Which is something a lot of servers act like they don't get.

Their work is more akin to contracting than it is to regular employment. You make hay while the sun is shining. The people who tip well make up for the people who don't tip well and for the times when you aren't tipped at all.

Just because you didn't physically get $7.25 this exact hour, doesn't mean your employer has to make up the difference for that hour. No, you take all the money you made from both your hourly wage and all the tips you collected, and you divide that by the number of hours you worked. If it comes out to $7.25 or over on average, everything is cool. If not, the employer has to make up the difference. That's the law.

And really, we should just absolutely do away with it. It pits the servers against the customers and creates an adversarial relationship. Servers don't want it to go away because a certain segment of servers know they cannot make as much as they do tipped. They are good at the hustle. They don't want to bring up their coworkers because it means they have to go down a bit.

So, fuck em. They could have a better system, but they choose this one. So I really couldn't give half a shit about most of their complaints. Especially when they put the blame on the customers rather than where it belongs, their employers.

Waitstaff understand this and build it into their concept of what their true hourly wage is. Many people will scramble to get jobs at $200/plate places, even if you have to wait around for 5 hours during the day time doing almost nothing till dinner comes. On the contrast, hardly anyone wants to work at busy diners that charge very little per plate. You'll be busy yourself, working non-stop and you'll take home very little since that's all they charge.

Reality is somewhere in between those two examples, but its a known reality.

The wait staff/bartenders I knew/know all do it because it was by far the highest paying job you could get. Especially with part time hours. There isn't much else you can do as a college student that will pay any better. And if you are very good, attractive, and get a bit lucky on where you work you are talking white collar pay levels per hour.