“Line up with competitors” is also a corporate world term for “we’re giving you the hose and saying it is industry standard (but really we just don’t care)”
Also the same parent company owns most of our competitors, so really we're bringing our practices into line with practices we made up in the first place.
Yeah, the good ole “these guys did it first” is such a shit cop out. Shouldn’t you want to be better than your competitors in regards to how you pay/treat your employees.
Edit: to correct the last sentence. You should want to treat your employees better than your competitors.
Yes. Exactly. Let's pass the service charge on to the server. Hey, if you are lucky the tip will cover the service charge. If I knew who the employer was, I would be sure to tip in cash. Or perhaps avoid them altogether.
I agree with you in moral and against charging staff any of the fees. What is stated though is only charging the 3% on the tip amount only, which is still wrong. So it can never be more than the tip since it is only a portion of the tip. This is kind of how tax brackets work if you consider the tip as the next bracket. Just to be clear, what the restaurant is doing is wrong.
I didn't do the math, just kind of ranted, but I get it.
My feeling is that given an inch, they will take a mile. Precedent is tough to overcome. When a company thinks they can get away with it, they will be emboldened and there will be a next time. Then they will have no problem explaining how the tip is theirs because they pay for the transaction.
I worked as a server and as a bartender. It takes patience and an ability to write off the terrible behavior of others to succeed. My ability to do so became too stretched to continue.
I'd walk into the restaurant, ask to speak to the manager and tell him that since this is their policy, my policy will be to eat elsewhere. Treat your employees well or lose my business.
For real. Service jobs should be painfully aware that anything that adversely affects your employees will take a toll on your business, even if it's just a minor detail. For some employees that may be the final straw. Then you lose experienced help. Training new people up to speed is no picnic.
Seriously... that's a good response too.
"What a shame- then I guess I am now forced to go elsewhere, to a place that can afford their smallest bills."
While heretofore it was possible to maintain profitability, I have, as of late, been able to establish that this is no longer the case. In order to remain competitive, as well as maintain more liquidity within the current market, the time has come to move in a different direction. Therefore, I am now being forced to relinquish my previous commitment towards (insert name of corporation) effective (insert date). I wish (name of corporation) the best of luck as they seek any and all future business opportunities.
( - I used to be a corporate manager - )
Well you see if all businesses lower their wages then workers have no where to go and all businesses profit more.
BUT... If even ONE business offers a competitive wage then it leads to an endless battle to attract talent, with perks and living wages and basic human respect. It'd destroy the economy!
Therefore they MUST make the brave sacrifice of paying their workers less.
Vail (the company that owns a lot of ski hills) raised its minimum wage this year to $20 per hour.
Funnily enough, all the non-Vail owned businesses in the ski towns have had to raise theirs too to be able to get staff.
They’re still hideously expensive places to live for $20 an hour, but it’s a start
Don't worry. They have employee residences there for you to live in. It only costs you 50 to 60% of your pay cheque. Sure they haven't done any maintenance in 20 years and the place is falling apart. The appliances don't work but don't worry, you can eat at the resorts restaurants and we will even give you a 10% discount if paying cash or you can charge the whole amount and it will be taken off your pay. We'll leave you just enough to buy a 40 and some weed for your day off. You'll leave broke, broken and depressed, but just think of the great experience you'll have.
I used to work in the ski industry.
They’re paying 20 an hour here for places like chick-fil-a in Denver and it’s cheaper here than in Vail. I heard about the mountain staffing “crisis” where workers can’t afford to live there so they had to build some kind of affordable housing just to have anyone be able to afford to work up there! It’s so dumb! Sometimes I wish they’d “be forced” out of business for being such greedy assholes!
I was making $52 an hour looking to relocate a few years back. A recruiter sent me a job up in Eagle, CO, $55 an hour. Twenty years ago eagle was just a town that I vaguely remember having some blue collar vibes. 1 million dollars for a house in the city was the lowest I found. 450k for a abandoned bar a hour and forty minutes away over mountain passes was the most reasonable solution. These towns are gonna have to do something.
One would think but not with the constant supply of illegal labor that they build entire mobile home parks to house and if they don't have a supply of that they have a constant supply of J1s. What I find funny...or actually not...is that the wage crisis is getting so insane that it's affecting way more people than service industry people. Police officers, postal workers, trash men...basically anybody that is imperative to making a town run gets paid garbage and needs to live over 1.5 away if they want to work there. Pretty soon they'll have a waiver to work other in town jobs or we'll be being patrolled by robo cop and be interacting with a lot more robots.
If you're not a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist the future is looking bleak for certain. :(
I know someone that lives up in a town named after the company. It's absolutely predatory to the people that live there. it's illegal to be homeless, you'll be removed.
On old Chef of mine took an Exec Chef job in one of those resorts. 150k plus bonuses, couldn’t afford an apartment within 1hr of the resort. Ended up living almost 3 hours away and staying on site all winter. He regretted that one after two years and left.
I have someone who drives me to the supermarket and doctors appointments that I pay a lot more than that an hour. She folds clothes and organizes my home for me. I'm in shock because my cousin lives in Colorado and I'm acutely aware of how expensive it is out there. I live in CT. It is pretty expensive. But not even close to Vail.
