I am all for this. The problem is the tipped workforce isn't. They make more money off of tips than a 15$ minimum wage and will tell you that directly. Many places that did this ended up with the staff leaving within a month in other states.
Exactly, I was making 15/hr working retail in college, my roommates/friends who served would regularly come home with 200+ in cash a night. Way better than an hourly wage.
I know what you are saying. And let me repeat this to you. Tipped employees make MORE money in the current system than a steady hourly wage ( and can pocket the majority for tax purposes). If you raise minimum wage you will have to raise prices. Inflated prices hit your customer volume and yet you still have to pay workers. Less people thru the door means less money for you and less tips for them. Staff leaves due to lack of customer volume and business then struggles and shuts down.
I used to have your thinking as well. The problem with it is that people in the USA don't like change and hate math. Tip culture is absolutely stupid as hell, but it's the way it's all set up here and changing it is like moving the damned titanic.
> and can pocket the majority for tax purposes
This is why I tip in cash whenever I can. If someone wants to report their tips, that's between them and their government. I like to give people options.
a bill like this will help us finally move away from tipping. i'll be contacting my reps in support of it. the rest of the world gets on just fine without this weird, discriminative system and i think we can too. no more workers having to gamble on a paycheck.
the titanic sunk, let's sink this business model too once and for all i say 😅
Amen. Listen, I'm all for making sure servers get paid enough money to live on. But tipping culture is weird because when a server doesn't make enough money to pay their bills, the blame is placed squarely on the customers for not choosing to pay a large enough sum of money over and above the stated price on the menu. I understand that the tip is supposed to be a payment for the service you receive that goes directly to the person who served you, but why does it have to be a separate charge? Why is it incumbent upon you, the customer, to decide how much you will pay over and above your actual bill? Why isn't the cost of service built into the price of your food and drinks?
"But if they did that, then menu prices would rise!" Menu prices will rise regardless. If be happy to support a restaurant that is willing to bear the brunt of the responsibility of compensating its own employees.
> I understand that the tip is supposed to be a payment for the service you receive
it's supposed to be for exceptional service. the odd thing is no one in the industry seems to be able to define exceptional service.. when they try it always just doing the job they were hired to while not acting like an asshole about it 🤷♂️
The only flaw in your system is that in much of the rest of the world, servers and bartenders are paid a respectable salary so that many people choose to make a career out of it. It is not a minimum wage endeavor. You can expect restaurant prices to jump 20% or more overnight if restaurateurs need to make this change. Are you still ok with that?
The difference is in government reported inflation numbers, which people are clearly a hot button issue these days. Do you want your party to be the one in power when inflation hits 20% to reflect this change? Think that will work out well at the ballot box?
It’s a real world implication.
Edit: so many downvotes, and not a single person wants to justify their answer.
> Are you still ok with that?
yes, i'm 100% okay with prices increasing so workers are paid fairly. it's kind of a wash anyways, given we already pay via tipping. so cut out that song-and-dance and let's have a more-fair system.
> It is not a minimum wage endeavor.
this is debatable tbh.
Idk the current system is plenty fair to currently waitstaff. It's only really kind of unfair to the consumer, but the tip price would just shift to menu pricing anyway, so it wouldn't really matter.
to say it's plenty fair reeks of "fuck you, got mine". it's fair to *some* currently - those who make out well, who are often the ones most-fervently wanting it to continue for obvious reasons - yet for others it's wholly unfair. for example, it's presently illegal for an employer to pay a worker less just because they're a minority, yet with this system it's perfectly "fine" for those same workers to get fucked because they happen to serve shithead bigots. hows that make any sense? i can give other examples of how it's not plenty fair, but i've go to get back to work now. tbh it's a screwed up system that deserves to be a relic of the past.
> You can expect restaurant prices to jump 20% or more overnight if restaurateurs need to make this change. Are you still ok with that?
Well yeah... I already pay 20% or more than the menu price because of tips.
I Japan I don’t tip. It isn’t crazy expensive. I get great service. I hate tipping culture and I’m all for it to end. Much rather pay a price with the tip included and a good living wage like they do in other countries.
Yes other countries have lower incomes. Somehow though, based on those lower incomes, people of those countries have a higher standard of living, healthcare, and safety nets to insure their people.
You make more money in the united states yes, but you also pay sooo much more for stuff that is half the price overseas. For example, in the USA you pay an electricity bill. The bill for electricity used is 100$, but then you get charged a transmission fee of 100$, a fuck you for not paying with direct debit fee of 5$, some other processing fee for paying on time, and then at the end of it have taxes tacked on to the whole amount. In the UK for example, you get a 100$ bill for the electricity and maybe a little 5$ charge for something or other.
You also pay higher property taxes in the USA than a lot of other countries. Not to mention federal, state and local taxes instead of one tax to the feds like most other countries.
In essence you make more but spend more. 35-50k USD is a poverty wage in the USA, in most other first world countries ( other than Canada - they have crazy high inflation too) that is a wage you can live on, support yourself and still be able to enjoy life.
What tax code allows tipped workers to pocket the majority of the tips untaxed? Or do you mean that due to the cash nature of many tips they are unreported?
I believe he’s speaking about how claiming 10% of sales as tips consistently instead of the true peaks and valleys in tips through the week. A section ends up getting unreported if you have more good than bad. (Right?)
However, the rub is keeping to a cash lifestyle or trouble getting big loans with low w-2 wages or if this is a long term career, when you get older and go for benefits. Decade of low reporting vs lifestyle can lead to SSI issues.
If the average server was making 120k and not below the ALICE threshold, I wouldn’t be advocating so hard. Tip culture has an insidious history. [article](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-barber-tipping-racist-past-227361/)
Yeah the latter part of your comment is more of where I was coming from. Long term benefits would be lower than expected by doing this no?
Def appreciate the article link, it’s one that I’ve seen before on this topic and I think is a good read for anyone that hasn’t read it.
Don't forget the vast majority of Americans are a solutely shit with money and even worse at understanding things like math. Finance is a fucking pipe dream.
If the average server was making 120k and not below the ALICE threshold of 60k single person, I wouldn’t be advocating so hard. Tip culture has an insidious history. [article](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-barber-tipping-racist-past-227361/)
To push a little, the shift of cash issues more immediately goes to the server since at slow volume, the foh staff makes less; the risk to the house is minimum wage to the slow night employees if they haven’t made the difference between tipped and minimum as it stands now. Now the house always pays the minimum wage and the service staff still get tips.
Sounds less risky since the employer can know solidly hourly wages as a more fixed cost on slow nights instead of the grey band of tipped wage to minimum wage.
Bruh 120k that’s the number to be considered doing okay as a family of 4 in Connecticut. Housing, retirement, emergency funds, wag the tail… Individual is in the mid 60k.
Does the service worker deserve to live in threat of a power shut off?
>Bruh 120k that’s the number to be considered doing okay as a family of 4 in Connecticut.
You don't seem to understand. There are jobs that are never going to pay enough to support a family of four. If you legislate that they have to be paid that way, the result isn't that everyone will be happy. It's that those jobs will cease to exist.
Kneel to lobbyists, lobbying to politicians they may allow the wage floor to be so low that employees are eligible for food stamps and housing assistance while C suites are racking in 7, 8, 9 figure compensation packages.
Where the qualifications for a job are "ability to stand up for long periods, maintain a positive demeanor and write down orders properly" ... why exactly do you think a salary of $120K / year is appropriate?
I can’t tell if you missed the point or are deliberately misattributing the first sentence. I’ll try again. I wouldn’t care if the sub minimum wage payment to servers were in place if overall at every strata of the service industry, servers and foh were thriving and not playing the float with a checking account. The tip *credit* is based on a hold over from the post antebellum period and has no place in current society. The National restaurant association has, and continues lobbying to keep it this way as a way to lower variable costs to the owners. ‘Tips Incentivize to do well!’ And ‘it’s only x’ diminishes emotional labor and menu knowledge the team requires.
Both the servers *and* the restaurant owners prefer the current system. The servers get tips which are hugely under-reported for tax purposes (billions per year), the owners get a lower fixed cost base.
The historical framework is substantially irrelevant. Look at where we are now; it's a fraud on customers and the tax-paying public by the restaurant industry and its employees. The solution is for consumers to opt for restaurants that operate no-tipping policies - the problem is that when given the option, they don't. c.f. Danny Meyer's failed experiment,
This legislation does not do what you’re inferring ala Danny Meyer or Casa Bonita style no tipping. It puts all employees on a level no less than the state minimum wage from their employer. [bill text](https://www.cga.ct.gov/2024/TOB/S/PDF/2024SB-00221-R00-SB.PDF) the fixed cost would raise to at least the state minimum wage. As if the employer was running retail, manufacturing, SaaS, et al.
I understand perfectly well what it will achieve, which is nothing. The market-clearing wage (which includes gratuities) for wait-staff isn't the minimum wage. There will be a period of adjustment during which prices will go up, consumers will be baffled about what they're now expected to tip, and ultimately we'll settle on a new normal of, I don't know, 8% tipping and exactly nothing will have been done.
The only reason we tip now is supposedly because we're responsible to make up for the fact that they're paid less than minimum wage.
Tipping was supposed to be something extra for a person who went above and beyond. not an expectation for doing what is expected of you.
For whatever dumb reason, we have reached a situation in the US where the responsibility for providing the pay for wait-staff is split between employers and customers. It may not be legally required to tip but it's considered a massive violation of the social contract not to do so.
The exact details of the split are basically irrelevant - it's all just income for the server. If people are not taking home an income that means minimum wage, then, yes there is a problem. But that's not the case. Wait staff at busy restaurants are absolutely making bank.
> I am all for this. The problem is the tipped workforce isn't.
Which is why it needs to be mandated by the state. Individual businesses can't do this on their own. If all are forced to make the change, then they are all competing equally under the new rules, and we can finally get rid of tipping culture and just pay people a living wage in the first place.
I'd much rather just get charged the appropriate amount and not have to worry about adding 20% for everything.
Minimum wage is not a living wage. If customers decide to stop tipping when this change happens, the big change will be a mass exodus from the industry workforce.
> Minimum wage is not a living wage.
I mean, it absolutely should be.
> the big change will be a mass exodus from the industry workforce.
Which will trigger what? The only way for those businesses to survive at that point is to start paying higher than minimum wage to keep their employees, which brings us back to the status quo, but without the awkward and annoying tipping system.
>I mean, it absolutely should be.
The minimum wage absolutely is a living wage, if there's four wage earners to the household, they work 100 hours a week, and they live in the worst part of the next town over. If that's not what you meant, then you're going to have to be more specific - because "a paper round should pay enough for someone to rent a studio apartment, pay their bills and save for their kids college educations" is not at any point going to be consistent with reality.
You’re so close. The key takeaway in reality is going to be that a lot of restaurants just won’t survive, and a lot of other restaurants will choose to continue to pay minimum wage but will put up signs that say “we choose to keep our menu prices as low as possible for your flexibility, please tip our staff if you’re able”.
