Minimum Wage Question for Food Service Workers

[jwoodie]

Would you give up Tips for a $15 per hour minimum wage?

 

[Pop23]

There are cash tips and tips done with credit cards that are entirely less desirable.

I nearly always tip with cash.

 

[jwoodie]

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

 

[Pop23]

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

I'm not a food service worker

 

[Misty]

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

There are placed here that do that too. Add 18%. I don't like it.

I tip for good service. If it's exceptional I leave an exceptional tip.

 

[Mr Natural]

I have no idea what a waiter makes. Nor is it any of my business. Nor is it a question I ask the waiter when he comes around to explain the daily specials.

I tip based on the price of the meal and level of service.

 

[Ernie S.]

Would you give up Tips for a $15 per hour minimum wage?

As one who employs tipped workers, they would be crazy. My bartenders make about $20/hour over all on an average night. On a busy week end night, they can make $100/hour.
We had a couple last night tip $50 on a 26 dollar tab.

 

[Ernie S.]

There are cash tips and tips done with credit cards that are entirely less desirable.

I nearly always tip with cash.

Me too and my bartenders would prefer that. I have to report their CC tips.

 

[namvet]

no tips needed

 

[JoeMoma]

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

If it's mandatory, then it is not really a tip. It is a service charge.

 

[Dana7360]

Would you give up Tips for a $15 per hour minimum wage?

I worked in the food service industry when I was in college.

No. They make much more in tips than a wage of 15 dollars an hour.

Which is why the new law in Seattle exempts those who work in the food service industry and get tips from the law. The employees who don't get tips will have the 15 dollar an hour wage.

And the lie about high wages from conservatives? Well it's been shot down again. The unemployment rate in King County where Seattle and Seatac are is 3.3%. Which is way below the national level.

The median income in the area is 67,479.00. Which is way above the national level.

 

[JoeMoma]

I have no idea what a waiter makes. Nor is it any of my business. Nor is it a question I ask the waiter when he comes around to explain the daily specials.

I tip based on the price of the meal and level of service.

I usually tip based on the same things. However, does someone who happens to be serving high dollar food automatically deserve a much larger tip than someone serving cheaper food at the Waffle House?

When I'm eating at the Waffle House, I usually tip upwards to 40 to 50%, but that's pretty easy to do on a $7.50 meal. At more expensive places I'm back down to the traditional 15 to 20%.

 

[boilermaker55]

Well shit, lets reduce your income and you have to rely on tips! MOTHER F*CKER. there is one great idea.

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

I'm not a food service worker

 

[Dana7360]

There are cash tips and tips done with credit cards that are entirely less desirable.

I nearly always tip with cash.

Me too and my bartenders would prefer that. I have to report their CC tips.

I don't know where you live but I used to be the payroll person for a restaurant in the 80s. They had a few of them around the area.

Every quarter I had to add up all the receipts for each of the staff who earned tips. If what they declared in tips wasn't at least the national standard level, which was around 10% at the time, the amount they should have reported was reported to the IRS.

The staff that earned tips never lived on their paychecks. Their paychecks paid the taxes they owed on the tips they earned. They made anywhere from 40 to 100 dollars an hour on tips depending on their job, what day of the week they worked and if they worked banquets or not.

 

[boilermaker55]

$40 to $100 dollars a day on average? Or that would be the outlier?
Tell us the right amount on average compared to the outlier. If there is one.

There are cash tips and tips done with credit cards that are entirely less desirable.

I nearly always tip with cash.

Me too and my bartenders would prefer that. I have to report their CC tips.

I don't know where you live but I used to be the payroll person for a restaurant in the 80s. They had a few of them around the area.

Every quarter I had to add up all the receipts for each of the staff who earned tips. If what they declared in tips wasn't at least the national standard level, which was around 10% at the time, the amount they should have reported was reported to the IRS.

The staff that earned tips never lived on their paychecks. Their paychecks paid the taxes they owed on the tips they earned. They made anywhere from 40 to 100 dollars an hour on tips depending on their job, what day of the week they worked and if they worked banquets or not.

 

[Ernie S.]

Let's not get into accounting.

 

[boilermaker55]

Why not? Tell the whole truth. Don't you think.

Let's not get into accounting.

 

[Ernie S.]

Yes, of course, but I'm not about to discuss accounting practices I'm not familiar with. You could call my accountant....

 

[SwimExpert]

Would you give up Tips for a $15 per hour minimum wage?

I think you're a bit confused in asking this question. Restaurant servers who make tips do not make the standard minimum wage. Instead, they make the "server's minimum wage." Federally, this is $2.13/hr, though some states have slightly higher thresholds. The tips are counted as part of your wages, and are counted as a credit against the minimum wage requirement. This benefits the employer, who is able to pay a lower wage, it can benefit the employee who is likely to make more than the minimum wage, and especially benefits high performers who have the opportunity to make an income that is commensurate with their high performance level.

