From the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. Note that Massachusetts has the lowest tipped minimum wage in New England.
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Wonk Post: The Decline in the MA Tipped Minimum Wage
Reality-based commentary on politics.
…that when we have raised the minimum wage we have not always raised the tipped wage to keep up?
I wish we would get rid of the separate minimum for tipped workers. In fact I wish we would get away from tipping altogether. Paying servers for doing their jobs is the restaurant’s responsibility, not mine.
From the MBPC issue brief:
Re: Tipping. You may want to consider the fact that even an increased minimum wage covers less than the cost of living.
You also might want to consider that (presuming good service) tipping one’s servers is nothing less than basic civilized behavior on the part of customers, so yes it is your job.
I fundamentally disagree with the last sentence. It is not a statement of objective truth. I reluctantly tip because our culture expects it and because it is a good chunk of what they live on, but their are other cultures and countries where tipping is not done and the servers are paid more in wages. That is as it should be IMO. There are a lot of people customers don’t pay directly just to do their jobs.
Couldn’t agree more. I think more and more upscale restaurants will slowly move over to it-particularly farm to table and other types that offer more sustainable/socially conscious fare. A particularly famous one in California switched and saw an improvement in morale, customer satisfaction, and profits.
Appetizer?
More drinks?
Dessert menu?
It’s not going away soon, any more than sales commissions or the like.
Every waiter, waitress and bartender I know – enjoy the wages that the job pays – and a lot of them earn 6 figure salaries. My roommate in college made more money as a waiter than I did as an engineer. It’s a tough job and requires thinking on your feet.
Then there’s prostitution…
Tipping is a racket, where business owners get to pay their help starvation wages, making them dependent on the whims of a largely-clueless public. No other developed country demeans people in the service industries the way we do. It should end – like 50 years ago.
In most countries the tip is a small addition to the bill. Salary is the norm.
I think they developed the leisurely meal culture because the service was so slow.
If you like waiting a while for someone to come over, everyone served food at varying times, waiting for your coffee to be filled, having to snap your fingers or shout out to get your check, then go ahead believing that’s a better system. This is not the tourist experience, but in business lunches and dinners with natives at the table and ordering the food.
If my bill is $100 and it takes my family one hour, that’s an extra $20. She probably has two or three tables during that time so maybe $50-60/hr in tips That’s not a living wage?
It’s a coercion to suck up to customers, in the hope that they’ll give you a tip. Your hypothetical three tables of diners, each giving the waitperson $20 probably does not exist. Many people tip 15%. Many do not tip at all, particularly if they don’t like something about the dining experience. Often, the things they don’t like are completely beyond the waiter’s control. If the food isn’t good, it’s not their fault, but they are penalized. If the kitchen is slow making the food, it’s going to be slow reaching you.
Also, you’re not laboring under the delusion that the waitstaff gets to keep all of your $20, are you? They have to share it with other underpaid staff who don’t get tips.
The customer’s point of influence should be management, not the line worker. If service is slow, make it known to management that it’s the reason you’re not going to eat there again. They can do something about it; the waitstaff usually can’t.
I wouldn’t want to be you. Very sad to go through life with those thoughts.
Sorry, you don’t get to make it about me or my thoughts, when the discussion is about objective reality. That you think it’s a swell system doesn’t make it so, any more than W saying we had the best health-care system on Earth made that so.
It takes longer than one hour to turn your table when you’re done. Some parties are not as eager as you to eat, drink, tip, and leave. Especially in more upscale restaurants (with higher tips), there may be two or at most three turns per night.
Most servers work by the shift, not by the hour. Many servers are limited by the number of shifts available to them. By the time the server has tipped out their support staff (host/hostess, busser, dishwasher, sometimes cooks, sometimes bartenders), that 60/hr turns into at most $150-$200/shift, and maybe $400-800/week.
That’s $20-40,000 per year. Not a living wage in any city with restaurants where a server can get $200/shift.
But for someone with limited skills or education it seems like a viable possibility.
I don’t know how to rectify this situation. I tip 20% and that’s about all I can personally do. I tip 25% at Chinese places because the food is so cheap.
