this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
708 points (97.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
36303 readers
825 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But who are you tipping, really.
In the US, there is such thing as "tipped minimum wage". So, federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour, but the employer may pay as little as $2.13/hour themselves if the worker makes up the rest with tips.
Most extreme in Delaware. Minimum wage is $15/hour, but minimum tipped wage is just $2.23, so up to $12.77/hour in tips can just be a discount to the employer.
Why do you think tips are being pushed so much in the US? Chart per jurisdiction: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
And lots of employers will refuse to pay more than the tipped rate on slow days stealing wages from the workers if they think they can get away with it.
You wish they did because then you'd have a easy lawsuit with plenty of lawyers willing to take that case. "lots of employers will refuse to pay" is a straight lie, employers are happy to pay the wage if you dont get any tips. Its still min wage and min wage is fuck all.
You missed this apparently.
If they think they can get away with it doesnt matter. Obviously the only people commiting wage theft are the ones who think they can get away with it. Its up to the employee to ensure they do not get away with it.
Placing the blame on the victim to not be taken advantage of instead of blaming the one who is taking advantage of others is myopic as fuck.
No where did I blame victims. The original post made the claim that a lot of employers will refuse to pay. I said no a lot of employers wont do that because they would get sued out the ass. He said "if they think they can get away with it" which is a redundant statement, no employer who doesnt think they will get away with wage theft is going to still commit it. So then the original argument is still a lot of employers do not commit wage theft because they would get sued if they did. Employees should continue to take legal actions against employers who do not pay.
To think that employees standing up for their legal rights is victim blaming or licking capitalist boots is braindead.
This is literally victim blaming.
You literally do not understand the mechanisms behind systemic exploitation.
The original claim wasn't that they will simply just "refuse to pay", it is that they will take advantage of the convoluted system in order to exploit the vulnerable and desperate workers they are responsible for.
Trusting the legal system that was designed and run by capitalists to uphold the interest of workers is braindead bootlicking. Literally. Fuck off your naive bullshit.
No its not. Crime is not magically detected by the all seeing eye. If someone commits a crime against you then its in your best interest to report it because it sure wont be the criminal who is reporting it.
Even if this is what I said (which it isnt) that still doesnt give a reason why employees shouldnt seek legal recourse and it just proves what I am saying even more. IF employers were so confortable explotiing this system then the only reason that would be is because they dont expect the workers to take any action against them. You're the only one here saying workers should take no action against their employer who is taking their wages. Actually in one of your comments you said they should "protest until the boss wont do it anymore" which is a terrible suggestion.
You're intentionally trolling and im done feeding you.
Bud you think fraud doesn't happen? How naive are you? Businesses will happily commit fraud if they think they can get away with it. And they do, routinely.
Do you seriously think that I believe that fraud doesnt happen? What would give businesses the impression that they can commit fraud? Oh it would be people not suing the fuck out of them.
If its a slow day and your employer doesnt pay you the legal min wage then you sue them. Its that simple. You dont turn around and act like getting no tips that day was the reason you made $2.
You don't get paid daily, dipshit. What gives them the impression they can get away with it is because they rely on a convoluted system to obscure their fraud against vulnerable, such as the youth who do not fully understand their rights as workers, and the desperate who are taking bottom of the barrel jobs to make ends meet and don't want to risk putting their lifeline in jeopardy to stand up for their rights. A legal battle takes time, but rent is due and the fridge is empty right now.
Jesus Christ, you are naive. Holy fuck you're not even worth talking to. Fuck off with your myopic victim blaming rhetoric.
Is it really as simple as using your not money that you weren't paid to hire a lawyer, take off of work for even less money to sue your employer?
Where my "that was easy" button, I'm dying to press it.
For a wage theft case you would not need to pay a lawyer. There are plenty of lawyers that seek out these cases and pay themselves off the settlement. You would need to do is book a meeting and explain the case and show up in court once if you boss was stupid enough to fight it. Thats not a wildly impossible set of steps to take.
Also, a lot of states are right to work states, which is exactly what it doesn't sound like. What do you think happens when my employer finds out Im bringing a lawsuit against them?
What the fuck is your point? "What happens if they find out im suing them" If your employer doesn't pay you correctly and then fires you when you seek legal action they are fucked under the Fair Labor Standards Act. They've just increased their fine from up to 10k to add another 25k.
I actually perplexed why people are pushing back against my claim that people should seek to protect their federally protected work rights. The examples that have been brought up are open and shut cases that will be picked up by any law firm and they will sue for recomp + damages + lawyer fees. Yes its "harder" than doing nothing, but by doing nothing you do not fix the problem and continue to be exploited. There is no magic eye that can perfectly detect illegal activity its up to the victim to come forward and make their case thats how law works in our society.
Lol if it was that simple, wage theft wouldn't exist. These corporations can afford to steal your money, have calculated the risk, and continue to steal money.
They're not going to write down "brought lawsuit" they're going to find an arbitrary reason, or better yet write down "I didn't like that person" because it's a right to work state and even in non right to work states, labor protection is dogshit.
No, lets be clear wage theft covers a lot of things. Here we are talking about a very specific situation where an employer is clearly violating the FLSA. You can even see it in this thread, so many people dont even believe that its illegal. So they dont even know they can sue for it.
"they’re going to find an arbitrary reason, or better yet write down “I didn’t like that person” because it’s a right to work state and even in non right to work states" nah that does not hold up in court. A judge isnt going to look at an employer getting sued for wage theft and then said oh i guess you just happened to fire this person. Nah thats never goign to hold up. Also yes US labor laws are fucking dogshit but they exist.
