Cocktail waitress?

[girlunquestioned]

Does anybody know what a typical tips+wages salary per week or month is for a cocktail waitress? I think that's the correct term. Is it? She's a waitress at a bar that is purposefully hired to wear rather skimpy clothes while serving, anyway. She also waitresses at the connected cafe, and is an art undergrad, although her degree has taken a longer time than usual because she supports her father, who almost didn't let her go to school at all. Any other insights about this line of work or anything about the very very quick overview I have given would be quite helpful.

[phage2004]

Well, im not an authority but I did meet someone who went that route. The wages were mostly tips, but she made minimum wage as well. It's a lot like being a waiter aside from the obvious differences. Drunks tend to tip pretty well, just how scummy and sleazy the job is really depends on where she works, topless being pretty much the bottom of the scale.

There are waitresses who, depending on their personality, looks, and the type of place they work in, make more money then a lot of college graduates, but those are at places that are fairly nice. You can also find places where they don't make much at all. In some states in the US, it's legal for someone who is supposedly being paid tips to be paid less then half the minimum wage, about half I think. I don't think that occurs with most cocktail waitresses, in any large town they are likely to be paid at least reasonably well, since they are employing from a smaller pool.

[girlunquestioned]

Thanks.

[not_your_pixie]

in Ilinois waitresses/hostesses/bartenders make $3.30 an hour + tips

[snooze]

I waitressed (not cocktails, mind you--the place didn't have a liquor liscence,) and made about $8.00 CAD per hour, plus tips. Tips would go anywhere from 1-2 dollars on a bad day, to my record of 17-19 dollars on a good day. Then I got another waitressing job which involved 8.65 per hour with an eventual raise to 8.73. But--practically no tips at that job, since it was split so thinly between the 4-5 people on shift, and people didn't think to tip because it was a cafeteria set-up rather than a sit-down affair. You're looking at better tips in an actual restaurant with tables, as opposed to just standing behind a register. (Although we took their orders at the register, seated them at a table, and THEN took the food out to them--it was a weird job...)

[girlunquestioned]

What is CAD? And do you think that people in an actual bar would make more on tips?

[Tundra]

^ i think that stands for CAnadian Dollars

[snooze]

^^Tundra's right. And in a bar, you'd definitely make better tips. A) You got drunk people with, presumably, surplus of their income to spend on recreational things. B) Alcohol is heavily taxed, so the prices are fairly steep in most bars (at least, for specialty drinks--straight beer not so much, but cocktails & hard liquor, yeah.) So thus the percentage allotted for a tip would be more money.