Jessica Maffia, who now works at a restaurant downtown, describes difficult conditions at a previous serving job. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)

Federal law requires a restaurant to pay the difference if a server’s pay with tips doesn’t reach the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. However, a federal compliance sweep of nearly 9,000 restaurants from 2010 through 2012 revealed that nearly 84% had compliance violations.

Typical pay, including tips, can vary widely. While some workers fret that they’ll walk away with little after a long shift, others see their tipped pay as generally reliable.

But there are other problems. Bobbi Linskens, a part-time organizer for the Restaurant Opportunities Center [ROC] of Pittsburgh, said servers who depend on tips might also feel that they have to put up with sexual harassment from customers.

“Just like everybody may have to deal with a boss who sexually harasses them — but just one boss,” Linskens said. “With a server, it’s many people.”

To avoid inequities and the need to rely on customers for pay, Bar Marco in the Strip District has eliminated tipping altogether. For guests who insist, the money is placed in a little glass jar behind the bar to be donated to organizations like the Obama Academy Cooking Club or 412 Food Rescue.

“Just like everybody may have to deal with a boss who sexually harasses them — but just one boss... With a server, it’s many people.”

Bar Marco pays part-time servers an hourly wage of $15. Full-time staff receives a yearly salary, starting at around $35,000, depending on experience and role, manager and events coordinator Andrew Heffner said.

This system is meant to level the playing field between staff in different roles. A tipped server has the possibility to make more than a restaurant’s hourly wage for good service, but that service wouldn’t be possible without good food and clean dishes thanks to the back of the house.

“The kitchen side of most restaurants makes historically way less money than the front,” Heffner said.

The modern practice of tipping has evolved over more than 500 years.

Tipping is believed to have been popularized at some point during 16th century Britain with servants of private homes. Visitors were expected to give small sums of money to servants going “above and beyond their usual duties,” according to “Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities” by Kerry Segrave.

A definitive origin of the word “tip” is unknown. One origin story described in the book explains that London coffeehouse from the late 1700s had a bowl with the words “To Insure Promptitude” (T.I.P.) that patrons would put coins in throughout the evening.

Rich Americans, known for spoiling servants overseas, brought the practice home from abroad by the 20th century, Segrave wrote, but the rise of industrial capitalism and wage labor eventually decreased the need for servants and increased a need for workers in restaurants, bars, hotels and mass transportation. Those working in such occupations were deemed “social inferiors” and their jobs were seen as “menial labor.”

Today, the United States is the only industrialized nation where tipped workers depend on tips for the majority of their income, according to a study by ROC United, a nonprofit that advocates for improved working conditions and pay in the restaurant industry.

“In a world that’s driven by reviews, it’s really impossible to have any type of voice or independence or stick up for yourself in the service industry,” said Zack Woods, who has been serving for over a year.

Before he began serving at the fine dining restaurant fl. 2 at Fairmont Pittsburgh in Downtown, the 26-year-old lived in New York City spending his weekends working part-time at a gastropub in Brooklyn.

While the work is fundamentally the same, the atmosphere is much different.

“You’re expected to have such a higher standard of service and food that if something is even remotely under par, you’re going to comp it,” Woods said.

Comping, or removing an item from the check, means a lower bill and lower tip.

At Emporio: A Meatball Joint, 21-year-old Adam Flagella runs food from the kitchen, busses tables, sweeps the floors, cleans the dishes and cups, and refills ice in the bar and kitchen at the Downtown restaurant. All of this, and sometimes more, is done for $5 an hour before taxes, plus the 11% from servers tips he said he's paid as a tip-out. Burnt Orange Restaurant Group, which owns Emporio, declined to comment on employee wages.

Combining his hourly and tip-out wages, Flagella reported making an average of $150 to $200 a week for 20 to 30 hours of work at Emporio.

Regardless of the job performed, payday for both Flagella and Woods is dependent upon where they work and how much their customers spend.

“I can make anywhere from $300 to $500 a night on the weekend,” Woods said.

Despite jobs that might offer more stable income, many servers choose the work for an opportunity to be paid above the standard $7.25 minimum wage in other lines of work.

“I wanted to be able to be paid for my quality, which is why the tipping industry works out well,” said Jered Rollins, a server at fl. 2 who has been in the industry for 18 years.

Both Woods and Rollins are unionized at fl. 2, which operates under Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Rollins was a union steward for over two years.

“We see a really rough side of people, but also a very beautiful side of people as well.”

Despite enjoying benefits like paid time-off, health insurance and a 401k plan, their paycheck quickly shrinks after accounting for union dues, taxes and contributions to those benefits. The company did not respond to a request for comment on employee wages.

The “career servers” in the industry are the ones that stick around for years —sometimes decades — like Denise Spirito, who has spent the past 31 years working as a server starting as early as legally possible. She’s spent the majority of her working life in the restaurant industry.

Working 28 to 32 hours, Spirito reported making an average of $500 per week at her current job at a Primanti Brothers location in Erie. The total can increase to around $800 or $900 around Christmas time.

The job isn’t always easy, but she sees it as reliable pay above minimum wage.

Maffia, who currently works at a gastropub Downtown, describes a harsher experience at a former job where she worked 13 hours as an average shift. There were times she would go the entire time without eating when there was no one to cover the bar. Other times she couldn’t even get away to use the bathroom.

With the wisdom and experience of career serving, both Maffia and Spirito noted the good that can outweigh a bad tip or experience.

“We see a really rough side of people, but also a very beautiful side of people as well,” Maffia said.

Each server came to this job for a different reason. For Dockum and Flagella, it was just trying to make some money while studying in college. For Woods, service will always be in his profession, but he’s still seeking a career as an experiential designer.

For Rollins, “this is a hobby.” During the day, he runs a company he started in 2016 that takes therapy dogs to nursing homes throughout western Pennsylvania and southwest New York.

Spirito attended Edinboro University for about two and a half years before facing financial barriers.

“I don’t even know what happened,” Spirito said. “If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve stayed in college.”

Working in the industry almost inevitably impacts how servers tip when they themselves are the customer.

In Maffia’s experience, customers who know the industry are easy to spot.

“You can definitely tell,” Maffia said. “You can tell based off of their patience, the way they speak to you, pre-bussing... I truly believe that in order for people to respect people in this industry, they need to know or have worked in the business at some point in time.”