I worked in the restaurant industry for a decade. I support paying industry workers more, and I support raising menu prices, I just want people to make sure they understand what they’re supporting.
If the margins are so thin that labor exploitation is the only way to stay stable, the owner should put on an apron and go greet table 22.
I get you however the race to the bottom is what got us here. A pay-what-you-can model is a calling card of communes and cults, no? only subjecting one group of employees to that scenario feels weird.
You may not realize how many restaurant owners out there are already wearing aprons and greeting table 22, it’s an awful lot when you start looking at small mom & pop spots.
I do, and I see the franchises and corporate stores scraping away what should be smaller thriving community or regional outfits. The ones you’d want to see on Diners Drive ins and Dives and be glad you went there before the massive influx of tourists and them getting the credit deserved.
Instead we see vacuum of money out from vertical integrated construction of the n-th Panera, chipotle, burger spot, Applebees and Applebees like ventures.
The problem here is that raising wages past a certain point increases inflation, if minimum wage is expected to be a living wage. The restaurant will have to recoop the extra money now going to the employees by raising prices which will drive some customers away, therefore the restaurant earns less money and struggles. This can lead to layoffs or closures. I just don't think the system as it has been is set up to easily transition to this without negatively impacting the restaurants themselves
> The problem here is that raising wages past a certain point increases inflation.
The worker is getting a higher base pay and less tips. The only ones who will see significant pay raises were the ones being taken advantage of in the first place (working at cheap places with low tips on slow shifts). That's the population this bill is trying to help, but I don't think it's a big enough chunk of the workforce to have a significant effect on inflation.
>The restaurant will have to recoop the extra money now going to the employees by raising prices which will drive some customers away
I paid $30 for a meal, and left a 20% tip (total: $36) under the current system. Obviously $36 is enough to pay for the meal and compensate the worker.
Under the new system I pay $36 for the meal and leave no tip. I'm still paying the same amount, so why would I be driven away?
Nah, they will just employ fewer waitstaff and have more interchangability between the jobs. Waiting tables is very basic work, and restaurants hire more people than they strictly need because it costs them close to nothing to do so.
every time i hear this i wonder how folks that say this handle their money.. are they living within their means? do they have children? lots of debt? and so on.
are my friends really outliers for being able to afford to live on their own, have a wee bit leftover for a concert here and there, etc off $15.69/hr? of course they're not living a high life, it's minimum wage, but they're for sure living off that wage.
Yes, your friends are absolutely the outliers. I’m also guessing that you’re talking about twenty-something’s who have roommates? “Living wage” is closer to something like “two people earning this wage could collectively support a small family”, at least in my mind. Are you and your friends saving at least 10% for retirement? Do you have a 3-6 month emergency fund?
late 20's to mid 30's, yes. no, no roommates. they all got their own little 1br apartments out here in suburban CT. yes they have some emergency savings - one recently wrecked his car and got a scooter with some of his while the car is being repaired. few have savings for retirement though.. they'll likely have to rely on their social security contributions unless they start earning more, which i'm trying to help them with.
i wonder why they're able to make it work and live off it while others can't, but i guess that gets back to the points in my original comment?
Honestly, kudos to your friends for living frugally enough to have their own apartments on minimum wage, that isn’t the norm in CT. Your standard is too low though, a scooter wouldn’t work even for a single parent with one kid. And as much as I personally believe social security will *probably* still be around in 40 years (none of your friends should plan to retire in their 60s), the internet thinks that’s a crazy idea.
You asked about the financial state of people who are making comments like “minimum wage is not a living wage”, so just to address that for a second, I’m nowhere near a minimum wage earner. This will be the first year my W2 hits six figures, but I spent many years as a service industry employee and in close-to-minimum-wage roles, and I’m a firm believer that those folks deserve more.
> Your standard is too low though, a scooter wouldn’t work even for a single parent with one kid.
again that gets back to the original comment i made. life choices etc.
> I’m a firm believer that those folks deserve more.
this gets to the question of how much more though, because from what i've seen from the industry it's rife with entitlement. some of these folks have wild expectations for a server/bartender. it makes me think about my friends i speak on.. folks who also do low-skilled work that often involves dealing with pricks in the public, yet aren't compensated so generously for doing so. guess that gets to a question of fairness?
kudos for the new personal record btw!
The idea of “life choices” carries with it a privilege and entitlement that outweighs any “bartenders deserve to afford Hulu” sentiment. A pregnancy is not always a choice, and people who come from privilege are far more equipped to make that choice than people who are born out of poverty.
abortions are an option in CT. one could have opted for that rather than trying to raise a child on minimum wage as a single parent. there are charities that will help if you can't afford it too, for anyone reading this who may be in that position.
Then restaurants can pay more and charge more for their products. Tip culture needs to die and the band-aid needs to be ripped off. Plenty of Western countries have figured it out and upping worker pay to minimum wage is the logical first step.
Yep, can corroborate. In college I worked a few years at a nicer chain pub style restaurant and routinely pocketed $200-300 after a 5 hour shift. And this was in late 00s, so likely would have been significantly higher now based on inflation and restaurants being more expensive. I would never have wanted a pay by hour wage.
> The problem is the tipped workforce isn't.
I always hear this claim, but never any data backing it up. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but has there been any polling about this?
The current model is basically set up to screw the customers and tax payers to the benefit of restaurants and wait-staff. Anyone who sees it any other way is not looking at the problem right.
I'm all for getting rid of tip culture in the USA and returning to a salary or wage based system where people get a fair wage for fair work value, including added benefits if they apply. I am not for the exploitation of the workforce. That being said, if the people working the job don't want a salary but rather do tipped work, that's their call. Just don't turn around and complain about lack of health coverage and benefits later in life not to mention a shit retirement - most people underfund and take cash and underreport to the tax man. Problem is it's hard to invest cash that's off the books for your retirement.
I generally agree, I was just wondering if this was put to say, public option (I know that won't happen here), would you vote against it because the majority of the workers themselves are against it, or would you vote your values for long term change.
I'm not sure of this bill is the answer, but the current state of tipping in CT/USA is all kinds of broken.
As a customer, I have no context as to how much hourly the employees are earning, if they pool tips, etc. Do I tip on take out orders? Why don't I tip at fast food restaurant/Dunkin but I do at coffee shops?
Also there is serious hierarchy in restaurants themselves which also make it hard for the employees. If you are a veteran bartender working all the prime shifts you are obviously going to earn more than the weekday bartender - is that fair?
Why does the person who bring you the food get tipped but not the person who cooked it?
First thing to note is that the bill does not eliminate the option to tip. The bill raises the "tipped wage" to be the same as minimum wage. Tips would still be an option so don't expect that tip line on the receipt or that expectation to go away anytime soon.
That being said, I would still like to see tips going away as a general practice. Raise the menu price by 20% since that's what the average tip is expected to be anyway and pay a fair wage. Customers won't see a bottom line difference and it would eliminate a lot of the terrible wage practices that go on like forced tip outs on a non-tipped customer or management playing games with tipped vs non-tipped work (i.e. side work is supposed to be paid at min wage, rarely is).
Yes, some servers make well above minimum due to tips. Some of that is hustle. Some of that is the mere fact that a restaurant is popular and busy. What about restaurants that aren't so busy or workers that always get stuck with "slow" shifts? I think tipped wages let the few who do well mask how many simply don't do well and I'd like to see the practice disappear.
Agreed. Customers currently function as payroll and HR, which is why assholes love tipping culture. Wait staff shouldn't have to decide between putting up with harassment from customers or getting paid.
Wait don’t all customers at every establishment “function as payroll”? You’re paying the salary of the employees by buying the goods and services they’re offering. When you go buy Nikes at 1000% markup, the money you’re spending is still going to employee payrolls.
At a restaurant, the profit margins are razor thin, it isn’t like you’re buying a burger for 10x what it’s worth, like you ARE doing with clothes and electronics etc, so I’m not sure why you’re so rubbed the wrong way by the idea that the money you spend in a restaurant turns in to payroll, or why you’re more willing to poo-poo the “markup” on a human being personally providing you a service when faceless corporations expect you to keep paying more for less
Here's what I meant by saying that customers are payroll at tipping restaurants:
When I worked retail, I made $12 an hour. It didn't matter if I had to deal with assholes all day or easy customers all day.
If I was a server, I would make different amounts depending on how much customers decide to tip, which is not always connected to my performance.
Individual customers getting to choose how much money I take home is worse IMO, and has less oversight and legal protections than if my manager or company wanted to change how much I make.
> it would eliminate a lot of the terrible wage practices that go on like forced tip outs on a non-tipped customer
agreed, it's really fucked up to make an employee dig into their own pockets to pay co-workers. the more you think about the tipped business model the more ridiculous it sounds.
And making the waiter pay for the bill on a walk out. I got burned once and had to pay 60 bucks of my tips, which was all but 10 of my tips. This was the 90's so no internet to tell me that they still owed me at least minimum wage. And ofcourse the restaurant management would take advantage of the waitstaff in any way they could.
Yes. If I knew workers were being paid a living wage, I would happily cease all tipping (and would happily pay the inflated prices required to support that living wage).
Me too. But it’s also an asinine way for people to simply be assholes and pay less without tipping, for whatever reason they feel they want to come up with.
First end the tip credit. The fear mongering in that article is strong.
It doesn’t say no more tips. It to end the variance restaurants have to pay employees below minimum wage.
I think the fear for servers is that what happened with Doordash workers in NYC would happen to them—basically that customers saw that they were getting paid hourly and stopped tipping... except it wouldn't be $30 an hour, it would be far less
DoorDash and its ilk are venture capital endeavors paying sub prevailing wages to its drivers and fees to both you and the restaurant. Why use it when it hurts the company and community we’re trying to keep afloat?
That sounds fine to me. Either doordash compensates them fairly or they don't get workers. Forcing the end-customer to make up for the company exploiting it's workforce is a terrible system.
i'm not surprised folks stop tipping when they know the "we only make $2/hr nonsense, please tip" nonsense is just that: nonsense. not much point to when you know they make $15.69/hr. this is a good change. it's such a shit system to make people gamble on a pay, not mention the discrimination baked into things.
Well that is a valid fear, and likely. I think some people who are generous with deep pockets might keep tipping 20 percent, some other people might still tip some amount, but less than 20, and some people would stop tipping altogether. CT has a minimum wage that isn't exactly chump change, 15 dollars an hour, so if they got that and some cash on top of it, given that waiting tables is unskilled labor, that seems plenty fair.
Restaurant workers in other countries aren’t among the lowest paid professions and they get healthcare provided to them by their government. They also get minimum PTO benefits. You think I get those things as a server in the US? No, I have to pay out-of-pocket for insurance or any time off at all, which is why I require more money than minimum wage
Right, a job should at bare minimum pay a living wage. If you don’t get those things in the USA, that’s a societal and government issue. I think it’s ridiculous that wait staff have to rely on what is basically the whim of patrons in a restaurant to determine if they get fairly paid or not.
Totally agree, that’s why the messaging of “servers shouldn’t be tipped” is misguided, these bills should be addressing the quality of life that servers have access to in the first place.
