That is how much the restaurant pays in wages, however the employees are guaranteed $7.25/hour. If wages +tips is less than $7.25/hour, the restaurant is required to make up the difference.
Which weirdly often doesn’t happen because of self tip reporting (as it’s been explained to me in the past. ) Apparently there is a motivation or pressure to not accurately self report tips for tax reasons, and it often results in servers not getting that difference if they should on slow or low tip shifts.
We seem to have let a really dumb system get ingrained into our restaurants
We come from nations where staff get paid at least the minimum wage and don’t rely on tips to make it up to that.
In the US, servers are guaranteed minimum wage as well. Unfortunately that wage is crazy know low at $7.25/hour.
$2.13/hr usually for tipped employees
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
That is how much the restaurant pays in wages, however the employees are guaranteed $7.25/hour. If wages +tips is less than $7.25/hour, the restaurant is required to make up the difference.
Yes, that is the minimum wage for tipped employees.
However, a tipped employee is guaranteed the non-tipped state minimum wage in the event tips do not cover the difference.
Which weirdly often doesn’t happen because of self tip reporting (as it’s been explained to me in the past. ) Apparently there is a motivation or pressure to not accurately self report tips for tax reasons, and it often results in servers not getting that difference if they should on slow or low tip shifts.
We seem to have let a really dumb system get ingrained into our restaurants
Yup, the way this works for restaurant table servers is something like this:
A. Declare your tips and come in under the minimum wage. Employer pays the difference.
B. Don’t declare your tips, and employer pays minimum wage. Employer (and potentially IRS) also calls bullshit on this.
C. Employer looks the other way on B.
D. Employer is a freaking unicorn and pays a livable wage.
Most of the time, the only viable answer is A, but never declare all your tips. That and you make sure that nobody spots you doing this.
Its a racist system, so they didnt have to pay the emancipated slaves who were working in the industry.