"Tipflation" may be causing tipping backlash as more digital prompts ask for tips

RotaryKeyboard@lemmy.ninja to World News@beehaw.org – 176 points –
"Tipflation" may be causing tipping backlash as more digital prompts ask for tips
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I work inside at a popular pizza chain. While tips for pickup aren't required, they are appreciated. But it's wild to think that $16/hr isn't cutting it and rather than pay us more than the minimum, they give us an option to shake a tin cup to our customers. Fucked up.

Bad idea. If you get enough tips they can start paying you as if you're a tipped wage employee, shooting your pay down to like 2.13 an hour + tips federally in the US. States have different allowances that can be higher than that, but most don't. You only need to be making 30 dollars a month in tips for your employer to legally start paying you as a tipped wage employee.

src: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

That's protected from happening in my state of Washington, thankfully.

I've never heard of this happening to insiders in other states, though, because other places already pay minimum wage for kitchen staff. If one place decided to pull tipped wage trickery they'd have a massive exodus to a competitor. Delivery drivers on the other hand rely mostly on tips and management figures that they can take the abuse and tipped wage if they're making more than most inside staff anyway.

That's good. I do think this is why they're trying to normalize the practice though, I wouldn't be surprised 1 bit if one day every corporate fast food restaurant in tandem "happened" to decide that they're paying their regular employees tipped wages.