crunching these numbers day in and day out.
Mostly YOU just look like a giant fucker if you don’t tip. It’s not doing anyone any favors.
I worked six years as a server. And yes, I did crunch those numbers lol. I wanted to know when I was making minimum wage or not. Anyone who doesn’t is an idiot who lets their employer take advantage of them.
You change the system by not tipping. You don’t change it by continuing to tip.
If you are making above minimum wage you are not number crunching. Maybe if you work at Chili’s I guess.
From the server side, having 5 people a day stiff you hurts more than it helps. If your answer is “well fuck, get everyone to stop tipping until servers make less than minimum wage so that they complain and change this” and then say you did it, it’s some real crab bucket shit, no?
Huh? I made upwards of $40 an hour serving. I still counted my pay. Why the fuck wouldn’t you?
If the state you live in cares about you then minimum wage is already higher than federal by a large amount. Not tipping in a $20/h state helps those in shittier states.
No clue what “crab bucket shit” means.
Because it doesn’t matter how much you make if you are appreciably beating minimum wage until you file taxes? I’m in the same boat where I worked in a white tablecloth restaurant, and it just doesn’t matter if you are guaranteed to beat it the minimum. There’s not a prize for knowing your take-home pay to the nearest dollar week over week.
It must be nice then living in a state with $20/h wages, that is not how it goes here. At the same time, knocking down the bottom line of your lowest paid workers is still checks notes a dick move. That’s true no matter who you are.
Crab bucket: you know how bad things are, but you intentionally punish other crabs in the bucket so nobody (or only a few) get out.
If your perspective is “this problem gets better if I, personally, don’t tip” you, tyler, are personally asshole. Period. And the more you understand the situation the worse it makes you look, not better.
What are you even talking about. Literally nothing you are saying makes sense. If you are making appreciably above minimum wage, then why would you be worrying about not making tips?
Who is knocking down any low paid workers?
Huh? This metaphor makes no sense. Punish them how? With what?
And yet this is how the entire rest of the world works. Are they all assholes? You keep thinking whatever you want, I guarantee you make ten times what I did working in a boonies Mexican restaurant, and even at the time I pushed for no tips and better pay. That was with federal minimum wage.
You’re just getting paid a ridiculous amount and see no tips as a threat to that, rather than a boost to all the actual low paid servers out there. Those that do make minimum wage every week because their employers say employees make more getting tipped.
The assumption that employers actually do this is interesting. What are the employees going to do about it if they don’t, sue? With what money?
It’s wage theft and violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act so they report the employer to the state and the state takes it from there.