1) Minimum wage just be just that: MINIMUM wage. An employer, no matter how he views it, should have to pay the federal (or state, if higher) minimum per hour, no matter what the job. Period.
2) Tips should not be used by the employer to make up the difference between what they want to pay and what the fed/state minimum wage is (see
Fact Sheet #15: Tipped Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act .
3) It is my understanding that only table servers can be paid "servers' pay", ie $2.15/hour. I have been told that counter workers (think Dunkin' or McD's) and kitchen staff are paid at minimum. Perhaps this is state-by-state. Way back when (1990s) and in a different state (Ohio) both of our kids worked simultaneously for the same mall-based chain resto. She was a grill cook, he was a server. She made minimum when she started (raises every 6 months afterwards, based on performance), he was paid server-base plus tips. He was good and cleaned up in the tip department. She made him buy the gas for the car ALL the time.
(They shared a car...)
4) Like some have said, I like having the control to reward for service well done. We've never not tipped because the kitchen was slow, the hostess was inattentive when seating us, or anything out of the control of the server. In fact, I can probably count
maaaybeeee two or three times total (in nearly 40 years) we stiffed a server because they were so absolutely inattentive to the job they were hired to do.
We have juggled tips based on how our experience went. I can remember one particular time our supposed-to-be server was very lax in doing their job, but another server (or runner, or busser - don't remember exactly what position she had) picked up the slack and made sure we had all we needed and took care of us. In that instance we left 10% for our assigned server and 15% directly into the hand of the person who did the work, explaining what we were doing and why. Don't know if she kept it or gave/shared with our assigned server. That was up to her.
As a rule of thumb we leave 20% for decent service. Put in extra good service, we give an extra good tip - on occasion (back before Himself was laid off) we had gone to 35% because our server was Just That Good. When I would travel alone I would tip as if the server were waiting on two of us, mentally adding another 60% of my real bill to the figure I would tip off of. It takes a server just as long (sometimes longer) to wait on a single patron than it does to serve two. With him not working we don't go out often. IMO my food tastes better than about 90% of the places we've been (we now hit just a few regular spots because we know it will be well worth it) and the only tipping necessary is "Kiss the Cook".
) and asked how dinner was. Told him we were amazed. Even in some chain restaurants management cares if customers are happy.
