Why can't restaurants just pay waiters/delivery guys a fair wage?

[apples and oranges]

Can someone explain why restaurants aren't required to pay their waiters, waitresses, and delivery people a fair wage so that they don't have to rely on tips? No other industry gets away with that!

[seabeyond]

1. early 80's. $6 an hour, tips without taxes cause #of employees under 13, in reno.

i worked 4-5 4 days a week and was doing fine.

texas, you get $2 something an hour. i think it is criminal.

[bottomofthehill]

5. not bad...in the 80's, i was making .77 cents per hour plus tips

I made about 75.00 per night in tips and would make 350-400 per week. I had to pay quarterly taxes to the IRS and State and never had a paycheck to cash because SS and taxes were with-held from the .77 per. Although, it seemed like a LOT of money back then, and it was a fun place to work.

[seabeyond]

10. this was a restaurant in macys and i was bartender one of the days, so i got a raise.

they tip well in reno...

[cbayer]

2. I loved being in the service industry and I loved the whole tipping part.

As the server, tips drove me to provide the best service and provide the best experience the customer could have.

There is a restaurant in LA called Sugarfish. They don't want the customers to tip. They don't even give you a credit card receipt with the option of tipping.

While their food is really good, the service stinks. They rush you. They treat you like you are troubling them. They don't take the time to talk a bit or explain things.

I would rather tip and get service that indicates that they are interested in making my experience pleasurable.

One last thing. Serving staff have a much better chance of making some good money working for tips than they do working for some flat, and probably low, wage.

I'm interested in what other who have worked in the service industry have to say here.

[justabob]

9. I sure wouldn't do it for minimum wage alone

unless it was min wage + tips. Having said that, I do think that the base pay should be better. I worked in restaurants off and on for 20 years and the wage never changed until this year. We went from 2.13 an hour to 2.27 I think, not enough to make a difference. The only time I ever wanted minimum wage was on really slow mondays when we had to do a shit load of "side-work" and not a lot of paying customers.

[cbayer]

11. If you don't make enough tips to bring you up to minimum wage, doesn't the

restaurant have to make up the difference?

[justabob]

14. in theory, yes

but it isn't on a shift to shift basis. Your week, or maybe the whole pay period, has to end up below minimum wage for that to happen. The good days balance out the bad days, in other words.

[cbayer]

16. Thanks.

I waited table when there wasn't much attention paid to tips at all. Not legal, but much of what we made was not reported to the IRS.

I think that has changed quite a bit.

Still I have good and bad dreams about waiting. Sometimes it's going just great and sometimes I can't keep up at all.

Just like real life, lol.

[justabob]

18. the dreaded weeds

there is nothing like being "in the weeds". It is indescribable, it is one of those things that one has to experience to appreciate. I will never forget one day when I lived the waiter nightmare.....customers kept coming and I was all alone. Thank dog for the busser. We rocked it out, but it was awful and I have never been so glad to be done with a shift.

[Atman]

20. That's a cultural problem...

In Thailand, tipping is considered rude. The servers take pride in treating you well, and a tip actually indicates that you felt the service was so poor that the server must need more money in order to do his/her job properly.

Imagine thinking like that in our society.

[Hippo_Tron]

3. Because it makes the meal appear cheaper

Nobody considers the cost including gratuity until the bill comes and that's good for the restaurant's business.

[jp11]

4. I can guess an argument might be that having a fair wage

might instill a bad attitude in servers to not be as friendly or work as hard to keep people happy. Which contributes to the restaurant's reputation and word of mouth is a big deal in that industry.

I suspect if Doctors, or mechanics relied on tips they might not keep you waiting so long or overbook their jobs as much.

[treestar]

6. They do it that way in Australia

Some argue the service is not as good. I had no problem with it whatsoever. But then I was on vacation.

[blaze]

7. Restaurants have higher overhead than other businesses?

That's what I was told one time... have no idea if it's true.

In the early mid eighties, I waited tables for a local coffee shop. Salary was $2.01. The restaurant was required by law to pay more if your tips + salary didn't add up to minimum wage. Even at our little coffee shop, I made WELL above min wage.

And I LOVED waiting tables. Sure, we had a few cheap ass regulars, but the majority made up for them. I enjoyed finding that fine balance between keeping an eye on a table and being a pest... some wanted their coffee cups topped off regularly... others wanted to finish a cup before getting any more. A quick glance around the dining room to see if anyone was trying to catch your eye...

I got "hired" once to give really bad service as a practical joke for a birthday lunch. The manager was in on it, the chef... everybody except the birthday boy. The party was seated after four or five groups came in after they did... I ignored the table for as long as I could stand it... got the orders mixed up, food poorly prepared, spilled water.... gah!!! It was horrible!!!! But as soon as we brought out a cupcake with a candle and started singing "Happy Birthday," you could see the light bulb turn on. I got a very nice tip for that horrible service. (And the entire party enjoyed a good meal with decent service on a later date. )

[xchrom]

8. Paying a livable wage is the responsiblity of all employers.

Doing that shouldn't magically make tipping disappear.

[Brickbat]

12. Some do. There are a few union restaurants and bars here, and restaurants and bars in union hotels

are also often union. Support your local HERE local!

ETA: I tip well anyway, but I tip extra when the waiter/waitress is wearing a union pin.

[Egalitarian Thug]

13. This is why, when you come to Las Vegas these days you will find more corporate chain

restaurants than in house places anymore. When the hotel casino closes a facility and "leases space" to a corporate chain, the chain is not subject to the union rules.

Minimum wage is becoming the wage, so we'd better focus our efforts on raising that wage and eliminating exceptions to it as quickly as possible.

[Kaleva]

15. Tips can be considered under the table income. No taxes on them.

[dems_rightnow]

17. Not legally or anything

But yeah, it does provide an opportunity to commit tax fraud.

[justabob]

19. more difficult to do that these days

When there were a lot of cash customers, that was true.... And before Micros and Aloha and other computer systems. Nowadays cash payment is rare, and we can't clock out without claiming our credit card tips minus tip share, and often you have to claim more than you made or the damned machine won't let you clock out. Every now and then, you have a heavy cash day, but they are so few and far between that it really isn't significant.

[demosincebirth]

21. Waiters/waitresses in Ca get to keep all their tips plus make, at least, min. wage (8.75).

[Odin2005]

22. Because capitalism sucks.

[NuttyFluffers]

23. i agree with you. we need to get rid of an outdated system.

i believe in wage equality and removing loopholes in the system. after traveling the world and seeing better wage equivalence for servers outside of this country i'm wholly for dumping antiquated systems that support the desperate wage slavery inequality systemic here. time for us to grow up.

[JI7]

24. depending on place of work, many employees would prefer the tips

but i think they should still be required to pay minimum wage.