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Comment by kingkawn | Hacker News Reader

It is not a bonus, they are legally exempt from minimum wage laws.

The entirety of their livelihood is dependent on our judgements of their service.

The jobs aren't blanket exempt. That's a federal rule. A ton of states don't exempt tipped jobs from minimum wage. In California, for example, where it is the case, the usual minimum wage is $12 or $13, depending on the number of employees, and a dollar less for tipped jobs.

But repeating the pattern, that's a state rule. Different parts of the state don't exempt jobs from minimum wage. (God, I'm glad I'm not a lawyer). In San Francisco, for example, the minimum wage is $15.59, and as far as I can tell, it holds whether you're tipped or not.

If they don't make enough in tips to reach minimum wage, the employer still needs to close that gap. It's not as exploitative as we're led to believe, or at least no more so than working a minimum wage job is normally.

Yes but this never happens. If you cost your employer money at the end of the month because you didn't make minimum wage then you'll be fired. Employers don't want to pay out, employees don't want to be fired so nobody ever speaks of it when it happens and employees just accept less than minimum wage.

You are mistaken. Firstly asking your employer to close the gap is a great way to get fired. Secondly minimum wage is so low that you cannot possibly live on it. It's in fact so low that not even walmart pays minimum perhaps because the kind of people who would work for it aren't liable to be worth employing.

Federal minimum wage is 7.25 after taxes this is about 250 per week wherein most people in this situation are paid every 2 weeks. That is to say that one cannot expect to have more than 2 paychecks per calendar month for a grand total of $1000. If you didn't need food, clothes, medicine, or anything else this is about enough for rent.

What this means is that the employee/employer relationship not to mention the individuals ability to live indoors and have food is actually predicated on the ability to achieve greater than minimum wage. Tipping out even if they can do so isn't enough to keep anyone afloat. Not tipping in a state that has a tipped minimum wage is not that much different from dining and dashing its just not illegal because its never been illegal to screw someone if they are substantially poorer than you.

cactus2093 referred to how it was originally intended, not how it currently works. I believe the original intent was for workers to always be paid a decent wage by default, and to get a bonus for exceptional service. Now it's inhumane not to tip because tipping is built into salary expectations, but that's unrelated to the original intent.

Minimum wage didn't even exist when tipping started.

it depends: that isn't true in san francisco, FYI.

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