Chip Chick
Let’s just get the PSA out there from the start: tip your bartenders and waitstaff well! As customers in restaurants and bars, you often don’t know or realize what actually goes on behind the scenes within the restaurant. TikToker @f.aa.ded, or bronté, opened up about the struggles of being a bartender.
To give viewers a sense of what her life looks like, she shows parts of her check, in a TikTok video, that she received from her bartending job. Just be warned, the amount of money that she makes is abysmal.
“So this is why you should always tip your bartender, servers– anyone who waits on you or provides a service for you,” she said while pointing to her check.
“This is my hourly for two weeks. I worked almost 71 hours– I get paid $2.13 an hour as a bartender and a server.”
Things don’t seem too outrageous yet– the hourly rate is a little surprising given that the minimum wage in most places sits slightly higher at around $14 or $15– but even still, you can make sense of it so far.
That is until she breaks down the numbers more in-depth–and it’s shocking.
“I should’ve made $150.81,” she said. “But because I have to have Social Security, Medicare, and the income tax taken out, I was paid $9.28 for 70 hours of work.”
She said that she didn’t have to rely on this check alone because people gave her tips, but it’s still not a livable wage.
And, there are those who don’t believe in tipping or who don’t believe in tipping a solid amount, in which case she’s back in the same spot.
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