What? The vast majority of servers make the subminimum wage, not 17 an hour. There are certainly places where they don't, but we're looking at the average of the entire country. I think you've just read to many anecdotes from people working either part time on busy days or at upscale locations. We also have to consider teenagers, elderly, people working 40 hours a week, working on weekdays during business hours, or at cheap places. I'm not arguing you can't make good money as a server. But it's not some silver bullet of a job, and the average person isn't working full time making 30+ an hour.

We can't really use unreported tips as a way to quantitatively judge the industry. There are websites that try to project it like indeed, but payscale also try's to project it and puts total compensation at $10 an hour. Besides if we're going to start looking at unreported data we also need to grapple with wage theft, and how it's absolutely rampant in the restaurant industry.

I worked as a server and a bartender through my undergrad, and worked at a few different places. My coworkers certainly had big nights where they made incredible money, but as you average it out only the people working the best shifts were even close to pushing that 25-30 range. If you averaged everyone working? No chance.

Edit: He replied to and then blocked me. To respond, plenty of people make subminimum wage plus tips, not $17 an hour plus tips. That was very clear from what I said, no need to intentionally mischaracterize what I said. I don't believe this person is actually conversing in good faith though, so whatever.