PSA on wages for waiting staff in the USA

[Goatfish]

I see far too often that people are super against the tipping culture and think that somehow waiting staff is making really nothing if they don't get tips. I feel like clearing this up a little bit.

Employers may claim a tip credit for employees who regularly earn more than $30 per month in tips. However, the employer must pay the wait staff at least $2.13 per hour as a cash wage. If the employee’s cash wages and tips combined are less than $7.25 per hour, the employer is legally obligated to pay the employee the difference.

So, what this means is that a restaurant in most states can pay a low wage to employees and have the difference made up in tips. The restaurant gets cheap labor on good workers allowing it to reduce cost of food and make a living itself. If it were a bad worker who never gets a tip, they still get at least minimum wage, or more depending on the state.

Besides, lets be honest.

As of May 2012, the average hourly wage – including tips – for a restaurant employee in the United States that received tip income was $11.82.

I will concede that allowing the min/max pay a worker might get be based on the luck of customer generosity is kind of shitty, this also means that there is more motivation to do a good job, and a much higher possible reward than many other jobs. Wait staff in Hawaii for instance average ~$14.00/hr which is well above normal min wage, and currently more than I make as an apprentice butcher. If you are good enough and can land a job at a higher end restaurant your upper wage can easily skyrocket.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm
http://work.chron.com/minimum-wage-w...aff-19308.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...36773769689062

[Mistame]

Just eliminate tipping. Good servers shouldn't be screwed over by bad servers and a customer should not feel obligated to pay any more than what's the bill.

[breadisfunny]

just what we need more threads about this. did you really have to make a new thread instead of posting the one already provided?

[Independent voter]

As of May 2012, the average hourly wage – including tips – for a restaurant employee in the United States that received tip income was $11.82.

And tips are pretty much tax free, the IRS gave up getting servers to report tips long ago so they take a portion of the base pay which is low.

For a while I dated a waitress who worked at the casinos and she would bring home a couple of one to three hundred dollars in tips a night.