Waitress who was paid just one cent for six weeks of work sparks TikTok debate

A waitress in the United States has revealed the shockingly small amount of money that she earned serving tables over the course of six weeks.

TikTok user @lvndsmac, also known as Liny, shared a video of the payslip she earned while working in a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee.

It might not come as a surprise to learn that in the United States, service industry jobs are incredibly low paid. The minimum wage for tipped employees is just a $2.13 an hour, however, in Tennessee federal, Social Security and Medicare taxes are automatically deducted from an employees income.

These taxes left Liny with just one cent to show for the six weeks of work that she had just done. Liny captioned the video: “Life of a server this is 6 weeks of ‘pay’...TIP YOUR SERVERS!!!”

It’s not clear how many hours that Liny had worked or how much she had been tipped during this period but people were stunned that someone could be paid such a small amount of money in any job.

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Her video, which has since been viewed more than one million times on TikTok with many people coming to her defence and urging people to tip more but, more importantly, for restaurants to pay their staff more.

One person wrote: “I always tip but restaurants need to pay you guys.”

“If you can’t tip go to McDonalds or cook at home,” another said.

A third person wrote: “How is this not illegal.”

However, the clip also started a debate in the comments with many feeling that it should not be up to the customers to provide a living for an employee.

One person said: “It’s not my job to pay your bills. I got my own to pay.”

A second wrote: “Blame the businesses you’re working for, not the consumers.”

A third added: “I’ve easily made $4400 a month being a server. Don’t let those empty checks fool you if you’re serving and making so much more than you get as an hourly rate.”