So you earn $16/hr for all time you’re at work, plus tips.
Which is how it should be. You’re being employed. Those tips are for the employee, not a gratuity for the owner to offset their costs.
“Tipped wages” are just another form of theft, bought by the restaurant lobby.
> So you earn $16/hr for all time you’re at work, plus tips.
This is not true. According to California Waitress & Bartender Minimum Wage Laws California Tipped Minimum Wage Laws for 2023, 2024 [1],
> California labor law allows tipped employees to be paid a lower cash wage than the standard California minimum wage by their employers, with different allowed tip credits applying to different classes of employer.
That lower amount is $11 or $12 per hour, depending on the size of the company (vs the normal $16/hour rate for non-tipped employees).
The numbers are lower for most (all?) of the rest of the country.
[1] https://www.minimum-wage.org/california/tipped-employee-mini...
>They want $7.25 for that hour. Regardless of the fact that the previous hour they took in $20 in tips.
Good. It is the companies job to pay the minimum wage rate per hour regardless of weather customer come in or not. If the restaurant industry cannot survive this they have no legal right to slave wages to survive.
The restaurant owner is encouraged to keep the restaurant open much later than "profitable" hours because the cost of the additional late-night hours is only $2.13/hour per employee. So if even one table comes in during the 11PM to 1AM hours, that breaks even for the business. The business owner benefits from externalizing the true cost of staying open for those hours onto the employees. The workers end up working a lot of no-profit hours.
If they were making $7.25/hr then the incentives would be (more) aligned for them to keep working those hours.
But currently this is NOT a legal requirement. So your statement "they have no legal right to slave wages to survive" drips with hyperbole.
It is in California, Oregon, and Washington. And probably a few other places in the US.
But you're going to want to advocate to get paid the full minimum wage and to get gratuity on top of that. Usually to the tune of 20% or higher even if the service was bad.
And it's why the tipping system persist despite any issues it has. Because servers who make more money than the service they provide is worth because they get to hustle the customers don't want to give that up.
You can believe what you want, but you're just wrong. I don't know a better way to put it. The fact that you get to hustle customers for money above and beyond the value of your service is what you get for giving up the normal minimum wage. Prorating per hour makes no sense. At that point, abolish tipping and pay a fair hourly wage.
> You can believe what you want, but you're just wrong.
> The fact that you get to hustle customers
Wow. This is so incredibly intellectually dishonest that I'm actually flagging it. I don't advocate/believe/want anything of the things you just ascribed to me. I'd like to see restaurant workers earning static livable wages without tipping. Please don't try to start flame wars using strawman arguments and then telling people what they believe.
However, there's no shame in the actual hustle. But that is what's happening in the tipping system.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar. Accusing others of that is just as intellectually dishonest as you think I was. And inflammatory in and of itself.
As to "you can believe what you want, but you're just wrong", is the belief that the incentives are misaligned. The cost to keep the kitchen open is prohibitive enough to not do it for the random straggler. You need better than half a customer an hour.
Servers do not want tipping to end. They want to be tipped and to be prorated when they're not actively tipped. They want it both ways.
What you are describing is typically called "side work". Basically work that is not directly related to waiting a table. Folding napkins, putting up chairs, moving tables, etc. Even in cases where the restaurant clocks in their workers for every minute they are doing work, servers complain about doing side work because "it costs them money". And they want the federal minimum wage during that time.
Which naively makes sense. But that's not at all how tipped wages work under the law. The formula is basically: (([hours worked] * [tipped minimum wage]) + [tips earned in pay period]) / [hours worked] = [hourly wage over pay period]
So if you work 10 hours in a pay period, that's $21.30. If you collected $51.20 in tips during that time, you made $72.50 or $7.25/hr (based on current federal minimum wage, obviously numbers are different for different areas where the minimum wage is different from the federal). The restaurant is in the clear. Even if you worked 5 hours doing "side work" and 5 hours waiting tables where you got $51.20 in tips.
Servers want to essentially prorate every minute they are not physically collecting a tip it seems. Worked an hour and every table stiffed you? They want $7.25 for that hour. Regardless of the fact that the previous hour they took in $20 in tips.
Serving is more akin to being an independent contractor. You need to make hay while the sun is shining. The fat sustains you through the lean. You look at your per hour over the aggregate, not counting every hour. It's why contractors charge the rates they charge. If you are only billing half the year, those billings need to support you through the other half.
Now, in your case, the reason they don't want you to clock in isn't to save $7 over a week. It's to up your average. Which is still wrong. Let's say at your current rate of collecting tips, you totaled $225 over 30 hours. That's $7.50. Restaurant doesn't owe you anything. Now, $225 over 32.5 hours (your low end over 5 days), that's only $6.92 / hour. The restaurant is short, not $7, but $41.28
And true, If you instead made $300 over those 30 hours, the extra 2.5 hours don't even matter to you. Your check wouldn't have been that different. But, it's money that's not coming from their pockets and it's really to push people near the bubble over their limit.