Dear internet person, as a longtime professional in the industry, my mind is torn about this.

Firstly, the only real correlation with higher tips is higher sales. The more sales I have, particularly the more tables/customers I serve, the more tips I earn. So, I literally make more the harder I work.

Secondly, an hourly wage for the way I do my job would sap my willpower and absolutely destroy my sense of working as hard as possible. I would make just as much hourly on $800 in sales as $1600, so why would I ever care about doing twice as much work?

Thirdly, I know that as a tipped worker, I’m an outlier in terms of earnings. Tipped workers encounter poverty at three times the rate of non-tipped workers. In nearly two decades in the industry, I can’t tell you how many past and even current coworkers struggle so hard to keep their kids fed, their bills paid, and a roof over their heads. Many of them have lived hand to mouth, using their shift’s earnings to buy essentials on the way home and then repeat the pattern the next day. I’ve seen a lot of people over the years have a run of bad luck and jump ship for another restaurant or job because they have to operate on a short-term budget.

Fourthly, I spent a long time calibrating and calculating my budget to accommodate the fact that I never know exactly what I’m making week to week. However, I do know how much money I need to put in the bank every month to keep myself afloat, and since I’ve been budgeting like that for a long time, I’m well ahead of living month to month.

So, I’m doing perfectly fine busting my ass and making good money doing it, but a lot of people don’t do as well through no fault of their own. Tipping is one of the most fickle, unfair, underhanded, unpredictable, ageist, sexist, racist methods of compensating people for their work.

It’s a complicated question with complex answers, but I make more money under the current tipping model than any restaurant owner would actually pay anyone.

Edit: Typos and grammar.