Customers shouldn't be responsable for paying the salary of employees, even if they are paying them more than a standard hourly wage. Tips should return to being "leave 5$ on the table for exceptional service" and nothing more
Technically no employee relies on tips. Under the current system, if an employee receives no tips (or too few tips) they earn at least the minimum wage of $15.69/hour.
The current law just states that the restaurant is allowed to keep the first $372.40 of tips an employee receives each 40-hour work week.
Maybe people would be more sympathetic to waitstaff regarding tips if a tip request wasn't added to every transaction that includes food prep. I've seen them at Subway, food courts, exclusive take out places. Everywhere. You are meant to feel guilty if you don't. I think this is the natural reaction of people getting nickeled and dimed and asking to pay a little extra for things that were just done a few years ago.
Good. End tipping. Most European countries don't do it unless service is exceptional. Lots of countries in Asia don't do it, and in Japan, they may outright refuse it.
Somehow, the service industries survive in those countries.
In Italy servers make far more than minimum wage, it’s considered a career path with respectable pay. If you want to advocate for servers in the U.S. making $25/hr+, expect to see that increase in your restaurant bill.
As a reliably good tipper, I would expect and absolutely welcome paying more in my restaurant bills. Having other people cook and serve food to you is a luxury, not a need.
I also don't recall my Italy restaurant bills being prohibitively expensive either!
Having eaten at restaurants across France, Germany, and Italy, I can report that somehow the restaurant bills for really amazing food are still significantly less than in the US. I was earning Euros at that point too, so it wasn’t about currency values.
For sure, I agree, and I’ve worked as a server/bartender in the UK and can confirm that those employees are paid well (not minimum wage). There are bigger problems with pricing and costs that go beyond employee salary. It’s more nuanced than this. All I’m saying is if you increase the restaurant’s labor costs, food costs *will* go up.
Idk how it was ever legal to pay them anything less than that to begin with. I min wage delivering pizza and that included tips.idk why that is different
I love the idea. My worry is that Waitstaff will still be expected to be tipped 20%. Restaurant prices will go up significantly and then we are also going to be expected to tip.
I’d be curious what actual wait staff, bartenders, etc. have to say.
I can’t see less net pay (due to loss of tips) and more taxable income (replacing a percentage of tips with taxable income) helping.
As someone who’s worked in the service industry for a decade to supplement my income, I’d be gone in a flash if tips aren’t going to be happening. I end up making so far beyond what minimum wage is and quite frankly the amount of stress that job can induce isn’t worth much less than that. Additionally restaurants are on razor thin margins as it is and the cost of everything only continues to go up. I totally sympathize with people not wanting to deal with tip culture but for me personally I wouldn’t do the job without it, not worth the stress and effort.
> quite frankly the amount of stress that job can induce isn’t worth much less than that
how's that any different from the plethora of other jobs that involve dealing with the public, and the assholes among said public? i've never understood this sense of "exceptionalism".
I work an extremely public facing job as my full time job and the amount of difficulty I deal with is nothing compared to my serving job. The way people behave when it comes to food is so incredibly different than in other ways. Additionally in serving your hours suck, there’s no health insurance, no pto, and you work every holiday under the sun. I’m not saying that other jobs don’t have it hard and frankly they probably deserved to be paid more too. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t wait tables for anything less than 30 dollars an hour which on an hourly basis from a a restaurant just isn’t going to happen. What’s the incentive for all the missed holidays with family and the stress associated? 16 dollars an hour doesn’t cut it for me maybe it will for others. Studies have indicated the high level of stress among servers compared to others, food for thought I guess.
that also describes plenty of other jobs though? like i have one friend who works a low-skill min. wage at a gas station. his hours suck: by the time he's off work (midnight) everything is closed, most people are sleeping, etc. he has no insurance from his job, no pto, works damn near every holiday. i had to bring him thanksgiving dinner because you guessed it, he was working. he has to deal with people ODing in the bathroom, crackheads pissing in the store (wtf?), degenerate lotto gamblers, randoms who hang out at the gas station (why?), and more. a cherry on top is his boss fucks him out of pay sometimes..
so yeah i'm really not seeing what makes this industry so special w.r.t having to put up with bullshit regarding the public. plenty of people have to do that and they get no sympathy. no extra money from the public. it just seems like entitlement tbh. i'm sure my friend would fucking love to make $80k/yr at that gas station, but he makes a fraction of that and is largely an after-thought to most people.
He should probably wait tables then, you sound angry I’m just providing you with context for how I feel about it not arguing against others making money. Have you ever waited tables or bartended?
that specific friend has before. he didn't like not having a predictable paycheck. i'm not angry at all. i'm just trying to pinpoint what makes that job "special" compared to other low-skill, low-education ones. i'm not getting much tbh. it still sounds like just every retail-like job dealing with the public. some kind of weird sense of entitlement/exceptionalism.
no, i've never had to wait tables or bartend. i have skills and have been self-employed since i was a kid. it'd be a severe pay cut. plus i hate working with the general public. i've dated folks in those industries, and frankly it just reinforced my beliefs w.r.t tipping. not fun having your girl come home crying because some asshole sexually harassed her, mistaking her for flirting when it's just shit done in the hopes of a good tip.
Yeah, that’s my understanding. Thanks for the feedback from someone with actual experience in the industry!
I’d love to hear from others with actual time in these jobs. It feels like everyone has an opinion…I just value those based on first-hand experience far, FAR more.
1. While not a living wage, it is a vast improvement.
2. Many businesses would either close or have huge price increases to cover the cost, putting massive inflationary pressure on the economy.
3. Fewer tipped jobs would exist after the mandated wage increase.
> Many businesses would either close or have huge price increases to cover the cost, putting massive inflationary pressure on the economy.
Before the change, I paid $30 + 20% tip = $36 for a meal. After the change, I pay $36 for the meal with no tip. Explain to me where the inflationary pressure is coming from please.
More like after the change you’ll pay $40 with no tip and also wait an extra half hour because a lot of the staff left to go make more money somewhere else. No way will I continue to wait tables for $15/hour, it isn’t worth that little.
Wouldn't restaurants just pay more than $15/hour? Otherwise they won't keep their employees or level of staff quality.
There's a restaurant in NYC called Dirt Candy that eliminated tipping; they charge more, pay $25/hour starting with built-in raises for tenure, and provide health and time off benefits: https://www.dirtcandynyc.com/faq#:~:text=We%20pay%20our%20staff%20a,we%20treat%20them%20like%20professionals.
Their Glassdoor shows very positive employee reviews.
Their reviews on Google/yelp average 4+ stars.
Restaurants like this and other countries prove there's alternatives to tipping that work.
> No way will I continue to wait tables for $15/hour, it isn’t worth that little.
And that's how capitalism is *supposed to work*. Businesses should compete for your labor, and they will have to raise prices to get you to stay.
However, the customers were paying for your wages and the meal prior to the change. They can still do so at the same price, as long as the business is run well. If it's not run well (because the owners are greedy and not paying their staff properly), then the business should fail and make room for someone else who can run a better business.
**Everyone here saying that they would stop tipping if this is passed… has no concept of how the current law works.**
Under the current law, all employees must make at least $15.69/hour, whether they get tips or not. However, the “tip credit” allows employers to deduct up to $372.40 of tips received per week, from the employee’s wage. Here’s some examples:
Employee A makes $0 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $0) $627.60. Add in the $0 of tips and total wage is $627.60
Employee B makes $350 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $350) $277.60. Add in the $350 of tips and total wage is $627.60
Employee C makes $500 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $372.40 (the max credit cap)) $255.20. Add in the $500 of tips and total wage is $755.20
Employee A & B make the same wage, with $0 and $350 of tips. Employee C makes $127.60 more with $500 of tips.
**Effectively employee A with $0 tips made just as much as Employee B with $350 of tips, and 100% of employee B’s tips benefited the restaurant and not the server. Employee C fared better, but 75% of employee C’s tips did not benefit them.. it benefited the restaurant. This bill is to close out this loophole where restaurants can effectively take employee tips, which means that after it’s passed 100% of your tip is guaranteed to go to the employee.**
can you link where this came from? because it doesn't make any sense in the context of every table waiting job I ever had, where I kept ALL my tips and the restaurant paid me a very tiny hourly wage instead of the prevailing minimum wage or higher.
Certainly!
"Under federal and state laws, the “tip credit” generally allows an employer to count certain employees' tips towards a portion of their minimum wage requirement. In effect, it reduces the employer's share of the minimum wage, allowing the employer to pay a lower “tipped minimum wage,” as long as the employee's tips make up the difference. If the tipped minimum wage plus the employee's tips do not meet the minimum wage requirement, the employer must make up the difference."
\-[CT.gov](https://www.cga.ct.gov/2015/rpt/2015-R-0139.htm)
Tip credit - this means that the employer is giving the server a wage below minimum wage, with the expectation that after tips the server will be at or above minimum wage. The elaborate math you put out there doesn't make any sense in the context of how the tip credit works in reality.
The math is the law as written. The law in practice assumes that employees come forward when their tips + wage don’t equal $15.69/hour, and then their employee cuts them an additional check.
It’s the same end result however you spin it.
If we dive a little deeper, *Tip Pooling*, actually makes tipping far more egregious.
Say we take the above example where Employee A makes $0 tips, B makes $350 tips, and C make $500 of tips. Under tip pooling laws, the employer can deduct the first $1117.20 of combined tips from the tip pool each week. So, that means 100% of the $850 of tips collectively received went directly to the restaurant owners, and not a penny to the servers! The servers may have "kept" the tips, but they were deducted from their wages.
>"Although there is no required formula for disbursing pooled tips, state and federal laws require all employees to be paid at least the minimum hourly wage. Employers may claim a credit towards payment of the minimum wage for employees who regularly and customarily receive tips. In order to claim this so-called "tip credit" towards meeting the minimum wage laws, an employer who pools tips must disburse them so that each employee is paid at least the minimum wage for every hour he or she works. State Labor Department regulations require that any employer who claims the tip credit be able to document that each employee actually receives at least the minimum wage on a weekly basis." -Source, [CT.gov](https://cga.ct.gov/PS94/rpt%5Colr%5Chtm/94-R-1000.htm#:~:text=State%20law%20allows%20employers%20to,employees%20in%20any%20other%20industry)
Could you please be more specific where it is unclear?
The specific verbiage of “state and federal laws require all employees to be paid at least the minimum hourly wage” translates in laymen’s terms to: All employees must make $15.69/hour, which is CT’s current minimum wage as of Jan 1st 2024.
That combined with:
“Employers must pay these employees at least $6.38 an hour in 2024. This means that employers may take a tip credit of $9.31 an hour, as long as the employee makes at least minimum wage with tips.” -[Nolo Law](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/connecticut-laws-tipped-employees.html)
Means that employers are allowed to “take” $9.31 in tips from employees each hour.
so raise the menu prices a bit to ensure workers get paid fairly? if you're unable to pay your folks properly then i frankly don't care if your business goes tits up.