I’m glad to hear that you tip at 20-25%, too many people don’t, and that’s all any server expects.
For those who can handle it, I agree it’s a great job for those with limited skills or education, it’s at least better than a great many alternatives.
I think the best we can do is eliminate the “non-tipped” exclusion and require all workers to be paid the minimum wage.
I would hope that everyone would continue to tip at 20-25% like you.
That’s usually among the most expensive food I encounter.
China Buffet on Plain St. in Lowell. Grand Buffet in Nashua is more or less the same (except the meals tax is higher in NH.)
My wife and a guy at work from Chelmsford – both are Chinese – like the place on Boston Rd. in Billerica, between Kmart and Friendly’s. (I think the Friendly’s is closed now.)
Most of the Chinese restaurants I’ve been to a number of times have variable quality. I think the chefs move around a lot. China Buffet seems pretty consistent.
Feng Shui in Chelmsford has a lunch buffet that good as well
Szechuan Chef is one of the places of variable quality I had in mind. Also, it’s not inexpensive. Haven’t tried Feng Shui. Bamboo in Westford has been quite good every time I’ve been there (better than the one in Burlington), but it’s also somewhat pricey.
That’s even less than China Mountain up the road, and you get soup and tea.
Though I tried the China Buffet once and regretted it. I don’t think the food was very good. I do usually do buffet.
A couple of days in Europe and I decompress from the asshole-ish “I should get whatever I want when I want it” attitude here. You make a little “signing the bill” motion with your hand and they bring it. It’s not that hard.
Is not typical. Tipped workers are far more likely to live in poverty in this state than non tipped workers. That’s an indisputable fact.
I’d have to see a reference to agree that is “indisputable”.
Seriously. My first attempt at a search (“tipped workers more likely to live in poverty”) and found this;
http://raisetheminimumwage.org/pages/tipped-workers
I’m sure I could add dozens or hundreds of links to that if I wanted to spend actual time on it. It has also been widely reported in the media as these Raise Up questions have been brought forth — and Raise Up as an organization has been all over the need to include tipped workers because of their poverty wages.
The evidence is overwhelming at this point that tipped workers are much more likely to live in poverty — and that’s why it’s so critical they be included in any minimum wage increase.
Link
The Boston metropolitan area is third highest in the country at a $28,070 mean?
i look forward to an invitation to their swimming pools.
I’d like to see some data to support that.
A server who earns $100,000 per year has to earn $1,923 each and every week. If the server does five shifts per week (itself hard to accomplish and sustain), that’s $385/shift.
That’s about twice what most servers make, even in nice restaurants. Servers in the Elephant Walk, for example, consider themselves lucky when they get a $200 shift.
Servers work hard, are the subject of frequent emotional abuse from patrons, cooks, and owners, are underpaid, and frequently must “tip-out” many of their co-workers.
The suggestion that “a lot of them” earn 6 figure salaries is ludicrous. My oldest daughter — a fine-dining chef in Manhattan for years now — laughed hilariously when I shared it with her.
“Head waiters at top-tier restaurants can earn from $80,000 to as much as $150,000 a year including tips, according to industry executives. In comparison, a line cook might earn as little as $35,000 to $45,000 a year while working longer hours. ”
My daughter is a chef at one of the top-end restaurants mentioned in your link.
You said “a lot of them” earn 6-figure salaries. That’s not what your link says. None of those are in Massachusetts, either — restaurant prices in Manhattan are significantly higher than in Boston.
And if the wages in Omaha City are slightly less – so is the cost of living. Are the majorities of restaurants like this – no. In my peer group in our twenties – some did very well being a waiter or waitress.
As much as people on the right tend to feel that this is the case, but the data, which was already linked to above, indicates that this is a profession where the average wage tops out at 28,000 a year. As a part timer myself, I would love to have that kind of salary at the moment, and I complained about that kind of salary at my first job out of school. But I am also a single (in the sense of being unmarried) childless male. A lot of servers are women, and many of them are trying to raise families on that salary and I am sure it is very difficult.
