Wow, this isn’t how it works here at all. I have worked as a waiter in one place, and as a waiter, then manager in another place in the area I live.
The way it worked for me (and my best friend and wife) is that your hourly wage of 2.13 was to “cover the taxes you must pay for federal withholding” and your tips were to cover the pay of the hosts and bussers what weren’t on payroll. So at the end of the day, all the money you had received from tips was weighed against the total of your sales for the day. Say that you had a total sales of 500 bucks, you would pay back the restaurant 10 percent (50 bucks) to cover your share of the pay for the hosts and bussers, and anything left from that you got to keep. So as long as you got tipped more than 10 percent per table on average you would make money that day.
I worked for an independent restaurant and a chain. The independent restaurant was 10 percent of sales, and the chain was 9 percent, but you also tipped out separately at 15 percent of your alcohol sales, and that went to the bar.
My wife has worked for two independent places and she now works for a very prestigious high end national chain, and her tip out on sales is 10 percent. She is really good as a waitress, and usually makes around 15 percent, so 5 percent is pretty good of sales to take home. She has to claim on her taxes the five percent she makes as income at the chain, where as the two independent places she worked at made her claim whatever federal minimum wage was at the time, which I think was $5.15 an hour.
There has never been speak of making sure that you made minimum wage over all for the day at any of the places I worked or where she works. That is so bizarre that it would be so plainly stated in law and not practiced.
On that I’m not surprised at all, the restaurant industry has a lot of violations in terms of Wage & Hour law that few of the employees know about and even fewer would be willing to fight about if they did.
Tip pooling/splitting is legal, but everyone must make Federal minimum wage of $7.25. The person who said the $2.13 was “to cover the taxes” was wrong, they may even have believed what they were saying (because it was probably a lowly restaurant manager who was just following what they were told.) That $2.13 is the minimum amount they can pay a tipped employee in ordinary wage from payroll, it wasn’t optional or to cover taxes, it’s what the law says they have to pay–but said tipped employee must actually earn minimum wage (overall) for every hour worked.
All of that is most likely fine, as tip pooling is generally legal, barring local/State regulations. As long as all of the tipped employees are making at least minimum wage.
Your employer cannot tell you how to report income on taxes, but they do control what goes on your W2 form. Your wife and you are both required to report the full amount of income you earn each year. The two places where she was claiming that she only earned $5.15 an hour she most likely was actually filling out her taxes improperly in violation of the law. She was required (and the IRS does not care what the restaurant says), to report all of her income, which is everything on her W2 + all her tips + all other income.
Of course not, why would the employer want that to be common knowledge? They certainly wouldn’t advertise it. They would say that they were under the “assumption” that all their tipped employees were making at least a rate equivalent to minimum wage when they worked, and they would hope that if any of them were not those employees (like you) would assume that part of the deal is there is a “potential” of making less than minimum wage in total if you don’t get good tips. But the reality is they are absolutely required to make sure you earn minimum wage.
Oh hell no, not everyday. But that was the luck of the trade. Some days you would, but some days you wouldn’t, and it really didn’t even out. But you got to take the cash at the end of the day with the chain place, where the independent place I worked held it for two weeks and would give you a lump sum of your tips (usually a bit short, so everyone had to keep up with their paperwork and double check.)
As far as I can remember, it worked out to be an average of 4 to 5 bucks an hour. When I was doing it before my current career started, I would work 12 hours a day 7 days a week, so you could live on an average of 4 or 5 bucks an hour ( The independent restaurant where it was biweekly check form, I would get about 650 - 700 bucks for a check.) Now it was livable if I worked double shifts 7 days a week, which was tough, but it was either that or not working at the time, so I took it. My wife makes about the same, and works the same. So if you were just taking that as just straight pay, she makes 450 a week and works about 11 hours a day seven days a week, so she would make essentially 5.84 an hour not factoring in her 2.13 an hour. If the 2.13 an hour got factored in, she makes 3.71 an hour in tips in addition to her pay. Did I do this right? So they are doing it legal?
That’s kind of hard to believe that your wife onlymkaes about 3.71/hr as tips as waiters. That’s basically turning over less than two $2 tip tables per hour, which is WAY less in both number of tables and tips than I saw in my days as a busboy.
Even back in 1989, when I made $2.01/hr as a busboy and got 1% of the total tips, I made something on the order of $15-20 per day as my chunk of the tips, which worked out to somewhere around $6-8 per hour, since my actual on the clock hours as a busboy tended to be 3-4 hours a day (11 am - 3 pm or so).
And even back then it was made clear to me that yes, I only got $2.01/hr as a wage, and that in the unlikely event that I didn’t make another $1.34/hr in tips on average during the pay period, that the restaurant was on the hook to make it up.
Ultimately someone’s been lying to you; ultimately you get $2.13/hr, but some combination of tips and additional employer pay is required to make up that $5.12 necessary to put you at least at $7.25.
To be honest, she doesn’t get a pay stub that reflects her tips, it just says what her hourly rate is on 2.13 an hour, which is usually 70 or so hours a week, and the amount that is totaled up is zeroed out so essentially she gets paid a biweekly zero dollar check. The amount that the total adds up to is what the amount of federal withholding. It adds up to about 300 bucks in total each two weeks, but the amount of the check is always 0.00, and it says on it “this is not a check” in large, unfriendly letters on the front of it.