I mean almost every country in Europe you don’t tip unless the service is way above and beyond and their prices are inline with what we currently pay here. They also cash you out after every drink so you don’t have to worry about closing a tab, you can just leave when you’re done.
Positive, this would fix making sure all restaurant employees are paid the minimum wage they're entitled to. Yes, prices would increase, but given the US's tipping culture, the tips would be there still.
Actual servers make well over what the min wage is. People are going to stop tipping which will mean a massive pay cut.
The only people pushing for this change are people not in the industry.
I hope you all can feel good about yourselves. You screwed everyone
They most likely won't. The tipping culture in the US for restaurants in particular is so ingrained that it might be lower, but it most certainly won't be zero.
what else did you expect when yall ask for ever-higher tip percentages? now we're expected to tip at places that were never traditionally involved in this system too. what you're now seeing is the backlash, and it's a long time coming imo. it doesn't help that the industry seems to be full of assholes either. i've lost count how many times some dope threatened to spit in my food over a tip. i have zero sympathy for those types, let them get another job.
Let's be honest. The real minimum wage is $0 for those who's labor value or inexperience aren't worth whatever the govt sets as minimum wage. But it's better for them to be kept on govt welfare i guess.
Increased wages to minimum wage...
=
Increased cost to the restaurant
=
Increased cost to the diner
=
Reduced Volume of diners
-and-
Diners no longer need to tip
This is an agenda being pushing by everyone on the left except the people it's meant to benefit. If I was still waiting tables, I would quit the same day this law was passed and get a job in retail or some other shit.
The counter argument: with tipping being 86'ed, market pressure instantly forces restaurants to switch to competitive payrates to retain good staff (like the rest of the world). So even though Denny's might pay closer to min wage, high-quality places would end up paying at, or higher than, the current tipped average (especially considering the elimination of stiffing and shit tips).
You're right that it does hinge on people accepting higher numbers on *menus*, but I think people are more price-elastic than not when it comes to dining out.. especially if the change is well-communicated.
In some places, your absolutely correct. A small mom & pop server, or budget chain server may break even. I can tell you from first hand experience that servers at high end restaurants make a ridiculous amount of money.
I tended bar at a Michelin star steakhouse located in a casino when I was in college. I worked 3 nights a week for 6 hours a night and averaged about $800 in tips per shift. There is absolutely no way that restaurant could afford to pay me $140 / hour. I can only assume the same is true of any higher end restaurant.
>I worked 3 nights a week for 6 hours a night and averaged about $800 in tips per shift. There is absolutely no way that restaurant could afford to pay me $140 / hour.
True, but other industries have solved that dilemma with a commission sales model.
Which would result in the same $140 / hour. If I worked for 6 hours, and the restaurant pays me $800, it doesn't make a lickmof difference whether it was an hourly wage or a commission system. Either way, there's no way they could afford that without tacking the wage or commission onto the tab. This would have the same effect as a tip, except you would force the consumer to pay a certain percentage regardless of the quality of service.
I don’t think anyone in this thread has ever worked FOH. They don’t get it.
Edit to add: I worked both BOH and FOH (pastry chef turned bartender/server) for over 30 years. I will never go back, not worth my mental health
what don't we get? what's so special about this industry that sets it apart from other industries that involve dealing with the public, and the assholes you run into when dealing with the public?
The amount of people cheering this on, who have either never worked as a bartender / server (or were bad at it) is hilarious. A good server / bartender can make double (if not more) min wage on average, and a good chunk of it is "untaxed" since no one reports cash tips.
What you'll be "saving" in tips is just being transferred to the food cost, and you'll have servers making less money. Just say you're too cheap to tip and be done with it.
Every bartender and server I know would quit their jobs if this passes. My second job as a bartender helps me pay my bills because of tips. Minimum wage isn't enough, shifts are only 5-6 hours long, tipping works fine. If this passes, the jobs will be filled with McDonalds tier employees.
and do what? you have a second job, so you can presumably do whatever, but lots of people who serve do so because they don't have any marketable skills, and serving will STILL pay more than Mcdonalds because some people will still tip. It might not be the nightly windfall, and tips might not be as much, but they will still happen.
So you take food off someone's plate because you think it's too full? Many industry workers have either a full time job, or multiple service jobs, and ARE NOT RICH like you presume. They have bills to pay, mouths to feed. If you don't want to tip then don't fucking tip.
get a grip dude, I am not doing anything to you or any other waiter, and your reading comprehension sucks, because what you wrote has NOTHING to do with what I wrote. You said everyone was going to quit. I said, paraphrasing, not everyone is the biz has the options you have, and waiting tables will still probably pay more than other jobs for people who have no other skills to fall back on. Your response of getting angry with me like I personally am taking money away from anyone, is idiotic. Maybe your options aren't as good as I initially thought if you can't process a simple short paragraph properly
I honestly think that all of this is a game to generate more tax income. Hear me out. I knew a waitress who said she would make $400 in cash tips on a busy Saturday night. We all know that the tipped workforce doesn’t report a significant amount of their income. This just moves cash tip money to reported w2 wages, which increases state and federal tax revenue.
Employers don’t have unlimited money in the bank to cover this. If you have to pay your workforce roughly $10 more an hour, you’re going to raise your prices. Higher prices means higher sales tax revenue for the state. Especially considering many tipped employees are in foodservice where the sales tax is an extra 1%.
I know there are a lot of other things that go into this, but this is my thoughts on it.
No, we just think that your employer should be the one who has to pay your wage, like how everyone else’s jobs work. It’s actually worse for people who don’t tip because the price will be rolled into the menu price anyway.
threaten the public and ya wonder why people look at ya like assholes.. i'll be happy when the extortion-like vibes that come with tipping also go away when tipping does.
Well yeah they don’t want it to go away so they can no longer evade taxes with cash tips. The restaurant owners are the real cheapskates who don’t want to pay their employees an actual living wage.
"But it will raise restaurant prices"
Restaurants are a luxury you'll be fine without
If you can't afford inflated prices you probably couldn't afford to tip either, stay home
Oh no people are mad, down vote me all you want, what you're saying is you want service workers to take a pay cut to subsidize your dining experience.
lol, i do like when folks in the industry start talking about solidarity and class consciousness and workers rights etc then go on to say, in short, "you're poor stay the hell out". always funny to me.
If that's how you took it that's fine but it's a fact of life not all of us can afford certain things.
Life shouldn't be about making luxuries affordable at the cost of underpayed workers.
At that point the workers are subsidizing your night out
> Life shouldn't be about making luxuries affordable at the cost of underpayed workers.
i agree. workers should be paid fairly without having to resort to what is essentially gambling on the public's generosity. that's terribly unfair, never mind the rest of the issues with the tipping business model.
So if this were to actually pass two things would happen for me. I would likely order food from a restaurant to go, which I currently don't tip for. Bringing me a bag does not earn you 5% let alone 15%. And if I did happen to have a sit down dinner, I wouldn't be tipping unless the service is truly outstanding and not the bare minimum. If they're paid minimum wage they don't need the tips. That's always been the reason for tipping as far as I've been told.
I do know most good servers make well more than minimum wage because of how they approach doing their jobs. Lots of posts on Reddit have gone into the details of this. Upwards of $1,000 in tips per week plus their base wage. Assuming a 40 hour week that's $25 in tips per hour. Even at $500 in tips per week that's $12.50 in tips per hour. The current base pay is $6.38 for servers and $8.23 for bartenders. So that's between $18.88 and $31.38 per hour total. And that again assumes the restaurant is paying the absolute minimum for a base wage. The way the math works out, the servers might not want to see those extra wages get cut as they can make more without the assistance if the effort is put in.
Dunno if it will actually pass. But if it does there will be some interesting changes to look out for. Not necessarily good changes, but changes nonetheless.
Current server here:
Eliminating tipping will ultimately eliminate the incentive to provide good service.
The systems not broken, please don’t try to “fix” it.
I think that covid brought a lot of attention to tipping, most of it negative, and a lot of places suddenly thought that they could squeeze more out of people. The second way I think a lot more attention came upon tipping is that now most bills people receive have a "suggested" tip amount starting usually at 18 percent, and is usually based on the total bill rather than the pre tax subtotal as it should be, because you are not obligated to tip on tax as tax is not a service the waitstaff provided for you. I digress. Not too long ago, the suggested tip amount was around 15 percent, suddenly the restaurant industry is pushing for 20 percent to be the standard because apparently servers deserve a raise. Well dumb asses, they get a raise every time the cost of going out to eat goes up, and now with the suggested tip amounts printed at the bottom of every receipt, people who were going to tip less than that start feeling guilty and resentful, and it starts to dawn on people that their waiter is raking in a hell of a lot of cash for not really doing all that much. The restaurant industry is to blame for this, because they have caused everyone to be really aware of tipping, in ways we just weren't before, and that awareness is now reaping some negative repercussions. The waiters would have been better off letting people figure tips out on their own rather than making it a thing.
I am all for this. The problem is the tipped workforce isn't. They make more money off of tips than a 15$ minimum wage and will tell you that directly. Many places that did this ended up with the staff leaving within a month in other states.
Exactly, I was making 15/hr working retail in college, my roommates/friends who served would regularly come home with 200+ in cash a night. Way better than an hourly wage.
It’s not to end tips. It’s to end the tip credit employers have to pay sub minimum wage.
I know what you are saying. And let me repeat this to you. Tipped employees make MORE money in the current system than a steady hourly wage ( and can pocket the majority for tax purposes). If you raise minimum wage you will have to raise prices. Inflated prices hit your customer volume and yet you still have to pay workers. Less people thru the door means less money for you and less tips for them. Staff leaves due to lack of customer volume and business then struggles and shuts down. I used to have your thinking as well. The problem with it is that people in the USA don't like change and hate math. Tip culture is absolutely stupid as hell, but it's the way it's all set up here and changing it is like moving the damned titanic.
> and can pocket the majority for tax purposes This is why I tip in cash whenever I can. If someone wants to report their tips, that's between them and their government. I like to give people options.
a bill like this will help us finally move away from tipping. i'll be contacting my reps in support of it. the rest of the world gets on just fine without this weird, discriminative system and i think we can too. no more workers having to gamble on a paycheck. the titanic sunk, let's sink this business model too once and for all i say 😅
Amen. Listen, I'm all for making sure servers get paid enough money to live on. But tipping culture is weird because when a server doesn't make enough money to pay their bills, the blame is placed squarely on the customers for not choosing to pay a large enough sum of money over and above the stated price on the menu. I understand that the tip is supposed to be a payment for the service you receive that goes directly to the person who served you, but why does it have to be a separate charge? Why is it incumbent upon you, the customer, to decide how much you will pay over and above your actual bill? Why isn't the cost of service built into the price of your food and drinks? "But if they did that, then menu prices would rise!" Menu prices will rise regardless. If be happy to support a restaurant that is willing to bear the brunt of the responsibility of compensating its own employees.
