False. The tipped minimum wage exists as a wage deduction allowance that restaurants are able to take out of their tipped workers’ wages. The federal maximum deduction under these rules is $5.12. The federal minimum wage is $7.25, and this is how we arrive at the $2.13/hr hourly rate for tipped workers. Employers are required to pay at least federal minimum wage, but as long as they can show in their records that your tips are making up for that $5.12/hr deduction, all they have to pay you is $2.13/hr.

The last time the federal minimum wage for tipped workers was changed was 1991. As early as 2011, I was working with people who were born into the system. They’re not buying into or supporting anything. It’s been foisted onto them by the people who made the rules: their parents’ generation.

ETA: Tips don’t exist to make up for the low hourly wages. The wage deduction (or tip credit as it’s also called) exists because tipping is so commonplace. A lot of people don’t understand that very fine point.

As a long time server myself, you should never be looking at your situation on a table to table basis. Your viewpoint should never be so tiny. The smallest useful increment to examine is your weekly take home. If you’re living and dying on every single table, you’re gonna have a bad time.

According to the IRS, only two things define something as a tip: it is voluntarily given, and it is the sole property of the recipient. So, technically no one has to tip if they don’t want to. But we learn who you are pretty quick.

Dear internet person, as a longtime professional in the industry, my mind is torn about this.

Firstly, the only real correlation with higher tips is higher sales. The more sales I have, particularly the more tables/customers I serve, the more tips I earn. So, I literally make more the harder I work.

Secondly, an hourly wage for the way I do my job would sap my willpower and absolutely destroy my sense of working as hard as possible. I would make just as much hourly on $800 in sales as $1600, so why would I ever care about doing twice as much work?

Thirdly, I know that as a tipped worker, I’m an outlier in terms of earnings. Tipped workers encounter poverty at three times the rate of non-tipped workers. In nearly two decades in the industry, I can’t tell you how many past and even current coworkers struggle so hard to keep their kids fed, their bills paid, and a roof over their heads. Many of them have lived hand to mouth, using their shift’s earnings to buy essentials on the way home and then repeat the pattern the next day. I’ve seen a lot of people over the years have a run of bad luck and jump ship for another restaurant or job because they have to operate on a short-term budget.

Fourthly, I spent a long time calibrating and calculating my budget to accommodate the fact that I never know exactly what I’m making week to week. However, I do know how much money I need to put in the bank every month to keep myself afloat, and since I’ve been budgeting like that for a long time, I’m well ahead of living month to month.

So, I’m doing perfectly fine busting my ass and making good money doing it, but a lot of people don’t do as well through no fault of their own. Tipping is one of the most fickle, unfair, underhanded, unpredictable, ageist, sexist, racist methods of compensating people for their work.

It’s a complicated question with complex answers, but I make more money under the current tipping model than any restaurant owner would actually pay anyone.

Edit: Typos and grammar.

I think you completely misunderstood me, amigo. I make close to $600 a week or more in tips, but the wages I’m paid by my employer are about $3/hr. And before you get into it, yes, tips are considered wages, so maybe I should have been more specific about the low hourly pay rate.

Too late!

Of course not. That’s implied by the fact that they’re married.

FALSE!!!

I’ve been waiting tables and tending bar since 2004. I made peace with the low wages a long time ago. I eat and pay my bills on tips.

When you don’t tip, YES WE ARE MAD AT YOU, not our jobs.

Guys can be married.

This sounds amazing.

Edit: Not to sound like a shill, but it seems like a good company.

HA!!

What is that from? Hahaha

It’s not sunshine, it’s the light of Laurelin, the Golden Tree of Aman!

Slenderfolk

Yeah. Hard to believe the song is that old. Seems like just yesterday I made a joke about it on Twitter.