And their income, including their tips, is way above minimum wage. Good waiters and waitresses make good money for hard work. My first "real" job was when I was 16 as a bag boy in a grocery store. The minimum wage was $1.00 per hour and we got $0.85 an hour plus tips. Working hard and really giving good service earned us a LOT more. The weekly paycheck from the store was usually less than the tips from working one 4:30-9:30 shift. Why is that bad?
Boy does that take me back.
During the Carter/ Reagan recession, I worked for a pizza place at night that I always did business with. He paid me $1.50 an hour plus gas money to deliver pizzas. Even then, that was well below minimum wage.
They would send me out with three or four deliveries, and I would have that completed in about a half-hour. With tips for those deliveries, I was making on average $10.00 for a half-hour work.
Mind you this didn't happen all night long, but you can make some pretty good money on tips. In fact one of my newest tenants has the same kind of job. While his actual pay was not impressive enough for me to trust him renting an apartment from me, my experience told me that he was making much more off the books. He and his girlfriend (now with child) have been successfully paying rent on time and keeping the apartment immaculate.