Is it true that the waitstaff itself doesn’t want the tip abolished instead of paying them minimum wage because it’s more financially beneficial for them?

26 comments

1. Probably.

   Servers typically make a good deal more than minimum wage with tips but would become minimum wage employees without it.

2. I’ve definitely heard this argument from waitstaff.

3. The wait staff I know want to keep tipping. My buddies restaurant the staff ends up at $22-25/hour after tips.

4. I haven’t waited tables in over 20 years but I made much better money than they would have paid on an hourly rate. Yes, there were some slow shifts here and there but overall for the week, I was averaging better than $20/hour when minimum wage was something like $5.25.

5. For every service job I had (waiter, then bartender during college), I made significantly more via tips than I would have if they offered me an hourly rate. I’m assuming that hourly rate would land somewhere around $10-$20 an hour. Even as a server (at this local bar and grill) if I had 4 tables of 4 going, assuming 20% it wouldn’t be uncommon to make $15-$30 off each table for about an hour of work. As a bartender it’s not uncommon to get tipped more than 20% depending on the place you work.

   Tipping is income that doesn’t (in most cases) go to the business, so that expense doesn’t come out of the businesses pockets. If it did, eating out would be almost unaffordable. However, you rarely have benefits with serving jobs. So take that for what it’s worth.

   The best part? Tips were usually cash (this was 10-15 years ago), so you leave with a pocket full of cash rather than having to wait for your paycheck. Perfect for a college kid, and even now as an adult, I wish I got a daily paycheck in cash lol.

6. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from friends who are/were waitstaff.

   Anyone who thinks waitstaff should be paid minimum wage instead of tips is just trying to get out of tipping.

7. This has been true of every server and bartender I’ve talked about it with.

   They can make WAY more in a night than almost any low skill hourly gig.

8. I’d say yes. I was making an average of $25 an hour serving at a causal restaurant. Most of my peers averaged $20. The old servers that had spent years developing regulars were making $30. Even shitty ones made $17-$18. I never once heard a server support getting rid of tips.

9. Yes. The amount of money you can make via tips is *exponentially* higher than minimum wage and significantly higher than what a business can reasonably afford to pay you.

   Back when I tended bar it wasn’t unusual to make between $30-$40 and hour in tips. That number could easily double depending on the evening.

   *Nobody* is paying a bartender $35 an hour. That’s close to what I make *now* as an IT guy.

10. Absolutely the case. A good bartender or server can make bank.

11. When I was a waitress it was against the law for tipped workers to earn below minimum wage after a day’s work. If the tips weren’t enough for me to reach the threshold (I worked at a cheap pizza restaurant and sometimes we had slow shifts) the restaurant would have to pay me enough to reach it.

12. Waiters make good money. Taking away tips would ruin them.

13. Do you truly think servers who work for tips are usually making minimum wage?

    I had friends with full time teaching jobs who would bartend Friday through Sunday, because they made more in 3 nights than the teaching job paid for 5 days.

    I knew a host working in New York city who made a disgusting amount of money before the pandemic. Minimum wage doesn’t pay the tip on a $600 restaurant bill.

14. I won’t speak for everyone, but the one time I did bartending I averaged $25/hour. $8 in wages and $17 in tips. And I was in a rural dive bar though constantly full of alcoholics.

    The tips were nice.

15. Many servers make a ton of money with tips and hate when non-server do-gooders keep talking about how we should get rid of tips.

16. Only speaking from personal experience knowing waitstaff. They make much more than minimum wage and would not want to go to minimum wage.

    Now some folks would be happy with a higher wage and no tips. But the people I know make very good money from tips and it means the restaurant can hire more people because the bump in income doesn’t come out of the restaurant.

    I know a couple restaurant managers and they would be ok with some straight minimum wage but they would have to staff less and raise prices most likely in order to get people to work for them. So the end result is the customer pays for it either way.

    Margins are thin for most restaurants and any price hike will reduce the number of patrons. So it’s all a balance. It clearly works in places without tipping but it is always a tradeoff.

