Random questions about tipping (for Dopers who worked in restaurants)

[Doug_K]

@doreen

I’m sure some are* - but I haven’t ever seen a server claim they made less than minimum wage over the course of a pay period. Sure, they’ll say that they got less than minimum for a particular shift- but it’s not a requirement than each individual shift has to result in enough tips to bring you up to minimum. Let’s say you pay $2.13 in cash wages per hour. That means you’re taking a $5.12 per hour tip credit. If a server works 10 hours per week and gets $51.20 in tips, you’re good, even if there were 6 hours with no tips.

I’ve seen that claim made in nearly every online discussion about tipping I’ve ever seen anywhere, including this board. That includes claiming that they have to pay taxes on ten percent of all their tickets whether they got tipped or not.

Here’s a post from a few years ago. It’s concerning pizza delivery drivers, but it’s an example of someone claiming that they only get $2.13 if there’s no tips:

@Askthepizzaguy

What needs to be addressed is the fact that pizza delivery drivers make less than minimum wage, generally serve one customer at a time, incur the unpaid expenses of additional cost of insurance, double what others pay if they can even get insured properly at all, spend more than twice as much on tires, oil changes, and tons more on car maintenance, and if gasoline goes up in price the amount they get paid for the gasoline stays the same. And half of all customers (or more) do not tip anything at all, and some think the delivery fee (which pays gasoline only) is the driver’s tip.

I’ve stated this several times before, but here it is again. Food servers in restaurants get tipped more and don’t have those additional expenses, and serve more customers at one time.

NETA: Well, it needs to be addressed if you folks want pizzas to be delivered to your house in a timely fashion. Otherwise you can keep getting part time teenagers with no work ethic delivering your food slowly because they have no incentive whatsoever to get it to you quickly. More trips per hour but no tips means the driver actually loses money on every run.

@snfaulkner

I can’t view that link right now. But when did that start? Last time I bartended was the end of last century and only made $2.13/hr when the min was like 6 or so. All my paychecks were 0 due to taxes on tips.

It’s always been that way. But it’s cash wage + tips must be at least minimum wage. I can imagine that if you made enough in tips and properly reported them that withholding would eat up your cash wage. But in that case you’d be better off than if you’d made minimum wage and no tips, at least unless you ended up with not enough withheld to cover your taxes and you got hit with the Underpayment of Estimated Tax penalty.