Tried to explain to some Swedish colleagues about how minimum wage doesn't apply to service jobs where tipping is the norm, and they absolutely refused to believe any aspect of what I was telling them.

This is what I say to people who get inordinately about European tourists tipping poorly. “Yes you are correct they should adapt to local norms around tipping but have you considered how insane those norms sound to any rational person?”

I was just gonna say that's the flip side. Either there's dawning horror or you have to deal with being told that you're wrong about how things work here because surely that's not true.

“The USA has good movies but is in every other respect not even a society.”

Wait, what? Minimum wage doesn't apply to waiters?

Thats not the case in California where I live thankfully. Absolutely shocking that some states allow that. Insane.

There is no governmentally set minimum wage in Sweden too, but most workers are affiliated to a union in their respective profession and said union negotiates wages and working conditions. And what you have to pay in a restaurant is clear and transparent, taxes and eventual fees included.

We recently had to fill two emergency prescriptions through an ER in Greece. It cost literally pocket change, and the pharmacist *delivered*.

And it varies wildly by state. In many states they only need to pay $2/hr and expect the rest to be made up in tips. A few states it’s just the state wage, no tipped wage exception, then in California it’s $20/hr for restaurant workers, tipped or not, it’s above the state wage.

A US friend was in the ER in Berlin and had the hospital staff tell him to his face he was lying when he described the differences in the medical system

Minimum wage also doesn't apply to disabled people in many circumstances, so it's even more fucked.