> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.sweatyspice.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # That Tipping Sign... - URL: https://www.sweatyspice.com/that-tipping-sign/ - Published: 2026-09-24T11:58:35.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T11:58:35.000Z - Description: People love to bitch about all the hands out seeking tips. Most of those who bitch really don't understand why service workers are underpaid, and how we got here. - Author: Geoff Anderson - Tags: Misc I am willing to bet you've seen this image floating around in your socials: ![image of a sign at a restaurant](https://storage.ghost.io/c/11/f5/11f5bb9f-30c4-445e-afa3-85a47d260f6e/content/images/2026/09/tipping-sign.jpg) A sign to customers to highlight why the patrons are expected to tip You might actually nod and think "fuck yeah!" because you are tired of tipping for everything. > Lots of comments saying "Well just *pay* your staff then..." But then these are the same people who crab about how expensive it has become to go out to eat at The Olive Garden. Imaging if that $2.13 wage for the server is $40 (\~ $20 an hour and you linger for 2 hours in your table). Look, I get it, you are harassed everywhere you go where the person who makes your coffee, your burrito, cuts your hair, delivers your food. And I can agree that it feels tiring, but this is how our economy is structured. Here's the thing. Restaurants in in particular run on razor thin margins. You might think that a meal for two at your local casual dining place is overpriced at about $70 for appetizer, 2 entrees, a shared dessert and one cocktail or glass of wine. Hell, pre Covid you were able to buy that same meal for $40\. That is insane. Here's what happened. First, all the restaurants that shut down in that time allowed all these workers (cooks, servers, busboys, hosts, bartenders) to have the time to look for different jobs. And they realized that instead of being unskilled, and stuck in these shit jobs, they actually had *skills*. They could work in chaotic, poorly controlled environments, deal with obnoxious customers, cope with shitty coked-up managers and thrive. Plus they had amazing people skills, and they cleaned up well. A lot of them got jobs in corporate America. Office managers at small medical practices, claims processors, support roles, and a myriad other jobs. A huge boom for those employers, and a major improvement in these former food service worker's situations. > Sidebar: I worked my way through college in the kitchen, and was a chef at a few different local restaurants, so I had a bird's eye view of what it takes to do well, and these people definitely would be valued in corporate America. When the restrictions lifted, restaurant owners expected these low wage workers to come crawling back to take their shit jobs for shit wages. And, news flash, they didn't. How dare they! So, what happens when you can't get workers? You have to raise wages until people apply. Econ 101\. Today you can go to a Hardees in Indiana (I stopped there for lunch on a road trip in July) and they have signs that they are looking for staff starting at $17.50 an hour. (Indiana has the same minimum wage as the Federal, $7.25 an hour). While tipping happens in other countries, it isn't a core component of compensation for the serving staff. In Europe, tipping is literally just leaving the coins from your change (and if you pay with a card, you don't even do that). But in the US, it is deeply entrenched, and no matter how much you hate it, it is not the server's fault. Let's get a little history lesson... #### The wage was never supposed to come from the owner Tipping barely existed in America before the Civil War. It came over as an import, wealthy travelers picking it up in Europe and bringing it home to look continental, and most Americans hated it. It read as aristocratic, a master-servant transaction that had no business in a country that had just fought a war over slavery. Six states, Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, went as far as criminalizing the giving or taking of a tip between 1909 and 1915\. William Scott's 1916 anti-tipping tract *The Itching Palm* called the tip as undemocratic as the relation of master and slave. None of it held. Industry pressure got every one of those laws repealed by the mid-1920s. What made tipping stick wasn't the custom itself. It was what employers did with it right after emancipation. Starting in 1868, George Pullman staffed his luxury railcars almost exclusively with Black men, many of them formerly enslaved, and paid them a wage – $27.50 a month by 1915 – that nobody could live on. The porters were expected to make up the rest from white passengers' tips. This is the actual innovation: not tipping as a bonus on top of a wage, which is the European model, but tipping as a replacement for one. Restaurants, hotels, and railroads across the country ran the same math on the same newly freed workforce. The wage didn't come from the business. It came from the customer, on the customer's judgment, on any given day. Sweaty's Corner doesn't have a marketing budget or an algorithm pushing it into anyone's feed. It has readers who share it. If this one landed, sending it to someone who'd get something out of it — or subscribing so the next one finds you directly — genuinely moves the needle. [ Subscribe ](#/portal/signup) Share this post #### Why the number is $2.13, specifically The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act created the federal minimum wage and excluded tipped, agricultural, and domestic workers from it outright, categories that were disproportionately Black at the time and stayed outside minimum wage protection because Southern Democrats in Congress would not support a law that covered them. Tipped workers had no wage floor at all until 1966, when Congress created the tip credit: employers could pay as little as 50 percent of the regular minimum in cash, on the assumption that tips covered the gap. That percentage crept to 60 percent by 1977, still moving in step with the regular minimum wage. The permanent break came in 1996\. Herman Cain, then CEO of the National Restaurant Association, negotiated a deal with Congress: the industry would not fight President Clinton's minimum wage increase for regular workers if the cash wage for tipped workers was decoupled from that minimum and frozen where it stood, at $2.13 an hour. The regular minimum wage has moved since, from $4.25 in 1991 to $7.25 today. The tipped cash wage has not moved once in over three decades. In 2026 dollars, $2.13 is worth roughly a third of what it was worth the year it was set. ### What to do? First, if you eat in a sit down restaurant, realize that the person carrying your food to you, serving your cocktail, walking you to your table, that they make $2.13 an hour[1](https://www.sweatyspice.com/that-tipping-sign/#fn1). They are counting on your tips to, ... well *live*. If you are buying take out, don't if you don't want to and don't feel bad[2](https://www.sweatyspice.com/that-tipping-sign/#fn2). If you DoorDash, or Uber, tip the fucking driver, those people are risking getting shot by [motherfucking ICE](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/22/us/venezuelan-man-shot-ice-austin?ref=sweatyspice.com). But playing fucking [keyboard warrior](https://substack.com/@generationwealth/note/c-332668944?ref=sweatyspice.com) and bitching about entitled service workers? Go fuck yourselves. We have all seen this scene (and if not, you should watch Reservoir Dogs): Thank you for your attention in this matter. Keep the lights on Like what you've read, but not able to switch to paid? Why not buy me a coffee instead! All money goes to help defray the expense of running the site. [ ![Buy me a coffee](https://img.buymeacoffee.com/button-api/?text=Buy me a coffee&emoji=&slug=sweatyspice&button_colour=FFDD00&font_colour=000000&font_family=Cookie&outline_colour=000000&coffee_colour=ffffff) ](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sweatyspice?ref=sweatyspice.com) [1](https://www.sweatyspice.com/that-tipping-sign/#end1) \- There are 7 states where the $2.13 tipped wage is not in place, and they use the local minimum wage: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington [2](https://www.sweatyspice.com/that-tipping-sign/#end2) \- Of course, when I ask for a tip, it really is optional and *not* expected. I do make a lot more than $2.13 an hour