During a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Representative Glenn Grothman (R-Nearest Free Food Event) was chatting it up with a couple of people from the restaurant business, either owners or lobbyists only identified as Mr. Boucher and Mr. DeCamp. It was amazing that they were able to spew so much bullshit and keep a straight face:
Grothman: Could either of you give a suggestion as to what either the wait staff or the bartenders are making say? First of all, in general, and secondly, on, say, a Friday night?
Boucher: Yeah, I’d be happy to answer it. So, as I mentioned in my testimony, our servers earn between $20 and $35 an hour when you include their hourly wage plus tips. And in fact, we at times are challenged with trying to promote a tipped employee into a management position because there are times where they’re earning more, especially as you indicate on those busier weekend nights, and our higher end concepts with the higher check average, they earn a significant amount of income and it’s difficult sometimes to recruit them to want to become a manager.
Grothman: Do they make more than you guys sometimes?
Boucher: I’m sorry?
Grothman: They make more than you guys sometimes? Your managers,
Boucher: I’m sure they do. That’s what I’m saying. There are times, yes.
Grothman: Yeah.
DeCamp:: With most of the restaurants that I work with, the front of the house employees, the servers, the bartenders and whatnot tend to have total earnings that are well above what the kitchen staff are earning, the cooks, the prep cooks.
Grothman: Yeah, way more.
DeCamp: Right. Those are the positions that people want in the restaurants because they’re lucrative. So, the idea that most tipped employees are on the edge of starvation is just wrong, that ignores the economic reality.
There is so much wrong in that conversation, it’s difficult to know where to start.
Notice how Grothman leads them immediately to discuss the earnings of bartenders on a Friday night at a high end joint, as opposed to a waitress working in a greasy spoon on a Tuesday overnight. He’s leading them to skewing the data like he leads the way to an all you can eat buffet.
Then there are the benefits, or the lack thereof. I don’t know of any waitstaff that gets health insurance or paid vacations or bereavement leave or even FMLA. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. If you’re sick, you come to work and spread your germs or you don’t get paid. If your child is sick, and the daycare or the babysitter won’t take them, guess what – you don’t get paid.
Other things that Grothman and company forgot to mention is waitstaff seldom get full time hours, especially in places where the weather can get downright nasty with bitter cold, snowstorms, heat, etc.
If they wanted to be honest and fair, the tipped staff would not only get boosted up to minimum wage, like Biden wants, but the minimum wage would be boosted up to a living wage.
