In Australia you would be looking at minimum wage under the Restaurant Industry Award 2020. Under this award you can be one of three types of employee, a full time worker, a part time worker, or casual.

A full time employee is defined as

An employee who is engaged to work an average of 38 ordinary hours per week over a period of no more than 4 weeks is a full-time employee.

A part time employee is defined as

A part-time employee is an employee who: (a) is engaged to work at least 8 and fewer than 38 ordinary hours per week (or, if the employer operates a roster, an average of at least 8 and fewer than 38 hours per week over the roster cycle); and (b) has reasonably predictable hours of work.

If you don’t meet either of those you are a casual employee, which means less guarantees and protections but a higher pay rate.

If you are a casual you get paid 25% more than full time and have a maximum of 38 hours in a week, averaged over 4 weeks, and a maximum of 12 hours on any day.

A casual employee must also be engaged for at least 2 hours per instance of work, so you can’t have single hour shifts here and there, it must be 2 hours minimum.

If a casual works over 38 hours in a week they are to be paid overtime rates, and breaks are still required for casual workers with penalties (increased pay rates) for situations where breaks are not possible.

The base rate is $26.44 Australian so $18.69 USD. The casual will earn 25% more per hour, so $33.05 AUD or $23.37 USD. This is the minimum for a casual server at a restaurant or similar venue. The casual does not get leave or similar but gets paid more, the part or full time workers get leave and regular hours with the lower pay rate.

We don’t do tipping here. The very rate occasion someone does it is generally seen as showy and a little gross. We sometimes have a tip jar at the counter which is split between all staff on a shift, but usually people only drop a bit of change in there and most people pay by card anyway.

You absolutely can’t live here and buy a house on that income. You can survive on it if you are living with other people, but living on your own is not really an option at that pay rate. Also we don’t have to pay for medical insurance here, we have Medicare which is actually really good, and we also don’t have to pay for school for kids, the fees are optional and you can say no. It isn’t perfect, there are tonnes of issues, but it is better than the US system of paying as little as possible and relying on the kindness of strangers and social obligation to keep people alive.

If someone serves me food and my food needs to cost a little more for them to be able to actually live a dignified life I am happy to pay that. Instead corporations find every way of cheating workers out of the fruits of their labour to increase profit. Nobody should live in poverty and without dignity, working or not, and no work is below respect, excluding exploitation of others. I personally think they should be paid more than they are by a significant margin, maybe 50% more, maybe more than that. If we raise the floor we raise everyone above them and live in a society without abject poverty, win win in my book.