Progressive liberals want to help out restaurant servers and raise the minimum wage they earn before tips. Restaurant servers need to beware, with friends like these folks, who needs enemies? [Emphasis mine]
In a study published in 2005 in Applied Economics Letters, John Anderson and Orn Bodvarsson from the University of Nebraska analyzed 1999 Bureau of Labor Statistics data and found no relationship between a boost in restaurant employees’ base wages and their take-home compensation. A larger study published last year by the Employment Policies Institute examined 20 years of Census Bureau data. Economists William Even (Miami University) and David Macpherson (Trinity University) found that each time the mandatory state wage for tipped employees rose by 10%, hours worked fell by 5%.
Messrs. Even and MacPherson have also analyzed Sen. Harkin’s bill, and they estimate that the combined loss of employee hours would translate to the equivalent of over 447,000 full-time tipped jobs.
Fewer hours at work and fewer employees on staff also means there’s less of a chance to earn tips. In Washington state, for instance, Seattle Weekly reported in December that many restaurants have stopped hiring bus boys and instead have servers bus their own tables. Managers assign five- or six-table sections instead of the traditional three or four. (Read More)
Ronald Reagan once joked “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” But he wasn’t kidding. Every time they try to solve our problems, they only make things worse.
The Dems. will always find a wrong way to do something.
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When I worked as a waitress in my much younger years I would have been thrilled to have a 5-6 table station as long as they weren’t all large tables. Three to four tables means for dinner you can seat them maybe 3 times depending on how busy you are. Five or six tables mean you can make more on the tips. Granted I was making $2.00 an hour and was taxed on my “sales” so that $2.00/hr covered the taxes on the sales amount of the food I served. So most of my tips were taxed anyway. But to make more per hour sure would have made it better on those slow days when no one came in or you only had one seating at each table. And while I made $2.00/hr the busboys made more than I did per hour anyway and still expected 10% of my tips for doing it. The bartender made 10% of my tips for making my drinks for me and even the cooks sometimes got into it at the end of the night wanting a couple of dollars for cooking our meals. So if I made $100 in tips a night I already gave away $20 leaving me $80 that if I divided it by the hours I was there came to $11.43/hr plus the $2.00 so that made $13.43/hr. Even back then that wasn’t enough to make ends meet since not everyday did you make $100 even on weekends when it was the busiest. If you had a $40 night then you end up with $6.57/hr including the $2/hr. Then you only managed to work 3-4 days a week. Lunches were worse because the food is cheaper and Monday nights were dead so if you had to work on Monday is was like working for free. My son who lives in CA has worked as a server and they do pay minimum wage plus tips but the tips aren’t that great because you have to just about kill someone to get a dinner shift someplace. I don’t mind them earning a decent wage and it’s based on their effort to serve me. Would we really notice if prices per entre rose $2.00 a plate?
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To answer your question; I would. I’d rather the “customary” tip be twenty percent, but let it be left up to the served. I’ve always hated the “20% will be added to parties over ten” or whatever. Sometimes the server isn’t worth 5% because they have an attitude that you’re disturbing them or they don’t want to be there that day. And then sometimes they’re worth more than 20% because they’ve worked their ass off to serve you, sometimes along with a great attitude. One of the most insulting questions that I have been asked by servers is when you hand them cash; they ask if you need change back from it. How very rude of an expectation and insulting as well, trying to publicly put the patron “on the spot”. Now, I only use credit when purchasing dinner out. Just like the few cheap asses that don’t tip well or not at all that brings down the average; a few servers have spoiled it for cash transactions as far as I’m concerned.
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Then there’s the problem with having 5 or 6 tables to wait on. If there’s a rush, the waitperson gets in the weeds, and service suffers. When service suffers, tips go down. Not to mention the people who get let go and have no job.
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IMHO when you set a min. wage you take away the bargaining power of both the worker and the employer. I asked for a job at the local bowling alley when I was 13 to do the clean-up after the Friday night league games. My employer and I haggled a bit about pay and what was expected of me. In the end we both shook hands and were satisfied we came to a mutual understanding. No one felt cheated. Sort of like these CEO’s who haggle their salaries. I guess we could just as easily make a min. wage law for all managerial jobs and end the negotiations right off the bat. But would the company get the best person for the job? I think not allowing people to start learning how to put themselves forward and negotiate a salary, whether you’re just starting out as a paperboy or hitting the big time as a top exec cheats you of showing you are worth what you are being paid or that you are worth more money and make your point to the employer.
A min. wage just lets employers off the hook. “I’m paying you the LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE, that’s all you get”!
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