Cheating Waiters With a Broken Tip

This article was written on Jan 8th of 2022

It’s time to abolish the barbaric practice of “tipped credit” allowing employers to use your tips to meet minimum wage requirements.

Tip Credit: Section 3(m) of the FLSA permits an employer to take a tip credit toward its minimum wage obligation for tipped employees equal to the difference between the required cash wage (which must be at least $2.13) and the federal minimum wage.

This practice serves only the employer who’s skimping on wages duly earned by their staff and cheapens the value of a tip given by the customer. Service based workers deal with a multitude of personalities, all while juggling who had what and who sat where. All of this and they still remember what’s on the menu.

Tipping originated in the middle ages, but they made disenfranchising servant workers popular in the united states because slave owners did not wish to pay formerly enslaved workers. Humanity is unparalleled in its capacity for hate.

An American Social History of Gratuities; John Speed “I had never known any but Negro servants. Negroes take tips of course; one expects that of them — it is a token of their inferiority . But to give money to a white man was embarrassing to me. I felt defiled by his debasement and servility.”

While we have made progression, greedy owners still claim it’s a hardship to pay up like the rest of the workforce employers. Just ask Ray Blanchette the CEO of TGI Fridays. He says it would be disastrous. I call bullshit. A tip to someone should not replace the wages owed to the employee from the employer. Rather, it’s a little extra on top of their normal wages as a thank you for the service provided.

Ray Blanchette “If the cooks are making $15 to $18 an hour and then suddenly the waitresses are making $40 an hour, that doesn’t make any sense to me”

It’s been several years, but I’ve been a cook, a dishwasher in the back of the house, and at no time did I feel needed compensation for tips gained by waiting staff. Anyone capable of pulling in enough tips to make $40 an hour has earned it. There’s a reason people like myself prefer to be in the back. We’d rather not deal with people, and the challenges that come from it.

Tip pooling, another practice among restaurants. Owners sharing tips among staff, sometimes even back-of-the-house employees who aren’t part of the tipped credit pay scale. On the one hand, I can understand the idea behind sharing tips among the wait staff. It could help balance out tips when fortune favors one over another.

Subsequently, though, to help one you harm another. A customer’s tip could be habitual, or from a sense of obligation. It could also be an indicator of who your customers prefer. Who enjoys tipping for poor service? An unruly attitude? I know I don’t.

Tip Pool: The requirement that an employee must retain all tips does not preclude a valid tip pooling or sharing arrangement among employees who customarily and regularly receive tips.

To further salt the wound, some owners even resort to illegal means called tip skimming where they’re outright stealing tips from their staff.

This behavior is disgusting. Any owner who robs their staff of tips received from customers should go to the darkest pit in jail.

It’s unfortunate enough to have wait staff at the mercy of customers’ generosity, but to take those tips reveals just how unethical and greedy some people can be.

Retention of Tips: A tip is the sole property of the tipped employee regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit.

Tipping is a natural expression of gratitude from one person to another. The act of using tips to meet the minimum wage standard needs to be abolished nationwide. Currently, there are seven states that don’t allow tipped credit.

States With No Tipped Credit;

1. Alaska
2. California
3. Minnesota
4. Montana
5. Nevada
6. Oregon
7. Washington

It’s time the rest of the United States follow suit and eliminate this practice, deeply rooted in bigotry and greed.