[fdpaq0580]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

I made average tips as a restaurant server - nothing over the top, but enough to go beyond the minimum wage in the state for non-tipped workers. Once, someone gave me a $20 bill after eating a $10 meal. And a few times, I was stiffed for a tip entirely.

I would've been fine with a living wage instead of tipping. But a living wage was not the same as minimum wage. I didn't rely on this one part-time job to pay my bills. If I was a single mother who couldn't afford child care and could only work 3-4 part-time shifts per week, I would probably hope that tipping was allowed, so that I had a chance of earning more than whatever my employer was paying me.

I wasn't in that situation though. During the years I worked in restaurants, I often worked multiple jobs. Sometimes part-time office work plus restaurants, sometimes more than one restaurant, sometimes bartending in addition - and when I lived in Boston, being a street musician was always my primary source of income.

If restaurant work paid $15/hour with no tipping allowed, I probably would've tried to get a job here in the Villages when I moved down, instead of working at Publix.

Thank you. I still don't like the concept ot tipping as an expectation. I don't like that the business shifts a part of their financial obligation to the employee onto the customer. It is unfair to both customer and employee. Employees don't have a steady paycheck they can count on and the customers pay more out the door for food+ 20÷ than the relatively smaller increase in cost to cover the expected rise to full service wage.