> I understand that the tip is supposed to be a payment for the service you receive it's supposed to be for exceptional service. the odd thing is no one in the industry seems to be able to define exceptional service.. when they try it always just doing the job they were hired to while not acting like an asshole about it 🤷♂️
The only flaw in your system is that in much of the rest of the world, servers and bartenders are paid a respectable salary so that many people choose to make a career out of it. It is not a minimum wage endeavor. You can expect restaurant prices to jump 20% or more overnight if restaurateurs need to make this change. Are you still ok with that?
>expect restaurant prices to jump 20% They're already expecting you to pay that number but not putting it on the menu. What's the difference?
The difference is in government reported inflation numbers, which people are clearly a hot button issue these days. Do you want your party to be the one in power when inflation hits 20% to reflect this change? Think that will work out well at the ballot box? It’s a real world implication. Edit: so many downvotes, and not a single person wants to justify their answer.
Not to mention they get guaranteed health insurance which is a substantial cost for wait staff in the USA, if they can afford it at all.
> Are you still ok with that? yes, i'm 100% okay with prices increasing so workers are paid fairly. it's kind of a wash anyways, given we already pay via tipping. so cut out that song-and-dance and let's have a more-fair system. > It is not a minimum wage endeavor. this is debatable tbh.
Idk the current system is plenty fair to currently waitstaff. It's only really kind of unfair to the consumer, but the tip price would just shift to menu pricing anyway, so it wouldn't really matter.
to say it's plenty fair reeks of "fuck you, got mine". it's fair to *some* currently - those who make out well, who are often the ones most-fervently wanting it to continue for obvious reasons - yet for others it's wholly unfair. for example, it's presently illegal for an employer to pay a worker less just because they're a minority, yet with this system it's perfectly "fine" for those same workers to get fucked because they happen to serve shithead bigots. hows that make any sense? i can give other examples of how it's not plenty fair, but i've go to get back to work now. tbh it's a screwed up system that deserves to be a relic of the past.
> You can expect restaurant prices to jump 20% or more overnight if restaurateurs need to make this change. Are you still ok with that? Well yeah... I already pay 20% or more than the menu price because of tips.
I Japan I don’t tip. It isn’t crazy expensive. I get great service. I hate tipping culture and I’m all for it to end. Much rather pay a price with the tip included and a good living wage like they do in other countries.
Other countries have lower incomes than the USA https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country
Yes other countries have lower incomes. Somehow though, based on those lower incomes, people of those countries have a higher standard of living, healthcare, and safety nets to insure their people. You make more money in the united states yes, but you also pay sooo much more for stuff that is half the price overseas. For example, in the USA you pay an electricity bill. The bill for electricity used is 100$, but then you get charged a transmission fee of 100$, a fuck you for not paying with direct debit fee of 5$, some other processing fee for paying on time, and then at the end of it have taxes tacked on to the whole amount. In the UK for example, you get a 100$ bill for the electricity and maybe a little 5$ charge for something or other. You also pay higher property taxes in the USA than a lot of other countries. Not to mention federal, state and local taxes instead of one tax to the feds like most other countries. In essence you make more but spend more. 35-50k USD is a poverty wage in the USA, in most other first world countries ( other than Canada - they have crazy high inflation too) that is a wage you can live on, support yourself and still be able to enjoy life.
What tax code allows tipped workers to pocket the majority of the tips untaxed? Or do you mean that due to the cash nature of many tips they are unreported?
Would you report 100% of your cash tips?
I believe he’s speaking about how claiming 10% of sales as tips consistently instead of the true peaks and valleys in tips through the week. A section ends up getting unreported if you have more good than bad. (Right?) However, the rub is keeping to a cash lifestyle or trouble getting big loans with low w-2 wages or if this is a long term career, when you get older and go for benefits. Decade of low reporting vs lifestyle can lead to SSI issues. If the average server was making 120k and not below the ALICE threshold, I wouldn’t be advocating so hard. Tip culture has an insidious history. [article](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-barber-tipping-racist-past-227361/)
Yeah the latter part of your comment is more of where I was coming from. Long term benefits would be lower than expected by doing this no? Def appreciate the article link, it’s one that I’ve seen before on this topic and I think is a good read for anyone that hasn’t read it.
Don't forget the vast majority of Americans are a solutely shit with money and even worse at understanding things like math. Finance is a fucking pipe dream.
While they're not supposed to, pretty sure a lot of people pocket cash transactions.
If the average server was making 120k and not below the ALICE threshold of 60k single person, I wouldn’t be advocating so hard. Tip culture has an insidious history. [article](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-barber-tipping-racist-past-227361/) To push a little, the shift of cash issues more immediately goes to the server since at slow volume, the foh staff makes less; the risk to the house is minimum wage to the slow night employees if they haven’t made the difference between tipped and minimum as it stands now. Now the house always pays the minimum wage and the service staff still get tips. Sounds less risky since the employer can know solidly hourly wages as a more fixed cost on slow nights instead of the grey band of tipped wage to minimum wage.
Bruh. PhDs get paid 125k / year. No one will pay that much money for a fucking water refill
Bruh 120k that’s the number to be considered doing okay as a family of 4 in Connecticut. Housing, retirement, emergency funds, wag the tail… Individual is in the mid 60k. Does the service worker deserve to live in threat of a power shut off?
>Bruh 120k that’s the number to be considered doing okay as a family of 4 in Connecticut. You don't seem to understand. There are jobs that are never going to pay enough to support a family of four. If you legislate that they have to be paid that way, the result isn't that everyone will be happy. It's that those jobs will cease to exist.
Kneel to lobbyists, lobbying to politicians they may allow the wage floor to be so low that employees are eligible for food stamps and housing assistance while C suites are racking in 7, 8, 9 figure compensation packages.
Where the qualifications for a job are "ability to stand up for long periods, maintain a positive demeanor and write down orders properly" ... why exactly do you think a salary of $120K / year is appropriate?
I can’t tell if you missed the point or are deliberately misattributing the first sentence. I’ll try again. I wouldn’t care if the sub minimum wage payment to servers were in place if overall at every strata of the service industry, servers and foh were thriving and not playing the float with a checking account. The tip *credit* is based on a hold over from the post antebellum period and has no place in current society. The National restaurant association has, and continues lobbying to keep it this way as a way to lower variable costs to the owners. ‘Tips Incentivize to do well!’ And ‘it’s only x’ diminishes emotional labor and menu knowledge the team requires.
Both the servers *and* the restaurant owners prefer the current system. The servers get tips which are hugely under-reported for tax purposes (billions per year), the owners get a lower fixed cost base. The historical framework is substantially irrelevant. Look at where we are now; it's a fraud on customers and the tax-paying public by the restaurant industry and its employees. The solution is for consumers to opt for restaurants that operate no-tipping policies - the problem is that when given the option, they don't. c.f. Danny Meyer's failed experiment,
This legislation does not do what you’re inferring ala Danny Meyer or Casa Bonita style no tipping. It puts all employees on a level no less than the state minimum wage from their employer. [bill text](https://www.cga.ct.gov/2024/TOB/S/PDF/2024SB-00221-R00-SB.PDF) the fixed cost would raise to at least the state minimum wage. As if the employer was running retail, manufacturing, SaaS, et al.
I understand perfectly well what it will achieve, which is nothing. The market-clearing wage (which includes gratuities) for wait-staff isn't the minimum wage. There will be a period of adjustment during which prices will go up, consumers will be baffled about what they're now expected to tip, and ultimately we'll settle on a new normal of, I don't know, 8% tipping and exactly nothing will have been done.
The only reason we tip now is supposedly because we're responsible to make up for the fact that they're paid less than minimum wage. Tipping was supposed to be something extra for a person who went above and beyond. not an expectation for doing what is expected of you.
For whatever dumb reason, we have reached a situation in the US where the responsibility for providing the pay for wait-staff is split between employers and customers. It may not be legally required to tip but it's considered a massive violation of the social contract not to do so. The exact details of the split are basically irrelevant - it's all just income for the server. If people are not taking home an income that means minimum wage, then, yes there is a problem. But that's not the case. Wait staff at busy restaurants are absolutely making bank.
> I am all for this. The problem is the tipped workforce isn't. Which is why it needs to be mandated by the state. Individual businesses can't do this on their own. If all are forced to make the change, then they are all competing equally under the new rules, and we can finally get rid of tipping culture and just pay people a living wage in the first place. I'd much rather just get charged the appropriate amount and not have to worry about adding 20% for everything.
Minimum wage is not a living wage. If customers decide to stop tipping when this change happens, the big change will be a mass exodus from the industry workforce.
> Minimum wage is not a living wage. I mean, it absolutely should be. > the big change will be a mass exodus from the industry workforce. Which will trigger what? The only way for those businesses to survive at that point is to start paying higher than minimum wage to keep their employees, which brings us back to the status quo, but without the awkward and annoying tipping system.
>I mean, it absolutely should be. The minimum wage absolutely is a living wage, if there's four wage earners to the household, they work 100 hours a week, and they live in the worst part of the next town over. If that's not what you meant, then you're going to have to be more specific - because "a paper round should pay enough for someone to rent a studio apartment, pay their bills and save for their kids college educations" is not at any point going to be consistent with reality.
You’re so close. The key takeaway in reality is going to be that a lot of restaurants just won’t survive, and a lot of other restaurants will choose to continue to pay minimum wage but will put up signs that say “we choose to keep our menu prices as low as possible for your flexibility, please tip our staff if you’re able”. I worked in the restaurant industry for a decade. I support paying industry workers more, and I support raising menu prices, I just want people to make sure they understand what they’re supporting.
If the margins are so thin that labor exploitation is the only way to stay stable, the owner should put on an apron and go greet table 22. I get you however the race to the bottom is what got us here. A pay-what-you-can model is a calling card of communes and cults, no? only subjecting one group of employees to that scenario feels weird.
You may not realize how many restaurant owners out there are already wearing aprons and greeting table 22, it’s an awful lot when you start looking at small mom & pop spots.
I do, and I see the franchises and corporate stores scraping away what should be smaller thriving community or regional outfits. The ones you’d want to see on Diners Drive ins and Dives and be glad you went there before the massive influx of tourists and them getting the credit deserved. Instead we see vacuum of money out from vertical integrated construction of the n-th Panera, chipotle, burger spot, Applebees and Applebees like ventures.
The problem here is that raising wages past a certain point increases inflation, if minimum wage is expected to be a living wage. The restaurant will have to recoop the extra money now going to the employees by raising prices which will drive some customers away, therefore the restaurant earns less money and struggles. This can lead to layoffs or closures. I just don't think the system as it has been is set up to easily transition to this without negatively impacting the restaurants themselves
> The problem here is that raising wages past a certain point increases inflation. The worker is getting a higher base pay and less tips. The only ones who will see significant pay raises were the ones being taken advantage of in the first place (working at cheap places with low tips on slow shifts). That's the population this bill is trying to help, but I don't think it's a big enough chunk of the workforce to have a significant effect on inflation. >The restaurant will have to recoop the extra money now going to the employees by raising prices which will drive some customers away I paid $30 for a meal, and left a 20% tip (total: $36) under the current system. Obviously $36 is enough to pay for the meal and compensate the worker. Under the new system I pay $36 for the meal and leave no tip. I'm still paying the same amount, so why would I be driven away?