They may succeed with the lawsuit, but that job is gone, and it's gone the moment it's filed.
The path of least resistance is unionization, and it would accomplish more faster.
Unionization is great but thats a much bigger ask and far less likely to suceed. And risker as the employee can be fired with no protection as soon as they're found trying to unionize.
I think employees should be trying to unionize as a default and then if they're the victim of wage theft seek legal recourse.
I can agree with the second part 100%
The first though, the same lack of employee protections against forming a union are the same that will get you canned for bringing a lawsuit.
Being fired for forming a union is a completely different case than committing wage theft then firing your employee for bringing it up.
The end result for the employee is the same. Very likely you and I, and statistically, 99% of the people potentially reading this.
Its not though. The employee is far more likely to win the wage theft case than the union firing case and I just think its wrong to try and dissuade people from fighting this issue. Its actively harmful to people to push that kind of a narrative.
I'm not dissuading anyone. Just laying our real world consequences for doing so. I've personally seen very little success with wage theft, the most common form of theft by the longest shot ever, compared with seeing companies unionize like once a month minimum. It helps more people and you're not just risking it by yourself.
People doing both would be great, but let's not pretend either will be just peachy.
Jesus christ. No they dont. There's more than enough dolts like you being employed in an unskilled trade industry for shit wages that has minimal overhead as it is so stealing your wage via tips would mean the restaurant is not going to be in business for long. Its not your employer's job to babysit your paycheck. If you arent reporting discrepancies, thats on you. Noone is guna keep working at a place that isnt paying employees what their owed. Especially not in an industry where the wage floor is so low and the employment is so heavily driven by word of mouth.
Why the hostility and insults to ~~unskilled~~ essential workers? Those jobs are often worked at by young workers who don't necessarily know their rights. I agree it's bad business practice to do it but it absolutely happens.
LOL Yes, it literally is.
Nice insult, very constructive. What would the capitalist business owners do without people like you putting down workers and defending their shitty business practices? Also ah yes it is the workers fault for that they are getting wages stolen from them not the owner's or manager's.
Got a love all the victim blaming going on in this thread right mate? I seriously don't get these people who bend over backwards to lick capitalist boots.
Also stealing wages via tips is different than not paying the difference between tipped min wage and regular minimum wage when there isn't much business. Maybe there was some confusion on your part about what I was referring to there.
Both are forms of wage theft and both do happen, but I wasn't referring to stealing tips in my OC. Perhaps I could've worded my comment better to make that clearer.
Are you thinking not tipping would magically transform a "tipped" position (that was subject to the minimum tipped wage) into a non-tipped position (that was subject to the normal minimum wage)? What's the threshold? A particular percentage of transactions refraining from tipping? Under a specific dollar amount of tips per worker? The employer having to supplement the tips to get it up to the minimum tipped wage more than a certain percentage of the time? Are you sure "yeah, but there's a blank on the receipt labeled 'tip', so theoretically the workers could get tips" isn't enough to make the minimum tipped wage apply? Does it vary by jurisdiction?
Meanwhile, the real person behind the real counter of the real coffee shop you like probably regularly skips meals to afford rent.
Even if what you're suggesting could work, who's to say they wouldn't immediately replace it with some "gig economy" sort of alternative that would turn the workers into freelancers to whom no minimum wage applied?
Yes, advocate for worker rights, but don't kid yourself that not tipping your servers is somehow doing them a favor.
It would actually magically transform it from a tipped position to a non tipped position. If you dont tip the server they still receive a legal min wage. If you tip the server all you're doing is paying the employers share of that employees wage.
No they don't, at least in every single tipped position I've ever worked, which would be at least 20 different places.
In reality what you're doing is just fucking over the person working that position. I agree that the rules suck, but you're not changing them by not tipping. Get involved in a way that will actually make a difference, and if you can't afford to tip, just consider yourself unable to afford that particular service.
Yes they do receive a min wage its just lower than what they receive through tips and thats why they dont want to get rid of it. Look at any other country for what happens when you dont tip. I will never tip out of principle.
I'm telling you from direct experience, that is not the case. It may happen in some, but in my experience, none.
You are helping no one but yourself at the expense of your server when you do that. That part is not something you can argue your way out of.
So you're telling me that the waitress earning $2 hr + $3 per hour in tips will be getting paid $5 an hour and not $7.25? If thats the case, then thats wage theft and its illegal and she should find a lawyer who will sue that employer.
You assume the business isn't committing fraud by not reporting accurate tips and/or aren't taking advantage of the naive and vulnerable by convincing them it is in their best interest to not report accurately.
Wage theft is the largest and most common category of theft in the US, after all.
The only real solution is a general strike of all wage staff that prevents these businesses from operating until things change. But that would require massive unionization efforts before it would even be remotely possible.
No. I am assuming that the business is committing fraud by misleading their employee into thinking their pay will remain $2 + tips even when their tips are below the min wage or the business is just paying $2 + tips instead of the legal min wage. The only thing being discussed here is the Fair Labor Standards Act. Everything else is random shit you're making up to muddy the water.
A general strike would be the best outcome for the business. All they have to do is say "ok things have changed we will pay you what you're lawfully owed.
Legal action the business could be fined 10k or more and the employee gets all lost wages + costs.
Yeah and also when the president rapes kids, he's goes to prison.
I'm sorry how is this relevant?
How the law is intended to work and how reality works are entirely different.
Do you seriously think people aren't winning these kind of cases? FLSA cases get won all the time. Also its different because wage theft is illegal but trump can legally rape kids according to the supreme court.
This sounds like something a non-tipper would say