Trev wrote:
Useful breakdown, by US state:
Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/state/tipped.htm
Any state that only mandates the bare minimum required by US federal law isn't doing much for its citizens. (Businesses love it, of course. I suppose it would be different if they got to take a cut of the tips, and I'm sure the lack of a cut is the basis of the argument for the lower wage.)
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If you live in a state, where the bare minimum is the norm, people become dependent on the tips they receive from patrons, so they typically take extra good care of them. People who treat me like sh!t, get the same, whether I'm a patron or a server. It's also ridiculous for a job to actually expect a cut of tips. A bar I used to work at, the bar owners would take tips out of every night, even though they never worked, nor did they ever get behind the bar or do anything that would remotely be construed at work. They found a loop hole that allowed them to literally "tax" their employees and guess what, if you had a problem with it, you could, verbatim in toto, "find another job if you had a problem with it".
Secondly, the US has this nasty little thing called the "right to work" clause, which means that it's a privilege to have a job and a job can fire you for anything, if they so choose, with no reason other than they felt like it. Of course, this also "helps" the employee, allowing him/her to quit their job at any time, without provocation, however, it's hardly unlikely that another job will smile upon you doing so. In other words, if you quit, odds are you've gained a stigma for enacting your "right to work" clause, meaning most places will refuse to hire you, as you might do that to them, though they have no qualms about doing it to you.
