Minimum wage boost first in 10 years

Lyra, I don't know if it's the same across the entire 50 states, but I know that Oklahoma has (or used to have, anyway) a similar exemption for employees who earn tips.  Employers are allowed to pay nothing but token wages to people who rely mainly on tips for their income.    The real unfairness takes place in  situations just as you described-- when tip-earners are kept from doing the jobs they're supposed to be doing, and are used for other things.  Scraping gum off the bottoms of the tables was one task I remember doing that hacked me off.

The upside is that employees who earn tips are able to 1) make more money than many of the regular wage-earners, and 2) can often do this without paying taxes on much of it.  The downside is that employers take advantage of these people, holding their jobs over their heads, when it's really the customers who pay their wages.   

If you were making $2.10 back in 2002, that means that tip-earners' wages haven't been raised since the late '80's, which is when I worked in restaurants!  I would have thought it would have been raised to at least $3.00/ hr by now, but I guess not.

When you factor in the decline of the dollar it really gets bad.  I've heard that if the minimum wage had been set to grow proportionally with inflation that it would now be up to $14.50   (sorry, I forget the year that this example corresponds with).  The purchasing power of the dollar is at an all time low.  Articles like this sound bad, but actually sugarcoat the true depth of the issue.

Ha, yeah, I have an interesting crappy tip story from that one waitressing gig in Florida.  Admittedly I received very good tips and a lot of compliments, so the rare freak low tip stands out in my memory for that reason.  But I was waiting on a British couple - and British people btw are known for not tipping well to the point where I knew servers who refused to take a table once the found out they were British, as well as airlines supposedly, from what I heard, including a "Remember to tip 15%" speech announcement or something before landing, reminding British passengers about how it is here in the States because apparently they don't know, things are different in Europe or something.  So anyway, I'm waiting on this proper middle class, middle aged British couple, who were very polite and friendly the whole meal.  They were my only table for most of the time they were eating, so they had attentive service.  Order came out perfect, everything was fine, they cleaned their plates.  The bill was in the high 40's, almost $50.  I was looking forward to what should have been a nice tip, it should have been in the bag with an almost $50 bill and great service and no complaints.

Wrong!

They left me two dollars.  I was like, WHAT?!? when I saw what they filled in on their credit card slip.  In my younger years I would never have said anything, I would just have been all "grrr" and kept it to myself.  But now I was like 28 and didn't care anymore.  I'm making flippin' $2.10 an hour, the lowest base rate I've ever made in my life at any job, at a restaurant I was planning to quit anyway.   So I went over to the table and was all Hi!  I just wanted to know, was everything okay with your meal?  Was the food okay?  Were there any problems?

"Oh no, everything was wonderful!" they both piped up, smiling sincerely.

"Oh, okay.  Well I was just wondering because you left a two dollar tip on an almost 50 dollar check.  You do realize we only make $2.10 an hour here in Florida, right?"  I love the fact that I said the last part.   

The wife looked at the husband, horrified, and admonished him with "You only left two dollars?!?" to which he began sputtering indignantly and got defensive and angry.  I just left the table at that point, like, whatever.  Ignorance.  And no, they didn't leave anything more for the tip, not that I was expecting it.  I knew going over to the table I'd never get a dime more out of them, it was just the principle of it, educating them about what the deal is in the U.S.  Like, HELLO people, we make $2.10 an hour here in Florida!  We ain't here for the base pay!  We're here for the tips.  But I've heard SO many stories over the years though from different servers I've worked with about low tips, servers confronting people who tipped really low or completely stiffed them.  One male server in California I worked with chased a couple out to the parking lot when they left him a dollar, and I think he threw it at them and told them to keep it because it was such an insult.  He'd rather had nothing than their measly dollar.  Lots o' stories. 

Reminds me of why I did a brief foray into cocktailing in my early 20s.  $5 for serving a corporate business guy a martini or a scotch on the rocks or a JD and coke at the hotel bar after his work shift....$5 for serving one drink.  hmmmmmmmmm..........HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.  !!!   Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math.  Soon I was making like $70 an hour in tips during the after work happy hour rush, PLUS Cali's higher than national average server base rate, just for serving drinks, buffalo wings and keeping people's bowls of bar pretzel snacks filled and wondering why I ever bothered wasting my time waiting on tables doing full lunch or dinner for 2-10 people in order to get the same amount of money.

I'm not sure what the problem is with that....all restaurants I've worked at in my life did that.  After the people pay with their c.c. and fill in the tip it's entered into the computer by the server, then at the end of their shift the servers run a report that tells them what their total c.c. tips were, and then they're paid out by the manager.  That's how it's been for me anyway in several states, from the high end restaurants on down to the casual diner environments....

Yeah, that seems to be what the reason is.  Tom theorized about that last night but I figured I'd ask to make sure.  It really sucks too because like you mentioned, there are times when servers don't have tables and are doing things like....scraping gum off the underside of tables, or other physical labor, cleaning/stocking work.  (the infamous "side work," a part of table waiting life as any server knows....)   And for that reason alone they should be at the Federal minimum wage level, or whatever their particular State pays if it's higher than the Federal rate since they're not making tips but doing equally as much work. 

___

Some serious reform needs to be done, but how to even go about it?  It took them this long, 10 years, to even raise the rates a little?   Actually the quickest, most direct way is for people to refuse to work these jobs anymore, versus waiting for bills to be passed around Washington.  Cause a major labor shortage until these restaurant jobs get their act together and stop paying a reduced exemption minimum wage rate to the tip earners.  If tens of thousands of people quit and refused to work at those rates anymore, and others refused to fill in for them and take such low paying, exploitative jobs, then there you go.  But you know that there will always be people willing to work for pennies, either out of youthful naivete (like in my own case when I was younger...) or financial desperation.

So does it end up on your W2 in that case?  That's what I was thinking.  That you'd have to declare it for income tax.

Glad you said something to those idiots.  I would have a hard time keeping my mouth shut.  My son's g/f also had a couple who ate their meal and then the woman complained that it was crap and didn't want to pay.  Didn't want to tip either although there was nothing wrong with either food or service.  I think some people do this everywhere they eat just to see what they can get for free.