by Amanda Scantling

Created on: October 06, 2010

We've all been there; It's lunch- you're in your favorite restaurant, bistro or cafe enjoying whatever your heart desires. Your server, harried and fluttering about from table to table in his or her section, is either polite, efficient and hospitable, or rushed, terse and botching orders left and right. The final decision as to whether or not you tip them based on their performance is yours and in a perfect world everyone would do so, at the almost universally agreed-upon rate of 15-20% of the meal total. However, we do not live in a perfect world and sometimes, no matter how hard that server works, how nice, chatty, quick, or professional they are, they will not receive a tip.

To add insult to injury, many restaurants such as Denny's require their servers to report their tips at the end of a shift and subsequently subtract that reported amount from weekly wages earned. As a result, a full-time waitress at Denny's, working at $2.13 per hour, may earn $170 in two weeks time in wages but because of the reported tips, will receive a check for $45. In addition, at restaurants such as this, a minimum percentage of the total sales for a server in one night must be reported before that server may clock out. For example, if the company is assuming you were tipped at an average of 13% of each check and you served 10 tables at an average of $30 per table, you must report at least $40 in tips regardless of whether you were tipped out by every guest or not. 

States such as Montana, Nevada, Alaska and California already require employers to pay any type of employee at least minimum wage. There is no reason that any worker in the United States, regardless of the industry, should not be being paid Federal minimum wage. If there is sufficient burden being placed on restauranteurs and bar owners to pay wages to all employees, then policies can be implemented such as requiring a waitress to tip the "house" a certain percentage of her tip earnings at the end of every shift to counteract the fact that she is being paid minimum wage.

Regardless of the reasons, effects or arguments for and against, is it every Americans right to receive a minimum wage if it is mandated by the Federal government, regardless of position or industry. Servers should be no different and this situation deserves a serious look from our lawmakers, especially in this economy where oftentimes service jobs like waitressing are some of the only ones to be had.

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