People tend to misunderstand the this; you still get minimum wage with a tip job. The restaurant is allowed to deduct 'x' from the wages they give you based on the amount of tips you recieve, down to a certain amount, but if you were to make no tips, they're still required to pay you minimum wage. So, for example, if you work one table in an hour, and they don't tip you, your boss has to pay you minimum wage for that hour. However, if that table tipped you $10, then the pay you'd get from the restaurant would go down to somewhere around 3 or 4 dollars, instead of the 7 something it is now. You're still making $13 - $14 an hour, however, instead of the 7 and change you'd make with no tips. Supposedly, this incentivizes good service, but since everyone tends to think 15% is almost mandatory, some servers tend to expect it just for average service. It's sort of a catch-22 situation.