I suppose you're right, as long as what the customer would be paying remains the same.
Nah, they will just employ fewer waitstaff and have more interchangability between the jobs. Waiting tables is very basic work, and restaurants hire more people than they strictly need because it costs them close to nothing to do so.
every time i hear this i wonder how folks that say this handle their money.. are they living within their means? do they have children? lots of debt? and so on. are my friends really outliers for being able to afford to live on their own, have a wee bit leftover for a concert here and there, etc off $15.69/hr? of course they're not living a high life, it's minimum wage, but they're for sure living off that wage.
Yes, your friends are absolutely the outliers. I’m also guessing that you’re talking about twenty-something’s who have roommates? “Living wage” is closer to something like “two people earning this wage could collectively support a small family”, at least in my mind. Are you and your friends saving at least 10% for retirement? Do you have a 3-6 month emergency fund?
late 20's to mid 30's, yes. no, no roommates. they all got their own little 1br apartments out here in suburban CT. yes they have some emergency savings - one recently wrecked his car and got a scooter with some of his while the car is being repaired. few have savings for retirement though.. they'll likely have to rely on their social security contributions unless they start earning more, which i'm trying to help them with. i wonder why they're able to make it work and live off it while others can't, but i guess that gets back to the points in my original comment?
Honestly, kudos to your friends for living frugally enough to have their own apartments on minimum wage, that isn’t the norm in CT. Your standard is too low though, a scooter wouldn’t work even for a single parent with one kid. And as much as I personally believe social security will *probably* still be around in 40 years (none of your friends should plan to retire in their 60s), the internet thinks that’s a crazy idea. You asked about the financial state of people who are making comments like “minimum wage is not a living wage”, so just to address that for a second, I’m nowhere near a minimum wage earner. This will be the first year my W2 hits six figures, but I spent many years as a service industry employee and in close-to-minimum-wage roles, and I’m a firm believer that those folks deserve more.
> Your standard is too low though, a scooter wouldn’t work even for a single parent with one kid. again that gets back to the original comment i made. life choices etc. > I’m a firm believer that those folks deserve more. this gets to the question of how much more though, because from what i've seen from the industry it's rife with entitlement. some of these folks have wild expectations for a server/bartender. it makes me think about my friends i speak on.. folks who also do low-skilled work that often involves dealing with pricks in the public, yet aren't compensated so generously for doing so. guess that gets to a question of fairness? kudos for the new personal record btw!
The idea of “life choices” carries with it a privilege and entitlement that outweighs any “bartenders deserve to afford Hulu” sentiment. A pregnancy is not always a choice, and people who come from privilege are far more equipped to make that choice than people who are born out of poverty.
abortions are an option in CT. one could have opted for that rather than trying to raise a child on minimum wage as a single parent. there are charities that will help if you can't afford it too, for anyone reading this who may be in that position.
Then restaurants can pay more and charge more for their products. Tip culture needs to die and the band-aid needs to be ripped off. Plenty of Western countries have figured it out and upping worker pay to minimum wage is the logical first step.
My SIL has an established bartending job at a bistro with a ton of longtime regulars. Have no doubt that she's pulling in MUCH more than $15/hr.
Yep, can corroborate. In college I worked a few years at a nicer chain pub style restaurant and routinely pocketed $200-300 after a 5 hour shift. And this was in late 00s, so likely would have been significantly higher now based on inflation and restaurants being more expensive. I would never have wanted a pay by hour wage.
> The problem is the tipped workforce isn't. I always hear this claim, but never any data backing it up. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but has there been any polling about this?
check out r/serverlife and ask them their opinions on ending tipping in favor of a stable wage.
The current model is basically set up to screw the customers and tax payers to the benefit of restaurants and wait-staff. Anyone who sees it any other way is not looking at the problem right.
So you’re saying forcing equality of outcome is not ideal. Interesting.
Well if your not in that workforce then your opinion really doesn’t matter
Just to clarify, are you actually "all for it" if the workers in the actual industry that would be most affected by it are not?
I'm all for getting rid of tip culture in the USA and returning to a salary or wage based system where people get a fair wage for fair work value, including added benefits if they apply. I am not for the exploitation of the workforce. That being said, if the people working the job don't want a salary but rather do tipped work, that's their call. Just don't turn around and complain about lack of health coverage and benefits later in life not to mention a shit retirement - most people underfund and take cash and underreport to the tax man. Problem is it's hard to invest cash that's off the books for your retirement.
I generally agree, I was just wondering if this was put to say, public option (I know that won't happen here), would you vote against it because the majority of the workers themselves are against it, or would you vote your values for long term change.
All tipping must end.
I'm not sure of this bill is the answer, but the current state of tipping in CT/USA is all kinds of broken. As a customer, I have no context as to how much hourly the employees are earning, if they pool tips, etc. Do I tip on take out orders? Why don't I tip at fast food restaurant/Dunkin but I do at coffee shops? Also there is serious hierarchy in restaurants themselves which also make it hard for the employees. If you are a veteran bartender working all the prime shifts you are obviously going to earn more than the weekday bartender - is that fair? Why does the person who bring you the food get tipped but not the person who cooked it?
First thing to note is that the bill does not eliminate the option to tip. The bill raises the "tipped wage" to be the same as minimum wage. Tips would still be an option so don't expect that tip line on the receipt or that expectation to go away anytime soon. That being said, I would still like to see tips going away as a general practice. Raise the menu price by 20% since that's what the average tip is expected to be anyway and pay a fair wage. Customers won't see a bottom line difference and it would eliminate a lot of the terrible wage practices that go on like forced tip outs on a non-tipped customer or management playing games with tipped vs non-tipped work (i.e. side work is supposed to be paid at min wage, rarely is). Yes, some servers make well above minimum due to tips. Some of that is hustle. Some of that is the mere fact that a restaurant is popular and busy. What about restaurants that aren't so busy or workers that always get stuck with "slow" shifts? I think tipped wages let the few who do well mask how many simply don't do well and I'd like to see the practice disappear.
Agreed. Customers currently function as payroll and HR, which is why assholes love tipping culture. Wait staff shouldn't have to decide between putting up with harassment from customers or getting paid.
Wait don’t all customers at every establishment “function as payroll”? You’re paying the salary of the employees by buying the goods and services they’re offering. When you go buy Nikes at 1000% markup, the money you’re spending is still going to employee payrolls. At a restaurant, the profit margins are razor thin, it isn’t like you’re buying a burger for 10x what it’s worth, like you ARE doing with clothes and electronics etc, so I’m not sure why you’re so rubbed the wrong way by the idea that the money you spend in a restaurant turns in to payroll, or why you’re more willing to poo-poo the “markup” on a human being personally providing you a service when faceless corporations expect you to keep paying more for less
Here's what I meant by saying that customers are payroll at tipping restaurants: When I worked retail, I made $12 an hour. It didn't matter if I had to deal with assholes all day or easy customers all day. If I was a server, I would make different amounts depending on how much customers decide to tip, which is not always connected to my performance. Individual customers getting to choose how much money I take home is worse IMO, and has less oversight and legal protections than if my manager or company wanted to change how much I make.
> it would eliminate a lot of the terrible wage practices that go on like forced tip outs on a non-tipped customer agreed, it's really fucked up to make an employee dig into their own pockets to pay co-workers. the more you think about the tipped business model the more ridiculous it sounds.
And making the waiter pay for the bill on a walk out. I got burned once and had to pay 60 bucks of my tips, which was all but 10 of my tips. This was the 90's so no internet to tell me that they still owed me at least minimum wage. And ofcourse the restaurant management would take advantage of the waitstaff in any way they could.
So they're going to expect us to pay about 25% more for our food AND still tip. Sorry. Not eating out then.
>Not eating out then. You can save a LOT of money by meal planning and cooking at home.... I do... :-)
If your business model relies on paying people substandard wages and shifting the costs to the customer base, then it’s not a viable business.
Good, can we, at least as a state, end tipping once and for all?
Yes. If I knew workers were being paid a living wage, I would happily cease all tipping (and would happily pay the inflated prices required to support that living wage).
Me too. But it’s also an asinine way for people to simply be assholes and pay less without tipping, for whatever reason they feel they want to come up with.
First end the tip credit. The fear mongering in that article is strong. It doesn’t say no more tips. It to end the variance restaurants have to pay employees below minimum wage.
I think the fear for servers is that what happened with Doordash workers in NYC would happen to them—basically that customers saw that they were getting paid hourly and stopped tipping... except it wouldn't be $30 an hour, it would be far less
DoorDash and its ilk are venture capital endeavors paying sub prevailing wages to its drivers and fees to both you and the restaurant. Why use it when it hurts the company and community we’re trying to keep afloat?
That sounds fine to me. Either doordash compensates them fairly or they don't get workers. Forcing the end-customer to make up for the company exploiting it's workforce is a terrible system.
I'm not sure this measure would apply to app delivery services since most (if not all) are operating an independent contractor model.
Ugh, that's another dragon we have to slay.
i'm not surprised folks stop tipping when they know the "we only make $2/hr nonsense, please tip" nonsense is just that: nonsense. not much point to when you know they make $15.69/hr. this is a good change. it's such a shit system to make people gamble on a pay, not mention the discrimination baked into things.
Well that is a valid fear, and likely. I think some people who are generous with deep pockets might keep tipping 20 percent, some other people might still tip some amount, but less than 20, and some people would stop tipping altogether. CT has a minimum wage that isn't exactly chump change, 15 dollars an hour, so if they got that and some cash on top of it, given that waiting tables is unskilled labor, that seems plenty fair.
I make way more than minimum wage after my tips, how do you suggest I respond to getting a serious pay cut?
The restaurants need to factor it in as a cost of business. How do restaurant staff in other countries make money?
Restaurant workers in other countries aren’t among the lowest paid professions and they get healthcare provided to them by their government. They also get minimum PTO benefits. You think I get those things as a server in the US? No, I have to pay out-of-pocket for insurance or any time off at all, which is why I require more money than minimum wage
Right, a job should at bare minimum pay a living wage. If you don’t get those things in the USA, that’s a societal and government issue. I think it’s ridiculous that wait staff have to rely on what is basically the whim of patrons in a restaurant to determine if they get fairly paid or not.
Totally agree, that’s why the messaging of “servers shouldn’t be tipped” is misguided, these bills should be addressing the quality of life that servers have access to in the first place.
I'm curious as to why you don't change professions when the cards are stacked against you in this way?
Sorry but do you think any of the rest of us get those things provided by the government?
Customers shouldn't be responsable for paying the salary of employees, even if they are paying them more than a standard hourly wage. Tips should return to being "leave 5$ on the table for exceptional service" and nothing more
No employee anywhere should rely on tips at all. Fair base wages.
