“Don’t forget to tip your waiter!” What a joke.
Tipping is degrading, bad for restaurants, an extra stress on the customer and arguably illegal.
While practiced around the world, tipping assumes a unique role in the United States to which most eating establishments welcomed by offloading the burden of paying workers a fair wage to their customers.
Servers have been known to live off their tips, but when it comes to being paid fairly, it’s the tips they receive that is part of the problem.
The Atlantic reported that tipping in the U.S. originated during the late nineteenth century as a means for restaurant owners to get away with paying employees less and passing on service charges to the consumer.
In nations like Japan, tipping a social taboo because servers are expected to give quality service in return for their set wage.
According to federal labor law, establishments are permitted to pay waiters, bartenders and other workers across the country an atypical low wage as long as their total earnings, with tips add up to at least the minimum wage.
California is lucky enough to be a state with one of the highest state minimum wages in the U.S. with $12 per hour, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
California’s minimum wage rate is second only to behind Washington D.C., which has a minimum wage that will be raised to $14 by July 2019, according to the same source.
But in states with minimum wages of $7.25 such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania and our neighbor Nevada – servers are finding it hard to make a living by surviving off of tips.
These workers are often being paid as low as 2 to 3 dollars because of tips affecting their hourly wage.
Restaurants work daily on a narrow margin due to the large competitive market with other local establishments, keeping their prices low in order to attract customers.
When it comes to being paid fairly, a constant hourly wage may be the solution for servers looking for a bigger check, instead of blindly relying on the generosity of customers.
As someone who’s been a server for two years in a fast-paced establishment, I understand that there may be days/nights that pay better than others.
Friday nights and weekends often yield the highest tips, but what about slower nights or weekdays?
The amount of tips a server receives are constantly fluctuating and never set in stone. That being said, should servers really expect consumers to be consistently generous EVERY time they eat out?
While I acknowledge that servers work hard on a daily basis, the fact remains that usually only the servers that get tipped as opposed to the rest of the people working at a restaurant.
Cooking is a very specialized skill set that the requires professional training and/or years of experience.
Becoming a server takes a normal intelligence and maybe extra “people-skills,” with only maybe a week of training.
The process of becoming a server is not necessarily as vigorous as becoming a kitchen chef, after taking years to perfect one’s culinary training.
Kitchen staff members make even less money than servers due to the narrow margin that restaurants work under daily.
This forces kitchen staff to either find another job or demand for a higher wage. Both being equally stressful on the staff.
The U.S. has adopted tipping as a normal means of funding employees in the restaurant industry, leaving the customers and servers split over billing stress.
Though most servers do have a highly money- driven work habit, their lives should not depend on 15 percent of the bill.
And customers not leaving the normal 15 percent tip should not be frowned upon.
It is the responsibility of the employer to pay employees fairly. A wage is certain, tip amounts are not.
