In 1981, during the previous oil shale boom in the west, I was working on environmental surveys at mine sites out of Gillette, Wyoming. As a boom town, the hotels and restaurants catered to roughnecks with a lot of cash in their pockets and consultants on expense accounts. There were a lot of places that tried to be fancy but had no idea how to get it right.
We used to stay in a hotel that had a central courtyard with a pool with a faux-tropical motif. It was surrounded with fake plastic palm trees with fake parrots and toucans perched in them. The illusion was rather spoiled by the fact that the glass outside wall on one side of the pool looked out on a desolate windswept prairie with tumbleweeds rolling by.
One night we went to dinner and got a very young waitress who had apparently started working that morning. The menu listed “Soup de jour,” so we asked her what it was. She said, brightly, “Oh, that’s the soup of the day!,” wanting to share what she had so recently learned.
We were amazed to find things like quail on the menu. We were disappointed when it arrived hot on the outside but still frozen in the center, obviously having been microwaved.
Another general pit-too: Restaurants that maintain a deafening audio ambience, either through carelessness with things like the ceiling design or (much worse) through deliberate design to amplify diners’ noises, usually because everyone knows that a really noisy place is gooder and funner and a great place to be. “What?” “I said… because everyone knows…” “WHAT?”
Most Macaroni Grill’s I’ve been in (not by choice) are examples of this. There can be ten occupied tables amid a hundred, and you can’t hear yourself think, much less your table companions speak. As these are in that tier of restaurants carefully built to order according to a company master plan, it cannot be accidental.
Huh. I waited tables in 1991 and my wages were $1.79/hr.
I’ll never forget Kale Lady. I worked in a small, family owned Mexican restaurant. Our fajitas were quite popular. I served this woman her fajita one time. She gets a sizzling skillet with peppers, onions and shrimp; warm tortillas in a ramikin; and our edible fajita basket containing lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream and guacamole, garnished with a slice of melon on a little piece of purple kale.
She is ecstatic over this presentation, praising over and over and over how wonderful everything is. “Oh, this is SO wonderful! The best looking fajita I’ve ever seen!” And the first thing she grabs to eat? The little piece of inedible kale on the garnish plate. It was as if I served filet mignon with all the spread and she eats the parsley first. WTF??
There are many ways around the rule. One of the one I saw most used was the “average nightly wage” calculation.
For example, let’s say you work a 5 hour shift around closing. Closing usually took 1 hour. So for 4 hours you were bartending or waiting tables. You made 12 dollars an hour during those 4 hours, wages plus tips. Then the 3.60 or whatever in the last hour. This is a total of about 51 bucks, or an average wage of 10 an hour.
I complained once when closing took 2.5 hours because of a lingering group of customers and learned about this little trick.
So, a lot of waitstaff technically make over minimum wage of course on the average, but they get frustrated because they are not making tips in those after closing hours.
Only twice in all my service jobs did I get the difference made up and both times it was a full shift with few or no customers and the two places it happened fought us on it both times.
It is a pretty common practice in the service industry.
It of course varies by state, but I did find this from Wisconsin where they can use the gross weekly wages:
Paying Less Than Minimum Wage
A tipped employee’s tips together with her wages must equal at least $7.25/hour, the current minimum wage. A Wisconsin employer must pay a direct or “cash” wage of at least $2.33/hour. If the employee receives tips that do not add up to the difference between $2.33/hour and minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference. For example, a waitress works a 40-hour week. Her gross minimum wage must be at least $290.00. She receives $50.00 in tips. Applying the tip credit requires the employer to pay her the remaining $240.00, which means it must pay the waitress $6.00/hour, and the employee keeps her tips. If, however, she receives $1000.00 in tips, the employer can use the full tip credit, and is only required to pay her cash wages of $2.33/hour. Note that the Wisconsin cash wage requirement of $2.33/hour is different from the federal cash wage requirement of $2.13/hour, but in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin requirement applies.
So, I think the concern for those who work after close is that they are not earning as much as they could be and, for that one hour, they are only earning the “service minimum wage” which is less than minimum wage. So, in an example of being paid overtime for having to work over, it is a little different for servers. This is especially true as a great many servers are only scheduled for 25-30 hours a week so they never qualify for OT.
Add the average tips and it’s $4.25. My checks were less than 30 bucks for each two weeks.
The cite you listed is minimum wage NOT in the food service/tipped industry. Here’s a better one.
As of January 1st 2015, the rate is $2.13. Your proposed wage won’t be there until the 2030s.
Not only did I work for Mexican Food Factory (private owned) in New Jersey, I also worked for Chi Chi’s, TGIFriday’s and Red Lobster. Not once was I paid over $2.00 /hr for tipped jobs in any of these companies.
And my father being a CPA for 48 years would disagree too.
I was eating a a Chillies for lunch about a year ago. Sitting there, eating my fajitas and I noticed a stainless steel nut in on the hot plate. I plucked it up and showed it to me waitress said ‘you may want to figure out where that came from’ She was kinda horrified and ran off to the kitchen with it. A little while later the manager came out and said ‘it was from a piece of kitchen equipment, don’t worry about the check we’ll just forget about this’
I wasn’t all that upset about it, things happen. I could imagine that could have been a much worse situation with a different customer. It was just kinda weird how the manager resolved it. Made it feel more like he was trying to buy my silence.
And you’re looking at this wrong. The tipped industry’s minimum wage includes tipped associates tips. So when you add the tips, your wages for that shift might bring you to 16 bucks an hour, or around 8 an hour on a snowy lunch shift. But my paychecks were for “tipped associates”, and my rate for the restaurants reflected that. Not once was I paid “wages” more than $2 an hour. So $2 an hour for 7 hours, 5 of which I got tables who tipped I made on average $80 tips plus $14 for the time on the clock.
This was different for bussers and barbacks, who earned more an hour but only received a percentage of server/bartender tips, usually 10% each for bussers and barbacks. If I walked with 80 in tips, I really was tipped 100. $10 for bar and $10 for bussers. The bussers would make minimum plus tips in most of the places I worked. Same wages as I made to bartend but made more percentage in tips.
What restaurants have you worked in? It must not have been in the US.
Exactly what I was trying to say. I can pay a valet Parker $1 an hour. If he’s tipped and exceeded minimum wage, not my problem. Of course, I claimed up to full minimum wage but didn’t declare any extra tips.
I was a dependent living at home at the time, so according to the IRS, I’m a perfect law-abiding taxpayer.
Here’s a newer example: Friends of mine in NYC are paid around $4 an hour. When clocking out, you have to close your sales. The time clock asks, how much would you like to declare as tips? It’s best to declare it all as you’ll probably get a refund come tax time. You can also declare zero and deal with it in April.
You are the perfect example for my argument: If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, you shouldn’t be allowed in one.
Your server, busser, barback and bartender are being paid less than the standard MW, theirs is adjusted for the expectation of tips. I’m very glad I don’t work in the industry anymore. Our refills on soda weren’t free and you’d probably tip me less as if it were my decision to set the menu prices. Another fucking menu moron, as you used to be collectively referred to.