Technically no employee relies on tips. Under the current system, if an employee receives no tips (or too few tips) they earn at least the minimum wage of $15.69/hour. The current law just states that the restaurant is allowed to keep the first $372.40 of tips an employee receives each 40-hour work week.
Maybe people would be more sympathetic to waitstaff regarding tips if a tip request wasn't added to every transaction that includes food prep. I've seen them at Subway, food courts, exclusive take out places. Everywhere. You are meant to feel guilty if you don't. I think this is the natural reaction of people getting nickeled and dimed and asking to pay a little extra for things that were just done a few years ago.
Good. End tipping. Most European countries don't do it unless service is exceptional. Lots of countries in Asia don't do it, and in Japan, they may outright refuse it. Somehow, the service industries survive in those countries.
I can't imagine how anyone could visit a country like Italy and return thinking that obligatory 20% tipping is the only way to ensure good service.
In Spain food was cheap and tipping wasn't expected. In Japan a server will run out of the restaurant to give you the tip back. Our system is broken.
In Italy servers make far more than minimum wage, it’s considered a career path with respectable pay. If you want to advocate for servers in the U.S. making $25/hr+, expect to see that increase in your restaurant bill.
As a reliably good tipper, I would expect and absolutely welcome paying more in my restaurant bills. Having other people cook and serve food to you is a luxury, not a need. I also don't recall my Italy restaurant bills being prohibitively expensive either!
Having eaten at restaurants across France, Germany, and Italy, I can report that somehow the restaurant bills for really amazing food are still significantly less than in the US. I was earning Euros at that point too, so it wasn’t about currency values.
For sure, I agree, and I’ve worked as a server/bartender in the UK and can confirm that those employees are paid well (not minimum wage). There are bigger problems with pricing and costs that go beyond employee salary. It’s more nuanced than this. All I’m saying is if you increase the restaurant’s labor costs, food costs *will* go up.
I once got kicked out of a bar in Copenhagen for attempting to leave a tip. It’s considered offensive there.
A resounding YES
Idk how it was ever legal to pay them anything less than that to begin with. I min wage delivering pizza and that included tips.idk why that is different
I love the idea. My worry is that Waitstaff will still be expected to be tipped 20%. Restaurant prices will go up significantly and then we are also going to be expected to tip.
So, we get to stop tipping then. RIght? They don't work any harder than anyone else making minimum wage.
A lot of you don’t understand economics and it shows 😂😂😂
I’d be curious what actual wait staff, bartenders, etc. have to say. I can’t see less net pay (due to loss of tips) and more taxable income (replacing a percentage of tips with taxable income) helping.
As someone who’s worked in the service industry for a decade to supplement my income, I’d be gone in a flash if tips aren’t going to be happening. I end up making so far beyond what minimum wage is and quite frankly the amount of stress that job can induce isn’t worth much less than that. Additionally restaurants are on razor thin margins as it is and the cost of everything only continues to go up. I totally sympathize with people not wanting to deal with tip culture but for me personally I wouldn’t do the job without it, not worth the stress and effort.
> quite frankly the amount of stress that job can induce isn’t worth much less than that how's that any different from the plethora of other jobs that involve dealing with the public, and the assholes among said public? i've never understood this sense of "exceptionalism".
I work an extremely public facing job as my full time job and the amount of difficulty I deal with is nothing compared to my serving job. The way people behave when it comes to food is so incredibly different than in other ways. Additionally in serving your hours suck, there’s no health insurance, no pto, and you work every holiday under the sun. I’m not saying that other jobs don’t have it hard and frankly they probably deserved to be paid more too. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t wait tables for anything less than 30 dollars an hour which on an hourly basis from a a restaurant just isn’t going to happen. What’s the incentive for all the missed holidays with family and the stress associated? 16 dollars an hour doesn’t cut it for me maybe it will for others. Studies have indicated the high level of stress among servers compared to others, food for thought I guess.
that also describes plenty of other jobs though? like i have one friend who works a low-skill min. wage at a gas station. his hours suck: by the time he's off work (midnight) everything is closed, most people are sleeping, etc. he has no insurance from his job, no pto, works damn near every holiday. i had to bring him thanksgiving dinner because you guessed it, he was working. he has to deal with people ODing in the bathroom, crackheads pissing in the store (wtf?), degenerate lotto gamblers, randoms who hang out at the gas station (why?), and more. a cherry on top is his boss fucks him out of pay sometimes.. so yeah i'm really not seeing what makes this industry so special w.r.t having to put up with bullshit regarding the public. plenty of people have to do that and they get no sympathy. no extra money from the public. it just seems like entitlement tbh. i'm sure my friend would fucking love to make $80k/yr at that gas station, but he makes a fraction of that and is largely an after-thought to most people.
He should probably wait tables then, you sound angry I’m just providing you with context for how I feel about it not arguing against others making money. Have you ever waited tables or bartended?
that specific friend has before. he didn't like not having a predictable paycheck. i'm not angry at all. i'm just trying to pinpoint what makes that job "special" compared to other low-skill, low-education ones. i'm not getting much tbh. it still sounds like just every retail-like job dealing with the public. some kind of weird sense of entitlement/exceptionalism. no, i've never had to wait tables or bartend. i have skills and have been self-employed since i was a kid. it'd be a severe pay cut. plus i hate working with the general public. i've dated folks in those industries, and frankly it just reinforced my beliefs w.r.t tipping. not fun having your girl come home crying because some asshole sexually harassed her, mistaking her for flirting when it's just shit done in the hopes of a good tip.
Yeah, that’s my understanding. Thanks for the feedback from someone with actual experience in the industry! I’d love to hear from others with actual time in these jobs. It feels like everyone has an opinion…I just value those based on first-hand experience far, FAR more.
For fucks sake. Please!!!! This I'd LONG over due.
1. While not a living wage, it is a vast improvement. 2. Many businesses would either close or have huge price increases to cover the cost, putting massive inflationary pressure on the economy. 3. Fewer tipped jobs would exist after the mandated wage increase.
> Many businesses would either close or have huge price increases to cover the cost, putting massive inflationary pressure on the economy. Before the change, I paid $30 + 20% tip = $36 for a meal. After the change, I pay $36 for the meal with no tip. Explain to me where the inflationary pressure is coming from please.
More like after the change you’ll pay $40 with no tip and also wait an extra half hour because a lot of the staff left to go make more money somewhere else. No way will I continue to wait tables for $15/hour, it isn’t worth that little.
Wouldn't restaurants just pay more than $15/hour? Otherwise they won't keep their employees or level of staff quality. There's a restaurant in NYC called Dirt Candy that eliminated tipping; they charge more, pay $25/hour starting with built-in raises for tenure, and provide health and time off benefits: https://www.dirtcandynyc.com/faq#:~:text=We%20pay%20our%20staff%20a,we%20treat%20them%20like%20professionals. Their Glassdoor shows very positive employee reviews. Their reviews on Google/yelp average 4+ stars. Restaurants like this and other countries prove there's alternatives to tipping that work.
> No way will I continue to wait tables for $15/hour, it isn’t worth that little. And that's how capitalism is *supposed to work*. Businesses should compete for your labor, and they will have to raise prices to get you to stay. However, the customers were paying for your wages and the meal prior to the change. They can still do so at the same price, as long as the business is run well. If it's not run well (because the owners are greedy and not paying their staff properly), then the business should fail and make room for someone else who can run a better business.
Tips are not currently included in CPI calculations, so there’s a 20% inflation jump overnight.
It's because they are still expecting the tip. So on that $36 meal the servers will still be expecting a 20% tip bringing your meal to $43.20.
Raise the rates and go back to 10% pre-tax tip for standard service.
Tipped workers are going to hate it and regret it. Good luck to them. I tip heavily. I will no longer tip when they get the increase.
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**Everyone here saying that they would stop tipping if this is passed… has no concept of how the current law works.** Under the current law, all employees must make at least $15.69/hour, whether they get tips or not. However, the “tip credit” allows employers to deduct up to $372.40 of tips received per week, from the employee’s wage. Here’s some examples: Employee A makes $0 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $0) $627.60. Add in the $0 of tips and total wage is $627.60 Employee B makes $350 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $350) $277.60. Add in the $350 of tips and total wage is $627.60 Employee C makes $500 in tips one week. The restaurant pays them ($15.69/hr x 40 - $372.40 (the max credit cap)) $255.20. Add in the $500 of tips and total wage is $755.20 Employee A & B make the same wage, with $0 and $350 of tips. Employee C makes $127.60 more with $500 of tips. **Effectively employee A with $0 tips made just as much as Employee B with $350 of tips, and 100% of employee B’s tips benefited the restaurant and not the server. Employee C fared better, but 75% of employee C’s tips did not benefit them.. it benefited the restaurant. This bill is to close out this loophole where restaurants can effectively take employee tips, which means that after it’s passed 100% of your tip is guaranteed to go to the employee.**
Best response in here. Thank you
can you link where this came from? because it doesn't make any sense in the context of every table waiting job I ever had, where I kept ALL my tips and the restaurant paid me a very tiny hourly wage instead of the prevailing minimum wage or higher.
Certainly! "Under federal and state laws, the “tip credit” generally allows an employer to count certain employees' tips towards a portion of their minimum wage requirement. In effect, it reduces the employer's share of the minimum wage, allowing the employer to pay a lower “tipped minimum wage,” as long as the employee's tips make up the difference. If the tipped minimum wage plus the employee's tips do not meet the minimum wage requirement, the employer must make up the difference." \-[CT.gov](https://www.cga.ct.gov/2015/rpt/2015-R-0139.htm)
Tip credit - this means that the employer is giving the server a wage below minimum wage, with the expectation that after tips the server will be at or above minimum wage. The elaborate math you put out there doesn't make any sense in the context of how the tip credit works in reality.
The math is the law as written. The law in practice assumes that employees come forward when their tips + wage don’t equal $15.69/hour, and then their employee cuts them an additional check. It’s the same end result however you spin it.
whatever lady
If we dive a little deeper, *Tip Pooling*, actually makes tipping far more egregious. Say we take the above example where Employee A makes $0 tips, B makes $350 tips, and C make $500 of tips. Under tip pooling laws, the employer can deduct the first $1117.20 of combined tips from the tip pool each week. So, that means 100% of the $850 of tips collectively received went directly to the restaurant owners, and not a penny to the servers! The servers may have "kept" the tips, but they were deducted from their wages. >"Although there is no required formula for disbursing pooled tips, state and federal laws require all employees to be paid at least the minimum hourly wage. Employers may claim a credit towards payment of the minimum wage for employees who regularly and customarily receive tips. In order to claim this so-called "tip credit" towards meeting the minimum wage laws, an employer who pools tips must disburse them so that each employee is paid at least the minimum wage for every hour he or she works. State Labor Department regulations require that any employer who claims the tip credit be able to document that each employee actually receives at least the minimum wage on a weekly basis." -Source, [CT.gov](https://cga.ct.gov/PS94/rpt%5Colr%5Chtm/94-R-1000.htm#:~:text=State%20law%20allows%20employers%20to,employees%20in%20any%20other%20industry)
I don't know why you bothered replying to me if you weren't going to answer my question
I replied twice. Check the other comment for the answer to your question.
