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Are you obliged to tip or can you refuse? (feddit.online)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
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I'm not into tipping when I've visited the US, since I come from a country where servers are paid the equivalent of Fr. 20-30 ($24-43) an hour so there isn't an obligation to tip them, but that's the opposite in the US. Am I allowed to hand them large cash tips such as Fr. 1000 ($1236) or 500€ ($583)? It gets weirder: as apparently fast food places demand a tip, like really? It's getting out of hand, what's the point then?

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[–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Depending on where you are in the country, the minimum wage can be as low as $7.25/hr. For tipped employees, that minimum becomes $2.13, with the intent that tips make up the rest.

So, that's a $5.12 difference, with a standard 15% tip a server gets that waiting on a single table with a $40 about in a hour.

Needless to say, most wait staff here are relying on tips for the bulk of their income, and when you fail to tip it's equivalent to making them work for free. I wish it wasn't like that here. But in case you haven't noticed, we have a lot worse problems right now. I don't think fixing it will be on any politicians radar....

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    when you fail to tip it's equivalent to making them work for free.

    It's even worse than that sometimes. At my last serving job, I was required to tip out back of house a percentage of my sales. So when a table left me absolutely nothing, it actually cost me money to serve that table. I didn't stick around at that job long.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago

    No it’s not, the minimum is $2.13 if they receive tips to get to federal minimum wage. If the tips do not get you to that 7.25 (or whatever it is in your state) then your employer must make up the difference.

    In other words, even if you’re maybe $100 an hour off of tips, you’ll still be making $2.13 an hour from your employer. But if you only make $2 an hour from tips, your employer has to pay you actual minimum wage in your state.

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