Had a chat with my barista that totally flipped my view on tipping

I usually tip $1 on my $5 coffee and feel fine. But this barista named Sarah at the shop on 3rd Street told me she makes $2.13 an hour base pay and relies on tips to cover rent. Now I'm sitting here wondering if my $1 is actually stingy or if tipping culture has just gotten out of hand. How do you guys decide what's fair for service workers?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny471mo ago

Totally agree with @the_mary on this one. I had a similar conversation at a diner a few months back with a waitress who showed me her pay stub from the previous week. It was literally for $0.87 after taxes and her share of the tip pool got factored in. She said she had to work a whole shift just to break even on gas and she still had to tip out the busser and the host from her own tips. It's insane to me that we even have this system where the customer is basically expected to pay the employee's salary on top of the product price. I started tipping like 30% on small orders after that because I realized that $1 on a $5 coffee is basically nothing when that person is living off goodwill. The whole setup is broken and it's not the worker's fault.

corablack1mo ago

$2.13 an hour? I thought that was illegal or something.

the_mary1mo ago

I actually saw a whole thing about this on the news a few months back, so it's wild that it's still legal. @corablack, the $2.13 is the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, and it's been stuck there since 1991. The idea is that tips are supposed to make up the difference to get you to the regular minimum wage, but in practice a lot of places just don't cover it. I've heard stories of waitresses getting zero-dollar paychecks after taxes and stuff get taken out. It's basically legal wage theft if the boss doesn't make up the shortfall, but a lot of them just don't bother.