Christina

no, it is legal in the US to pay below minimum wage to various jobs that are classified as tipped professions by the state agency that regulates wages. Restaurant staff is certainly the biggest category, and the amount they are allowed to be paid is set by a state. Some states have laws that allow the employer to elect that option and there is a minimum amt in tips that employee must regularly earn to be put in that category (federally, at least $30 a month in tips).

Some states classify hotel and motel workers as possibly being called tipped employees for wage purposes, as well as bartenders, beauty salon workers, and some other categories like that -- even concierges.

ira

Hi Neil,

>...In general it seems to me that the tipping regime followed by most of the posters here replicates American practice. Does this mean that chambermaids etc., etc., in Europe work under the same conditions as in the US...<

No. It only means that they are carrying their US practices with them.

Service staff in Europe are much better paid than they are here. That is why tips in Europe are much lower.

On our last trip to Italy, I tried to tip the bellhop for carrying our bags up to our room.

He wouldn't accept it.

I also tried to tip the porter who carried our two suitcases up from the hotel in Praiano.

He refused it.

Neil_Oz

Thanks, Ira. Stories like yours are common in many countries - China for example, where tipping most definitely isn't part of the culture and where waiters have been known to chase a departing diner down the street to return what they took to be forgotten change. This doesn't stop some visitors tipping (or trying to tip) everyone in sight, to the bemusement of the locals. One of these, after local custom was explained, defended the practice - on the grounds that it made him feel good.

ira

>One of these, after local custom was explained, defended the practice - on the grounds that it made him feel good.<

If it feels good, do it?