[Ele201]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

It's even more nefarious than that. I've worked as a waitress in a few full-service restaurants, and at a summer resort.

Here's what happens when people over-tip:

The management/owner sees the receipts. Credit card tips are monitored. If they see a trend of high percentage tips, it justifies them paying their employees sub-minimum wage - which is LEGAL. How it works in Florida:

Minimum wage is $11/hour in Florida. Except for servers. For them, it's $7.98/hour. Let's round that up to an even $8/hour. That's $3 less per hour than other hourly workers in the state.

So let's say the server is getting an average of $2 per table in tips - and they have 4 tables per hour, for four hours. That's $32 per shift in tips. It also means their ACTUAL hourly pay averages the $8/hour server minimum, plus $8/hour in tips = $16/hour. Since that's $5/hour more than the NON-server minimum wage, the employer can justify never paying their employees better than that server wage of $8/hour.

The more they earn, the more justified the employer is in never giving their servers a raise. That means - employees working slower shifts where they might not see more than $5 in an entire shift (like Monday opening shift at some places), will always earn less than the $11/hour non-server wage.

If everyone tipped according to the old-school "standard" employers would likely pay their servers more to begin with, because they won't assume customers will help their servers "make bank" in tips. This hurts new employees who just aren't trained well enough yet, or have enough experience yet, to hustle for those extra bucks. And that causes a lot of turnover, which puts more pressure on the seasoned employees to pick up the slack, which causes burnout, which causes turnover.

As someone who has worked in the service-for-tip industry, I tip how I was taught to expect being tipped:

15% for just doing my job, nothing more or less.
18% for doing my job well, and demonstrating efficient problem-solving skills.
20% for going above and beyond the job description.
0% if I did something actually BAD enough to get management involved.

Respectfully I think these percentages are a bit low. I give 20% for good service, always. Above and beyond, 25%. I’ve never called a manager on a server.