Reply to Tipping - how to advise teens?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Explain to your kid what categories of workers are "tipped employees" whose salary is lower by law because the restaurant lobby convinced the DOL long ago that they make a ton in tips, effectively passing the obligation to pay the employee to the customer directly and enabling the worker to evade taxes more easily.[/quote]

This is not entirely true.  Waiters and other tipped employees must make at least the minimum wage in combined base pay plus tips.  If the tips received are not enough to cover this, the employer must make up the difference.

Not that this is an excuse for not tipping, but it is important to understand that no waiter (even the worst one) is actually making $2.something/hour.

Not sure where everyone is getting 20% as a standard tip, though.  15% is standard in the US for average service.  20% for good service.  And complain to the manager for bad service.

Counter service is generally not tipped, but I might do it if extra effort is involved in packaging my order or something similar.

Emily Post has a good discussion on tipping on her web site.

And, yes, adolescents should tip the same way as their parents.[/quote]

"Not that this is an excuse for not tipping, but it is important to understand that no waiter (even the worst one) is actually making $2.something/hour."

Sorry to laugh, but no one enforces this. Typically it doesn't happen often, but people most definitely walk away with less than minimum wage. And it's SOP for managers to require servers to do pre- and post-serving work while on the clock at $2.13.

What happens more frequently is that you get a shift with few and poor tippers, and you technically make $9/hr at a restaurant with $25 entrees, where you'd expect to make more, and you still need to pay your rent.

Sorry, it's weird to think "no big deal if people don't tip according to custom, they'll still get minimum wage!" Imagine if you did a great job, your boss was like eh, I know you usually get a bonus based on sales, but I'm not feeling it today. But don't worry, I'll still pay you $7.25/hr." That's just not the job. It's harder to get a serving job than most minimum wage jobs because it's not supposed to be a minimum wage job.

I'm not talking about awful service or whether tipped workers should have a higher wage, or how we should just be like Europe or whatever. I'm talking about the situation here and now for competent service. [/quote]

When I say people walk out with less than min wage, I don't mean often, but literally almost every server has, at times, regardless of the law.[/quote]

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