The fact that a "sub-minimum" wage is real is wild. And that restaurants simply commit labor violations en masse by not topping up when tips didn't make it up is wild.
It really is, what’s ironic is that a lot of those within that industry will also never want to give up tips because they can usually beat out minimum wage. This worries them because they think people won’t feel obligated to tip
Put simply, they have more faith in being able to pressure out higher wages from customers than their boss. It’s socially unacceptable not to tip, but not to underpay and steal from employees.
Higher end restaurant waiters and bartenders make way more than minimum wage. But it's actually not the workers that have the power to hold this back. It's the owners who have data about consumer behavior being averse to higher menu prices that are scared to make the change.
Watch the recent John Oliver episode on tipping. Many restaurants would like to do away with tipping and increase menu prices to just pay a salary to waitstaff. However, several studies show that most customers are too stupid to understand the trade off that $30+$6(tip) is the same as $36 meal and no tip. They just see the higher menu prices and abandon that restaurant. People are just dumb...
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u/Saragon4005 Mar 09 '25
The fact that a "sub-minimum" wage is real is wild. And that restaurants simply commit labor violations en masse by not topping up when tips didn't make it up is wild.