An Italian holiday may be a priceless experience for those who have enjoyed all this country has to offer. But the summer of 2023 will go down as one of the priciest in history after a slew of price gouging scandals at cafes and restaurants that have affected foreign tourists and Italians alike.
Coming from a country where we at least give servers minimum wages* and then they can keep their tip tax-free** on top; this still doesn’t sound right.
I at least know that all** of my tips go to the server on top of what he would’ve get in the first place. Otherwise I’m essentially not gifting money for good service but paying part of the wage for normal service as well. And that’s something that should be priced into the products, not tips.
*unless they were unemployed for years, then minimum wages don’t apply for the first six months, and i guess there are some other loopholes; but in general minimum wage is the minimum
**unless its a “throw everything in a pot and then share it at the end of the month” arrangement; or if the tips is required; it must be a voluntary gift from the customer directly towards the server to not count as income
Incorrect. Minimum wage applies immediately. It’s illegal to pay less than minimum wage in the US. It is never less than minimum. I’m not sure where you got that but it’s wrong info. If someone pulled that shit it was illegal and should have been reported to the department of labor. They don’t play. Unfortunately plenty of bad actors rely on ignorance and get away with it but those assholes would be pulling other shady things with wages if they’ll do that to tipped employees anyway.
A fact that a lot of you like to ignore is that putting servers at minimum wage would be a pay cut for a loooot of people. It’s rare to not make over minimum and if you have a good weekend you can easily triple (or more) your pay for the week. I know I would have immediately quit being a server if they went to just straight minimum wage because that job is horrific and I would never put up with it for minimum wage. With all of that said I still firmly believe we need to work together to get a living wage first. Hell, the tip situation might just work itself out at that point because people will leave if they can make more elsewhere and not have to beg for tips
I think he’s primarily talking about states where tips can make up part lf the minimum wage instead of it just being the baseline with tips on top.
Also, I’m pretty sure his first * is him talking about his country, not America.
Realistically if we removed tipping in America restaurants would be forced to raise wages to get anyone to work there. It would be a rough transition though.
My prediction is restaurants would raise prices but still keep most of it by paying the bare minimum. Then, adults would be priced out of the industry and it would be another shitty job that nobody wants to do. Like fast food. I’m sure it’d be easy enough for our local govs to keep tweaking child labor laws so we’ll fill them up with teenagers that don’t know they shouldn’t have to take that abuse or work that hard for minimum wage.
