An employer only needs to pay more if tips don’t make up minimum wage over the pay period. So that 2x 30 mins every shift spent cleaning is paid at $2.13 an hour
It’s still paid at a minimum of 7.25 per hour. Yeah cleaning time increases the denominator for the overall pay rate but I see the issue more as 7.25 is way too low or COL is too high.
Put another way, if a waiter gets zero tips their pay calculation reduces to what a fast food worker makes.
