Minimum wage sucks. We all know that. What about the subminimum wage?
In 1991, the national subminimum wage was set at $2.13 an hour. 22 years later it still sits at $2.13 an hour. WTF?
For those who do not know, subminimum is what tipped workers are paid. Namely I am talking about wait staff in the food service industry. Right now the wage is the lowest inflation-adjusted level ever.
Now some argue that with inflation comes higher menu prices, with higher menu prices comes higher tips. But in the past 22 years, personally I have not seen menu prices rise that much. I will give an example, I worked in a restaurant in 1990-1991, making that very same $2.13 an hour. My average table for two would come in around $65 before tip. I just ate at that same place, under the same ownership, with the same cuisine being served. My wife and I spent $69 before tip. So if you add that up, this would work out to a whopping .80 increase in tip. In an average night, I would clear about 12 tables in an 8 hour shift. Busy nights(Friday/Saturday) I would clear about 20 tables. So 3 nights a week, today's wait staff is only making an extra $9.60 a day and on the two busy nights, an extra $16.00 a day. Or overall, they are making an extra $60.80 a week or an extra $1.52 an hour over what I was getting paid 22 years ago.
But here is the bigger problem as I see it. We are in the tail end of a recession, so, people are eating out less. Restaurants across the country are lowering their menu prices to attract customers back. People are being more frugal when they do go out. So they may order less, or heaven forbid... tip the "minimum" when they go out. Not to mention they are at the mercy of the kitchen at times. Not every customer knows that the wait staff is not 100% responsible for their food. Sure, we can make sure the soup is hot, that the food "looks" good. That it gets to your table in a timely manner, that we do it with courtesy and a smile. Remember, they have to wait for the kitchen, they have to wait for the bar tender, and if your steak is cooked wrong, it may not be your server's fault. Sure they could have ordered it wrong for you, but 9 times out of 10 an over-cooked steak is usually a problem in the kitchen. So cut some slack...
I know times are hard, and we are all trying to save where we can. But if you do go out, tip the shit out of your wait staff. Unless they try picking up on your date, or dump soup in your lap of course. Remember before you go out, that 6.3 percent of all workers live below the poverty line, but 16.7 percent of tipped wait staff are officially poor.
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