My firm doesn’t tip the guy who delivers the coffee refills to our copy machine, doesn’t tip the guy who waters our plants, doesn’t tip the mail man or Fedex guy, doesn’t tip the Xerox guys or IT guys that occasionally come in to fix a problem, why should we tip the guy who delivers the pizza? Because it’s a social convention and we are conscientious that he lives off those tips as wages. But if we knew he was getting the same living wage those other outside service providers were getting, we wouldn’t think about it, just as we don’t for those other guys.
First, the “industry executives” – could they possibly have found a less objective source? – are saying that’s what “head waiters at top-tier restaurants” get. How many head waiters are there at a top-tier restaurant – three? How many top tier restaurants are there in a place like Boston – ten? Fifteen? You’re talking about maybe 45 people making that kind of money. If you’ve never worked for tips (and I doubt that you have, or you would have told us you had), you have never had a prospective employer (that’s those industry executives the WSJ surveyed) tell you some wildly inflated number that you “can make with tips”. It’s pretty much always a fabrication. Meanwhile, the majority of waitstaff scrape by in the neighborhood of the poverty line. Their fault, I suppose, since they haven’t become head waiters at top-tier restaurants.
Never been a waiter – been a food prep chef and bus boy in the great 1970’s economy. I have a great respect for people who working in restaurants.
But looking at the figures from a very expensive restaurant.
Figure $100.00 a person x 4 people = give you a $80.00 tip x 10 tables is an $800.00 daily tip. $800*5*52=$208,000.00, Granted this is widely optimistic.
The minimum wage sadly will price people of the job market – or force jobs under the table. What is a bad wage in Boston – is a great wage New Bedford. Markets take care of this problem – a higher minimum wage means that job won’t be there in New Bedford – even though the cost of living is 1/2 that of Boston.
This does not happen. It’s the usual argument against any increase in the minimum wage, and gets trotted out faithfully by those who favor poverty for others. There is no evidence that it ever happens. Furthermore, the effect on the price of meals – particularly at the toney places you seem to eat – is miniscule. Tiny. Insignificant. Not worth mentioning.
CBO has -500K jobs – in our current weak recovery that’s not good.
Or put roofs over their heads, so please spare us with your “great respect” while you suggest they’re all off making 6 figure salaries and living the high life.
Meanwhile, the nonsense you spoke of about the minimum wage has been taken up by scores of economists and the overwhelming consensus is that your position is complete and utter nonsense. Increasing the minimum wage for restaurant and service employees has a great impact on middle class lives and there’s little, if any, evidence of any job losses at all.
The “market” has failed at ensuring people are paid a living wage. The residents of this fine Commonwealth will fix that in November if Beacon Hill is unable to do it sooner.
And from my experience from my days in New Bedford, I can say with certainty that the overwhelming majority of people in New Bedford will eagerly vote to increase the minimum wage, so spare us the concern trolling.
So there’s a couple restaurants in particular major US cities that are so expensive their wait staff can earn a decent living.
Great for wait staff who can get those jobs, but last time I checked there were far more waiters and waitresses working at places like the 99 than at 14 course “foodie” restaurants in Manhattan’s most elite locations that almost no one could ever afford.
We need a system that works for the vast majority of waiters and waitresses who don’t earn anywhere close to those salaries. Shame on anyone who would try to suggest that because there’s some tiny shred of anecdotes who a system may work for, that we should ignore the multitudes in which the system is clearly broken.
Celebrity chef being sued for cheating servers out of tips
Another drawback to the tipping racket – the owners can cheat waiters out of their tips. Look up Amy’s Bakery for another example of that. It was featured on one of Gordon Ramsey’s shows.
Which thankfully has been replaced by Just Crust-an employee owned cooperative pizza joint in Harvard Square.
The tipped minimum wage used to go up each time the regular minimum wage rose. But in 1996, after intense lobbying by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) under the leadership of former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, Congress passed a law allowing the overall minimum wage to increase as long as the minimum for tipped workers stayed frozen.
the decline in the tipped MW as a share of the regular MW. Since the regular MW itself is down compared to inflation since 1968, the purchasing power of the tipped MW has dropped even more precipitously.