Call me a godless skeptic but I'm going to take this with a grain of salt.
Yeah, these things are notoriously faked.
The tip thing is a well known one and while I doubt anyone would be as brazen as the situation in OP, I've known some very brazen people.
I waited tables for 5 years quite some time ago. I never had someone skip out on the total bill, but I did get a few of these as a "tip". Since I'm in the US, I actually lost money on those tables since we had to pay a flat percentage of our "sales" into a pool that was split between other front of house staff.
What a stupid system.
I have very mixed feelings about it TBH.
It was a bigger place that would staff for surges in customers. "Better" WWs would get better sections and shifts, so you would stay busier longer despite dips in overall volume. Not to mention more consistent tips.
This all created an incentive to be decent at your job, which involved a mix of knowing the menu, how to interact with customers, and multitasking/path optimization to turn your tables. I routinely did 20,000 to 30,000 steps a shift. Not everyone figured it out or wanted to do that amount of work, so the low end of the staff had a decent amount of turnover.
On the higher end of the scale you could clear $200-$300/shift working in casual dining, depending on the day of the week, without any education barriers. That's $20-30/hour or $42-$60k/year. You weren't getting rich, but that's enough to put you around median income levels. There were lifers who had been doing it for decades.
I don't see a shift to hourly pay making up the difference for the higher earners.
High earners can still make tips on an hourly pay.
Hourly pay does not exclude tipping.
"not that the server got stiffed on a tip"....
it's only when the owners get robbed that they'll say something about it
Yeah, if owners were required to cover the difference when waiters get stiffed or under-tipped, I bet things would change pretty quickly.
They are? Unless you mean to an arbitrary tip amount like 20%. Businesses are required to pay servers minimum wage if tips don’t make it. It’s still super scummy and they should pay living wages by default, but they can’t just not pay people.
That minimum wage for servers can be as low as $2.13 an hour, depending on the state. The amount and how it is applied varies widely and all of the minimums are pretty low. That server needs every last dollar.
EDITED TO ADD: this conversation goes on for a while in which another person goes out of their way to mischaracterize US law in multiple ways. I stopped responding simply because the law doesn't say what they think it does, and they're trusting you not to look carefully at external sources. I have linked them so you can look through them yourself and not have to rely on someone simply asserting "That doesn't say that." Well, see it for yourself.
This person wants to get eyes on the minutiae in order to draw attention away from what I started with: that minimum wage for servers is absolute shit, not all servers are guaranteed even that, and they need every dollar. I have yet to be corrected on that.
If paying servers a living wage is something important to you, as it is to me, don't be fooled: what servers actually go home with, and the laws that dictate that amount, are a complete fucking mess, there are literally exceptions and variations of the law in EVERY state, and it all adds up to hard-working servers not getting paid their due because people fight very hard to defend the tipping system, based on racism and slavery, exactly as it stands.
Handy links:
What servers make in the United States as a full-time job -- Salary.com
Compare and contrast this with the 2026 federal poverty guidelines (used for SNAP, Medicaid, WIC, etc)
Federal Poverty Level Tables -- 2026
(Note: I linked a third party site because official HHS poverty guidelines pdf publication returns an error)
The US Department of Labor Reference Guide to FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) -- dol.gov
The first table I linked to, in my comment above; note especially the tip credits:
Fact Sheet #32: Youth Minimum Wage - Fair Labor Standards Act -- dol.gov
While service workers in restaurants, hotels, bars, and elsewhere would now be covered under [FLSA], the 1966 amendments to the FLSA created a “tip credit.” The tip credit allowed employers to count the tips received by their staff against 50% of the minimum wage they were required to pay—effectively establishing a separate “tipped minimum wage” set at half the regular minimum wage. Subsequent amendments to the FLSA adjusted the level of the tipped minimum wage to varying percentages of the regular minimum wage, reaching as high as 60% in the 1980s. In 1996, the FLSA was amended again to raise the federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15. However, the bipartisan deal that was struck in Congress to achieve this increase decoupled the tipped minimum wage from the regular minimum wage. The deal locked the tipped minimum wage statutorily at $2.13 per hour (50% of $4.25), the level at which it had been set in 1991. -- quoted from Tipping is a racist relic and a modern tool of economic oppression in the South -- Economic Policy Institute, June 2024
The same information, but with minor explanations in an easier to read format:
Tipped & Youth Minimum Wage by State: 2025 Table for Employers
You are misunderstanding. A server must be paid $2.13 an hour (depending on state) plus tips. However if the tips do not raise the server to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (or the state's minimum wage if required) then the business must pay the difference.
Basically if a server goes in for a 4 hour shift and doesn't have a single customer/tip they must at minimum be paid by the company $7.25 an hour.
Funnily enough this is stated a couple of paragraphs down in your very source:
If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct (or cash) wages do not equal the minimum hourly wage of $7.25 per hour in each workweek, the employer must make up the difference.
A specific tip amount, yeah. Minimum wage is pretty low compared to 20% tips. Fully agree that just having a living wage across the board would be the best solution, though.
On reddit the op left the Gemini icon in the lower corner...
Got a link to the post?
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1ulxn9v/in_lieu_of_payment/
Tell me if and where you spot this "watermark" the OP left in the picture. I don't, but note that their reddit username is thedivinegemini which probably got somebody confused.
Yeah, look at the bottom of that receipt. Somethings not right.
Uh... 'Render unto ceaser that which is ceasers...?'
Caesar. Or Cæsar, because how often do you get to use æ?
Caesar*
Ah damnit. Youre right, of course. Ill take the humiliating L
Caelsar? (okay the pun was bad sorry)
actually it's pronounced Caesar
But what if I don't order a salad?
this is just slop with a ragebait caption. upengagement!
I got plenty of fake Jesus dollar tips as a barista. So fucking annoying.
Very MAGA.
Why don't all food service places have you pay when you order? It works like that in the uk in more than half of places and the establishment can't suffer any loss.
Because they want to upsell you throughout the meal, add on drinks, appetizers, side dishes, desserts, etc.
why couldn't they do it anyway after they've made you paid for the first round?
Every time they ask you for more money is more friction, and you're more likely to be aware of how much you're spending. They'd rather you just order food without thinking about prices until the bill comes.
It's also harder to hit you with hidden fees.if you see it before, then you can refuse. If you eat the food and then find out you can't exactly refuse to pay as easily.
Fast food places and cafes, sure, but not restaurants with waiting staff. Even the least trusting of those will just take your card when you sit down then charge you at the end.
There's a very slim possibility that a KKKristian handed this to a beggar on the street, and the beggar was canny enough to use it to get the meal he was begging for in the first place. Which sounds like a Bible story, except it needs a bit about wild boars or locusts destroying the KKKristian's garden or something.
Fellow Christianism hater?
Why would the beggar need the fake receipt to dine and dash, assuming he looks presentable enough to be served at the restaurant in the first place, he could always just walk out without leaving anything.
Is that thief on the security camera? I'd track them down and inform LE.
That triggers the victim/martyr response, though...
"I was HARASSED and ARRESTED for believing in JESUS!!!"
I wiped
This is just what happens when paying customers enter the establishment pre-loaded with its own exploitative energy
Sir, this isn't a Wendys
I'm sorry, we only accept cash, Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
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