For decades, increases in the minimum wage have not seen increases in the "server wage." When the minimum wage was $4.25, the server wage was $2.13/hr. When the minimum wage was raised to $4.75, the server wage stayed the same. When the minimum wage was increased again to $5.15, the server wage continued to stay stagnant. When the most recent minimum wage increase to $7.25 was passed, the server wage remained the same $2.13. The requirement that the hourly wage plus tips must equal the general minimum wage has been a big part of the rationale. In this way, it is believed that servers are receiving the same benefits from increasing the minimum wage as everyone else would. However, this ends up being very untrue. The stagnation of the server's minimum wage is, in many ways, analogous to many of the challenges the rest of the country has been facing along the way. By and large, almost every restaurant pays servers the permissible minimum server wage, with only a slight increase of 25c-50c for servers who may be designated as trainers or as head waitstaff. Generally, the only time a restaurant will pay a higher hourly wage is for small restaurants that do less business, who cannot maintain staff at the minimum server wage due to the reduced tips the servers would receive. Servers also do not generally receive cost of living wages for their longevity with a company.

A server's income has always been largely from tips, and thus is variant. That being said, the share of income servers receive from tips has become more and more dependent entirely on tips, so much so that significant problems have arisen in regards to reporting income and collecting of taxes. For many years now, the every day reality has been that a server does not receive a paycheck. Or if they do, it's less than $10. The $2.13/hr wage a server receives has been entirely consumed by taxes for years. It is also no secret that servers have a long history of under reporting tips to reduce their tax liability. While this has been true for many servers historically, it's also a consequence of low server wages, as well as other regulatory and policy factors. For example, if a guest fails to tip a server for whatever reason, that server will still have a certain automatic reporting that applies. He or she will also incur an expense for that table not providing a tip, as the server typically has to tip out other employees such as bartenders, food runners, and bussers based on total sales without regard to the server's actual income. In some cases, restaurants may go so far as to also charge servers daily fees for uniforms and "tabling" fees (whereby a server must pay a fee for each table in their section), fees for credit card transactions, and the cost of customer theft. These costs incurred by the server may be counted as income for taxation purposes, even though the money was not actually made. In addition it is not uncommon for high performing servers to receive a $0 net paycheck, while still owing additional taxes because their server wage was insufficient to cover all of the taxes that would normally be deducted from their paycheck. There is also the often unseen, and thus forgotten, matter of set-up and clean-up labor that servers perform which does not generate tips. This varies from restaurant to restaurant, and can be anywhere from an additional 30 minutes to two hours. In some instances (and becoming more common) servers are at times taken away from table server to perform work otherwise done by employees who do receive hourly compensation, but who have either not been scheduled or have been sent home early (giving the employer a back door for paying for labor well below the normal wage). Finally, when a server works overtime, there is essentially no overtime pay benefit as would exist for most other hourly jobs, because time-and-a-half of $2.13 an hour is only $3.20/hr. While under reporting tips seems unethical on its surface, it largely has been a mechanism for servers to readjust for unfair challenges that are inherent to the system.

In recent years the IRS has become zealous about pursuing servers to ensure full reporting. This has led many restaurants to take additional action to minimize a server's ability to under report their tips. Automatic reporting of all credit card tips (because they are easily traceable by the company) has become a nearly universal practice in the industry. Many restaurants automatically report an additional minimum based on the server's sales, and perform audits of server's daily tips with the threat of disciplinary action for the appearance of under reporting, on the premise that low tip reporting implies poor performance.

Thus, to pose the dilemma of whether servers would forfeit accepting tips in favor of a $15/hr minimum wage is a false dichotomy. With only one or two exceptions in the entire country, a minimum server wage exists separate from the minimum wage. If the minimum wage were raised to $15/hr, the server wage is not likely to increase, though it rightfully should. It seems that what you are really trying to ask is whether servers would be willing to forgo the tipping system in exchange for a pure hourly wage system for their jobs. In which case, the answers will be varied for different individuals. By and large, though, most experienced a quality servers would not prefer a purely hourly pay. Most servers appreciate the fact that they can earn their daily pay without limitations of simply being paid by the hour, allowing them to make more money due to their skill and performance. Even average servers would be opposed on account of the fact that serving is not mean tto be a minimum wage job. Even the sloppy fuckstains at McDonalds make more than minimum wage. Why should a server, who actually generates revenue as opposed to taking orders and performs at a much higher level, be expected to do a more difficult and more skilled job for less? What I suspect you would find is that most servers would advocate for a more fair server wage and better protections against practices that put undo burdens on them and their income.

 

[kaz]

In France, there is a mandatory 18% tip added to the bill. Would you prefer that?

FYI, they do automatically put it on the check, you're right. But if you feel you got bad service, you can complain and have it removed.

Funny story on that. My first trip to Belgium on business, we went to the Grand Place, the downtown area in Brussels. There are a lot of nice restaurants down there, and they are expensive. We got drinks and all. I paid for the table, we all worked for GE so there was no reason to split it. There were probably 5 or 6 of us. As we were leaving and had just gone outside, the waitress ran out the door and said "oh, thank you, thank you so much." A couple questions later I found out about the gratuity already being included...

After that in a new country, I always go the the hotel Concierge first and ask about tipping. GE paid it, no questions asked. And I want to be fair to workers, but I didn't mean to waste their money and over tip