She hasn’t worked at this restaurant long enough to get a W2, so I have no idea what they would put for her total wages for the year.
When I worked as a waiter, I never even saw the zeroed out check, and when I was a manager, I never handed out any either.
This was my math if it helps.
Me = 650 for two weeks
325 a week
84 hours a week (I worked about 10 am to 11 PM usually but I rounded down)
325 / 84 = 3.86 an hour, but there were times I got a 700 dollar check
Wife = 450 a week
77 hours a week (she works from 11 am to 10 PM usually)
450 / 77 = 5.84
Is federal minimum wage still 7.50 for all states? Because I know quite a few people here in my area still getting paid 5.15, which is what I thought minimum wage is. We have a poster where I work that says that for year 2013, Texas Minimum Wage is 5.15. The guys that work the gas station next to my house all make 5.15. I know because my mother in law is trying desperately to get a job and I asked them because we are pretty friendly (they give me free refills on my diet Pepsi fountain drink cup as long as I keep using it over and over because I am in there about five times a day.)
I am sorry to hijack the thread like this. I am just really curious now as to how this stuff works. Did the minimum wage just go up or has it been that way for a while? The guys at the gas station told me they make 5.15 an hour about three weeks ago.
Man it really varies per day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the math I was doing was flawed. But the numbers I am using I am pretty sure are correct, because I pay my bills with them.
I do know she worked a day about two weeks ago where she made zero money, because it was a Sunday and all she had were church tables and they all tipped less than 10 percent. She was actually to owe the house money at the end of the day, but the manager that closed her out didn’t want her to pay the staff out of her own pocket for the day so he just washed it in total. I don’t know if they made up the difference on the check she was paid and just paid it all out to federal withholding, I am going to look for the check to see if the amount is off. They are always zeroed out though, so I don’t look at them very closely. Let me see if I can go find it.
I had two days when I was waiting that I only made about 9 dollars for the whole day, but I never made zero.
The Federal MW has been $7.50 since July of 2009.. It hasn’t been $5.15 since Jul 2007. In some state’s it’s hight, but not lower. It goes to $10/hr in CA in 2016. It’s $8/hr now.
There were two of the people working there that I know working right now when I walked over for my free daily diet pepsi fizz buzz and showed them the notice of minimum wage. When I gave it to the first employee, he read it about 20 times, and said, “Mother f***er! I told you, Jimmy! Look at this!” When James came over (James I know better than the first dude) he looked at it and asked me where I got it. I told him it came off of the DOL website. He said something akin to “holy shit” and they both got really red in the face. I don’t know whats going to happen, but I hope they don’t get fired when they confront their boss.
As I was walking out, I thought about that. When I asked my current employer for a raise back in November 2012, I got fired. I was making 14 an hour where the industry standard for my profession was 20 - 25 an hour (I am a state license holding commercial fire alarm technician). He called me back to offer 18 around New Years Day 2013 because he was getting popped by the state because he didn’t have a license holder on his staff, so I took the job back.
Quite a few people I know have gotten fired for asking for a raise, that is something you just DON’T do in Texas.
Anyways I had better stop hijacking this thread, sorry, Lumpy
If I was a convenience store clerk who had been working in Texas for some years at $5.15/hr instead of $7.25, and was fired I’d just mention that under DoL guidelines once I opened a case and showed them my pay stubs they would be liable for all owed wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages. That might give them a second thought about firing someone, but I’d probably open the case with the W&H division anyway since I’d not want to work for an employer who had behaved that way in the first place.
Its not necessarily that. Don’t think of waiting tables like everyone works at Chili’s or something where you have a 6 table section and they flip twice an hour. Imagine a restaurant where the staff essentially costs you nothing (because you don’t pay them from the funds you take in) so you hire way too many waiters, and they all get an average of 1 table an hour. Then the people that are eating tip 11 percent of the tab. Since the waiter has to pay out ten percent, he gets to keep the 1 percent. If its a 50 dollar tab and you tipped 11 percent, your tip would be 5.50, which is fine in some places. The waiter gets the short end of the stick because he is paid last.
That is what happens frequently. I have tried to get the wife to move off into a lower class of restaurant (like the ones I used to work) but the over hire problem is bad in corporate restaurants here as well. Where I used to work, they didn’t over hire so it wasn’t as bad as a problem. Since the economy is still in the crapper, you have a lot less single college kids working and more of those waiting jobs going to people trying to support families. I don’t have kids, but I do support my mother in law, which is kind of like supporting a kid. I just hope she can find a job eventually.
For example my wife worked a double yesterday (11 hours) and came home with 50 dollars cash. Thats 4.55 an hour. Now she took in much more as her tips for the day, but the required pay out was 10 percent of her total sales.
I’ve eaten at lots of restaurants in my life, and I’ve never been to one where where a waitress gets 1 table per hour. That’s like one waitress per table. I could see that at the highest of high end restaurants, but nowhere else.
Pay for the chance for someone with no skills and no experience outside of the classroom to get their food in the door in a lucrative long-term career?
The root of the whole unpaid internship issue is that there isn’t a hard line between “education” and “employment”. How much should be on the company to bear the costs of finding and training people and how much should be on individuals to develop their own skills.
