By Federal Law restaurants can pay servers as little as $2.13 an hour.  Our tips are supposed to bring those wages up to minimum wage and at a good restaurant well beyond that.  But, lets face the facts here.  Most servers are barely making it.  They mostly work at diners and low priced restaurants and are hoping to just get a 10% tip and are lucky if they get a 15%-20% tip.  Like me most people leave the tip on the charge slip and just add it to the total bill at the end of the meal.  But, if you do this your server may not see that total tip.

I first caught wind of this when I was reading my local paper the Plain Dealer this past Sunday.  A chain here called Yours Truly has apparently started charging their servers a percentage of the processing fee that goes along with using a credit card to pay for the meal.  So any tip that is left on a charge card is being taxed by the Restaurant.

Now that sounds completely unfair…doesn’t it?  The restaurant is already going to be charged a processing fee for me paying with a credit card and that’s a fee that they were already prepared to make by offering me the convenience of paying with a credit card.  Honestly they’ve probably already factored that fee in to the price of my meal anyways since an overwhelming majority of people pay with a credit or debit card and not cash.  So why should the server lose out on money that “I” paid them for their service.

The restaurants that are doing this justify it by saying it is only fair.  Why should they pay a fee for the servers tip?  Well, in my book that’s because the government is giving you a break by not forcing you to pay them more per hour due to those tips. 

We need to stand up and let restaurants know that this is not OK.  We need to tell them that they need to give all of those tips to the servers and not deduct anything from it….or as patrons we need to come with cash ready for the tip so that servers are not penalized for us using a credit card. 

If you’re willing; ask your server if they have a processing fee deducted from the tip you leave them. If they do make sure that you leave your tip in cash and also report it here.  I’m going to compile a list of restaurants that are doing this.

Tags: servers, skimming, tips, waiters, waitresses, yours truly