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> "Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S. exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the minimum wage.

Restaurants are required to bump tipped employees up to the non-tipped minimum wage if the tips don't put them over it. Thus, "normal wages" in this case would be the non-tipped minimum wage.

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They are "required to", but this is rarely enforced, so they very frequently don't actually do this.

What a bizarre interpretation of 'minimum wage' and 'tip'! This means that the restaurant owner essentially collects (part of) the tips?

So you could employ a restaurant worker at $0/h and then bump them to minimum wage, because the tips will never cut it? Basically, you'd be collecting all the tips? This cannot seriously be legal!?

There's a separate "tipped employee" minimum wage, which must be paid by the employer regardless of tip income. Last I'd checked, though, it was only about $2/hr.

if (wages+tips) < minimum_wage then wages = minimum_wages end

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