    At least with tipping it’s the folks that can pay more that make up the difference.

17. Let’s just put it this way. While we were in college my brother and I worked jobs to make money for the next year. I worked at a grocery store where I started out making minimum wage and eventually got to making $2.50 over minimum wage. My brother worked at a local coffee shop where he was being paid $1.50 below minimum wage but got tips. My brother would consistently make around twice what I made per week despite being paid $4.00 less an hour than me and also working around 15 hours less a week than me thanks to his tips.

18. $20 x 8 hours is $160. I’ve known servers who’d make several hundred in a few hours in the evening.

    I’ve never done worked as a server, but the math adds up. If a table of four spends $50 and tip 20%, that’s $10 for the server. Wait 4 tables an hour and that’s $40/ hour, but I think most have more tables, and people often spend more.

19. They’ll never in a million years get paid what they make now with tips

20. Generally, yes. Tips can be very big, especially at higher end places. They’re not minimum wage or even slightly over minimum wage jobs, as much as Reddit would like them to be.

21. Yes. Why would they want to give up making hundreds of dollars a night in exchange for minimum wage?

22. It’s like every other job. People that excell at their job want incentive based pay. People that suck at their job want a guaranteed salary.

    Joe’s Crab Shack tried a flat wage ($14 per hour.) They raised food prices to cover the higher wage. All of their really good waiters quit because it was a pay cut. They were left with average and below average servers. Customers were unhappy about the crappy service, and they had to switch back to a tip based system.

23. It’s painfully obvious that some individuals on Reddit’s hard on with getting rid of tips comes from total lack of experience in the job. When I bartended I would be making $50-$60 an hour. There’s not a chance in hell anyone would want to give that up.

    It also just makes no sense. If we theoretically gave up tipping, prices would have to rise 20% anyways, so the customer would be paying the same amount. The only difference would be that the 20% wouldn’t be going directly into the server’s pocket, it would go to the restaurant owner. Are we going to trust Olive Garden to just pay all that forward and just start bartenders at $40 an hour?

24. Tipping is basically a money printing machine for servers. I made between $15-$25 an hour back in 2005 at a Dennys in a small town when I was 17-19. Absolutely no way I could have made anywhere near that working any other job at that age. The only people who cry about servers not getting paid a living wage have never waited tables.

    Honestly, the practice of tipping servers should be extended to other countries, and not eliminated from ours. Eliminating tipping would instantly financially ruin millions of servers who depend on tips.

25. The thing is that it varies wildly depending on the restaurant. Most will average out to better than minimum wage by a long shot. Some .. eh, sure, but not wildly so. It’s always inconsistent within a restaurant. Let’s just say I don’t know any servers who live a comfortable life just on their tips.

    There’s a lot of things about working at a restaurant that are fine for young people, but it doesn’t tend to be a career for most for a reason. You can’t count on your schedule week to week and no benefits were the big ones for me. I’d just like to see serving become a more consistent and reliable job for people if they want it. As it is now, it seems exploitative. I worked in the restaurant industry for years serving and bartending. Yeah it can be fun and rewarding while you’re working it, but I didn’t realize how much I hated a lot about it until I left that environment.

    Another thing that is out of whack with this system is that the servers can make a lot of money, while the kitchen staff are making a whole lot less. Sure, different jobs and all, but that is a big disparity for a team that needs both sides to work well in order to be successful.

26. People like tipping culture because it works out to the benefit of every stakeholder involved.

    Businesses that have tippable employees are generally in service industry and have notoriously low profit margins so anything to help them increase that margin could be the difference between success and bankruptcy.

    Customers get better service and cheaper food/service then they would otherwise.

    The tippable employees themselves earn more than they otherwise would if they had a standard hourly wage. Most servers make much more than minimum wage and bartenders can actually make fairly decent money to compete with some office jobs.

    The only people that dislike the tipping system are misers who hate the idea of spending more than they need to. This is proven with every survey of tippable employees which show they much prefer the system in place than abolished. It’s also not an American invention, but was imported from Europe before the practice went out of favor there.