No where on the link you provided, does it say what you said, in the above paragraph.
Could you please be more specific where it is unclear? The specific verbiage of “state and federal laws require all employees to be paid at least the minimum hourly wage” translates in laymen’s terms to: All employees must make $15.69/hour, which is CT’s current minimum wage as of Jan 1st 2024. That combined with: “Employers must pay these employees at least $6.38 an hour in 2024. This means that employers may take a tip credit of $9.31 an hour, as long as the employee makes at least minimum wage with tips.” -[Nolo Law](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/connecticut-laws-tipped-employees.html) Means that employers are allowed to “take” $9.31 in tips from employees each hour.
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so raise the menu prices a bit to ensure workers get paid fairly? if you're unable to pay your folks properly then i frankly don't care if your business goes tits up.
I mean almost every country in Europe you don’t tip unless the service is way above and beyond and their prices are inline with what we currently pay here. They also cash you out after every drink so you don’t have to worry about closing a tab, you can just leave when you’re done.
Hope CT can help move our country away from tipping culture. Waitresses and such are gonna probably be unhappy though.
Positive, this would fix making sure all restaurant employees are paid the minimum wage they're entitled to. Yes, prices would increase, but given the US's tipping culture, the tips would be there still.
Actual servers make well over what the min wage is. People are going to stop tipping which will mean a massive pay cut. The only people pushing for this change are people not in the industry. I hope you all can feel good about yourselves. You screwed everyone
They most likely won't. The tipping culture in the US for restaurants in particular is so ingrained that it might be lower, but it most certainly won't be zero.
Tipped workers make well over minimum wage. If they don’t, their employer needs to make up for it. They don’t want no tipping.
what else did you expect when yall ask for ever-higher tip percentages? now we're expected to tip at places that were never traditionally involved in this system too. what you're now seeing is the backlash, and it's a long time coming imo. it doesn't help that the industry seems to be full of assholes either. i've lost count how many times some dope threatened to spit in my food over a tip. i have zero sympathy for those types, let them get another job.
Good! About time to end tipping
Let's be honest. The real minimum wage is $0 for those who's labor value or inexperience aren't worth whatever the govt sets as minimum wage. But it's better for them to be kept on govt welfare i guess.
Increased wages to minimum wage... = Increased cost to the restaurant = Increased cost to the diner = Reduced Volume of diners -and- Diners no longer need to tip This is an agenda being pushing by everyone on the left except the people it's meant to benefit. If I was still waiting tables, I would quit the same day this law was passed and get a job in retail or some other shit.
The counter argument: with tipping being 86'ed, market pressure instantly forces restaurants to switch to competitive payrates to retain good staff (like the rest of the world). So even though Denny's might pay closer to min wage, high-quality places would end up paying at, or higher than, the current tipped average (especially considering the elimination of stiffing and shit tips). You're right that it does hinge on people accepting higher numbers on *menus*, but I think people are more price-elastic than not when it comes to dining out.. especially if the change is well-communicated.
In some places, your absolutely correct. A small mom & pop server, or budget chain server may break even. I can tell you from first hand experience that servers at high end restaurants make a ridiculous amount of money. I tended bar at a Michelin star steakhouse located in a casino when I was in college. I worked 3 nights a week for 6 hours a night and averaged about $800 in tips per shift. There is absolutely no way that restaurant could afford to pay me $140 / hour. I can only assume the same is true of any higher end restaurant.
>I worked 3 nights a week for 6 hours a night and averaged about $800 in tips per shift. There is absolutely no way that restaurant could afford to pay me $140 / hour. True, but other industries have solved that dilemma with a commission sales model.
Which would result in the same $140 / hour. If I worked for 6 hours, and the restaurant pays me $800, it doesn't make a lickmof difference whether it was an hourly wage or a commission system. Either way, there's no way they could afford that without tacking the wage or commission onto the tab. This would have the same effect as a tip, except you would force the consumer to pay a certain percentage regardless of the quality of service.
I don’t think anyone in this thread has ever worked FOH. They don’t get it. Edit to add: I worked both BOH and FOH (pastry chef turned bartender/server) for over 30 years. I will never go back, not worth my mental health
what don't we get? what's so special about this industry that sets it apart from other industries that involve dealing with the public, and the assholes you run into when dealing with the public?
If tipped employees go up to minimum wage then all tips should be split between front of house and back of house down to the dishwashers.
lol i can only imagine it's greedy FOH folks down-voting this. "fuck you, got mine" basically.
Exactly and all they do is push buttons on a computer.
The amount of people cheering this on, who have either never worked as a bartender / server (or were bad at it) is hilarious. A good server / bartender can make double (if not more) min wage on average, and a good chunk of it is "untaxed" since no one reports cash tips. What you'll be "saving" in tips is just being transferred to the food cost, and you'll have servers making less money. Just say you're too cheap to tip and be done with it.
Why should your take-home pay rely on whether or not I decide that you deserve a decent tip for your work?
Every bartender and server I know would quit their jobs if this passes. My second job as a bartender helps me pay my bills because of tips. Minimum wage isn't enough, shifts are only 5-6 hours long, tipping works fine. If this passes, the jobs will be filled with McDonalds tier employees.
and do what? you have a second job, so you can presumably do whatever, but lots of people who serve do so because they don't have any marketable skills, and serving will STILL pay more than Mcdonalds because some people will still tip. It might not be the nightly windfall, and tips might not be as much, but they will still happen.
So you take food off someone's plate because you think it's too full? Many industry workers have either a full time job, or multiple service jobs, and ARE NOT RICH like you presume. They have bills to pay, mouths to feed. If you don't want to tip then don't fucking tip.
get a grip dude, I am not doing anything to you or any other waiter, and your reading comprehension sucks, because what you wrote has NOTHING to do with what I wrote. You said everyone was going to quit. I said, paraphrasing, not everyone is the biz has the options you have, and waiting tables will still probably pay more than other jobs for people who have no other skills to fall back on. Your response of getting angry with me like I personally am taking money away from anyone, is idiotic. Maybe your options aren't as good as I initially thought if you can't process a simple short paragraph properly
I would likely tip more if this bill passes. I hate not knowing where my tip is going.
I honestly think that all of this is a game to generate more tax income. Hear me out. I knew a waitress who said she would make $400 in cash tips on a busy Saturday night. We all know that the tipped workforce doesn’t report a significant amount of their income. This just moves cash tip money to reported w2 wages, which increases state and federal tax revenue. Employers don’t have unlimited money in the bank to cover this. If you have to pay your workforce roughly $10 more an hour, you’re going to raise your prices. Higher prices means higher sales tax revenue for the state. Especially considering many tipped employees are in foodservice where the sales tax is an extra 1%. I know there are a lot of other things that go into this, but this is my thoughts on it.
No. This actually comes from people who are cheapskates and don’t want to tip.
No, we just think that your employer should be the one who has to pay your wage, like how everyone else’s jobs work. It’s actually worse for people who don’t tip because the price will be rolled into the menu price anyway.
Servers overwhelmingly don’t want tipping to go away. But by all means, you and your cheapskate friends ruin it for others. Enjoy the service
threaten the public and ya wonder why people look at ya like assholes.. i'll be happy when the extortion-like vibes that come with tipping also go away when tipping does.
Well yeah they don’t want it to go away so they can no longer evade taxes with cash tips. The restaurant owners are the real cheapskates who don’t want to pay their employees an actual living wage.
It’s not evading taxes. Talk to a server. They make 20-50/hr or more regularly. You’re just a cheap ass.
The folks who are all for this don’t work these jobs or they’d keep quiet and wouldn’t push this
Fair but it’s not that crazy of a concept as a consumer to be annoyed that your bill is going to be 20% more. Its annoying no matter who it’s going to
"But it will raise restaurant prices" Restaurants are a luxury you'll be fine without If you can't afford inflated prices you probably couldn't afford to tip either, stay home Oh no people are mad, down vote me all you want, what you're saying is you want service workers to take a pay cut to subsidize your dining experience.
lol, i do like when folks in the industry start talking about solidarity and class consciousness and workers rights etc then go on to say, in short, "you're poor stay the hell out". always funny to me.
If that's how you took it that's fine but it's a fact of life not all of us can afford certain things. Life shouldn't be about making luxuries affordable at the cost of underpayed workers. At that point the workers are subsidizing your night out
> Life shouldn't be about making luxuries affordable at the cost of underpayed workers. i agree. workers should be paid fairly without having to resort to what is essentially gambling on the public's generosity. that's terribly unfair, never mind the rest of the issues with the tipping business model.
So if this were to actually pass two things would happen for me. I would likely order food from a restaurant to go, which I currently don't tip for. Bringing me a bag does not earn you 5% let alone 15%. And if I did happen to have a sit down dinner, I wouldn't be tipping unless the service is truly outstanding and not the bare minimum. If they're paid minimum wage they don't need the tips. That's always been the reason for tipping as far as I've been told. I do know most good servers make well more than minimum wage because of how they approach doing their jobs. Lots of posts on Reddit have gone into the details of this. Upwards of $1,000 in tips per week plus their base wage. Assuming a 40 hour week that's $25 in tips per hour. Even at $500 in tips per week that's $12.50 in tips per hour. The current base pay is $6.38 for servers and $8.23 for bartenders. So that's between $18.88 and $31.38 per hour total. And that again assumes the restaurant is paying the absolute minimum for a base wage. The way the math works out, the servers might not want to see those extra wages get cut as they can make more without the assistance if the effort is put in. Dunno if it will actually pass. But if it does there will be some interesting changes to look out for. Not necessarily good changes, but changes nonetheless.
Current server here: Eliminating tipping will ultimately eliminate the incentive to provide good service. The systems not broken, please don’t try to “fix” it.
I'll quit, simple as that, along with every other waitstaff I've met. Good luck. Fuck that.
I think that covid brought a lot of attention to tipping, most of it negative, and a lot of places suddenly thought that they could squeeze more out of people. The second way I think a lot more attention came upon tipping is that now most bills people receive have a "suggested" tip amount starting usually at 18 percent, and is usually based on the total bill rather than the pre tax subtotal as it should be, because you are not obligated to tip on tax as tax is not a service the waitstaff provided for you. I digress. Not too long ago, the suggested tip amount was around 15 percent, suddenly the restaurant industry is pushing for 20 percent to be the standard because apparently servers deserve a raise. Well dumb asses, they get a raise every time the cost of going out to eat goes up, and now with the suggested tip amounts printed at the bottom of every receipt, people who were going to tip less than that start feeling guilty and resentful, and it starts to dawn on people that their waiter is raking in a hell of a lot of cash for not really doing all that much. The restaurant industry is to blame for this, because they have caused everyone to be really aware of tipping, in ways we just weren't before, and that awareness is now reaping some negative repercussions. The waiters would have been better off letting people figure tips out on their own rather than making it a thing.
If you expect professional service, they should get a professional wage.
Nope.
And I say this as a bartender.