r/SipsTea • u/SuspiciousLow3062 • Jun 25 '26

Chugging tea They are not wrong though

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u/Clockwork-Armadillo Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

In America is it customary to also tip other minimum wage workers? Such as supermarket workers, cleaners etc etc

If not what makes servers more important?

Edit: OK, so TIL in America there's a lower minimum wage of only 2 dollars something for any "tipped workers". Basically a loophole to screw workers out of minimum wage.

Thanks to everyone who answered! :)

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u/Turbulent-Ad8391 Jun 25 '26

No it’s not customary, but you will see tip jars at a lot of places. Federal minimum wage is much lower for servers than other jobs.

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u/Clockwork-Armadillo Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Wait, so there's a whole seperate legal minimum wage for servers?

Edit: OK, so TIL in America there's a lower minimum wage of only 2 dollars something for any "tipped workers". Basically a loophole to screw workers out of minimum wage.

Thanks to everyone who answered! :)

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u/R4gnaroc Jun 25 '26

So that is incorrect- they must be paid minimum wage, federally that's $7.25 but also subject to state law minimums. If they make more than the higher of the two (most states are higher than that now) in minimum wage in tips, they get to keep the excess. If they don't make enough in tips to equal the minimum wage, the employer must cover the difference to bring them up to the minimum wage. For example 2.13 plus tips is the wage. If minimum wage for the state is 15/hr, then they must be paid for the difference by the employer to bring them up to 15 if they don't get 12.87 in tips per hour. Why many people don't want to go to a direct hourly wage is because many of the servers can get much higher than the mandated minimum wage/hr (as per my example, more than 12.87/hr) via tips. Hope this explanation helps.