[godelski]

> I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge or actual malicious pay practices (probably some of both), but number of people I meet in the service industry who don't know that last bit and tell me they've never been paid the difference for "dead" shifts (those that generate little to no tips) is staggering.

That's because wage theft is relatively common among the service industry and is also why several states outlawed special wage. You can probably imagine how easy it is to perform wage theft in this situation simply because how difficult accurately calculating that differential is. You're basically relying on every single person to act in good faith in an environment where every person has large incentives to act in bad faith (employers can easily get away with not paying and employees can easily pocket tips and not report them. One of these, or just the perception of, can create a coupled feedback loop with the other).