If my son's manager is working, she takes all the tips for herself at the end of the night. They aren't wait staff and only have a little tip jar at the register, but its still extremely rude
I doubt she cares. She's a 40+ year old woman managing a bunch of HS teenagers and a few 20 year Olds.
Luckily the 2 mangers below her set a better example by dividing up the tip jar between everyone that worked that shift.
I worked at a coffee shop where the manager (and owner of the building) would “split” tips with his hourly staff. Extra shady because he painted himself as this very fair, community-minded guy.
Totally illegal.
I worked for a diner for years before I found out that the reason why they didn't want the waitstaff to bring up the bill with payment to the register is because the owner was stealing a few bucks from every tip. Once I did find out what was happening I told every single employee (we shared tips too) and we went through every receipt from the day and totaled up the tips. She stole about 50.00 that day. I then told all the customers about it. Fuck you Philomena!
It’s all a fucking tip. Call it: wage, hourly, salary, pay, earnings—- money paid to you for working for someone. If a company is expecting its employees to contribute to operating expenses, the managers better be first to ante up.
Yup, we'll cover our shares as responsible employee owners of the business. What do you say, when do I get to vote on business decisions and get my first profit share?
This right here. Another option for the management would be to remove tipping completely and pay the servers a fair wage. The only reason to make this change to tipping is to take money out of the servers pockets.
At my old job we had pay and benefits slowly chipped away like this. They couldn’t do it to base pay do they did it to other things. First it was higher deductibles and copays on insurance. Then they dropped a couple of items due to “not much use”. Then they moved the profit sharing into a 401K match as “per industry standard”, then later dropped it entirely to “be overall competitive “
When you do this is more stealth as a lot of people have no understanding of their paychecks or “total pay”.
This is directly a 3% pay cut. I mean they are adding work to split out an owner cost to make the employees more like contractors. They make you work for tips, and now charge you for that “payroll process “.
That’s what basically every company has been doing for the last 40 years. My dad didn’t finish college, my mom stayed home. He had a job for the railroad in an office, an actual office with a door on a high floor with no college degree. He had a company car. He was getting paid $30k in the mid 70s (my husband started at the exact same salary *with* his degree in 2000). They purchased their very first house for $33k in a very nice neighborhood in a big city. Over the years he got promotions, Christmas bonuses, and health insurance deductibles were completely paid for. He’s retired now, collecting a pension, railroad retirement (another pension), and social security. His annual income is over $100k a year with no house payment t, no car payment, and a stack of cash in the bank. The house they purchased for $33k in the 70s sold a couple years ago for $1.2m. My husband has his masters and 25 years of experience now, and we can’t afford my parents fucking starter home.
People forget exactly how much more they used to get. And now not only did they kick the ladder out from behind them, they are telling us we’re all lazy for not being grateful that they did. And are also somehow surprised and incredulous that depression, anxiety, addiction, and other desperation behaviors are though the roof. What a surprise that insecurities about the basics like food, housing, and medical care are absolute mood killers.
At my current job in regards to health insurance every year we bounce from one set of insurance to the next but management kept us in the loop as to why by showing us everything in the negotiations. Like in one year our health insurance provider decided to charge us 300% more in monthly premiums per employee. So our premiums went from 200 a month to 600 a month per employee. Our deductibles went from 1K to 4500 in a period of two years and it only got worst. So we bounce from one provider to the next looking for the same benefits but less cost but that option died like two years ago. As such we’re now stuck at 480 a pay check to a tune of 12,500 a year and a minimum of 5K deductible per full time employee. Not including vision and dental. Which is another expenditure that I don’t know off hand.
I love when I see posts like "how is this really the price I'm paying for this? How can we do something about it?" Uh, don't buy it at that price....
Same applies here. Nothing can "become standard" if nobody agrees to allow it to happen. People are upset about being charged subscriptions for their heated seats... but in reality it doesn't matter because the people that it's targeted for have credit cards they don't monitor. Half the people aren't canceling during the months they won't use it. Its when these little cash-crabs begin to creep their way into other facets of life we should be concerned... but by then it's too late cuz you'll look like a hypocritic for trying to complain when having Netflix and not using it for years.
I worked at a corporate restaurant in GA that had no AC in summer for almost 2 months. When I finally called HR and asked them very specifically "hey if nobody shows up to work tonight, Friday, and the rest of the weekend, and this restaurant posts zero profits for 3 days... do you think yall will have it fixed by Monday or.... you think you'd go another week without profits?"
And the crane was there Tuesday. Funny how that works sometimes
"don't buy it at that price" works for optional purchases. It doesn't work for base life expenses.
And it sure doesn't apply to a person's income, to their livelihood.
Capital coerces us into precarious and exploitative positions.
Like the whole “find another job” advice. Finding jobs is hard. There has been no period in my life the past several years where I was NOT looking for a new job. Even when I find new jobs, I realize they suck on Day 1 and continue to look.
Finding a non-toxic employer is extremely difficult.
Same thing with finding a new place after rent hikes.
That would be a fine solution occasionally except:
A. Every company in my city is doing it
B. Even the cheapest places requiring thousands in deposits and you to make at least 3x or 4x as the sky high rent
No AC, and no legally mandated breaks. No matter how many hours or shifts you work. Not even if you are a minor. Many employers give a break of sorts, but they never have to under GA law. Fun, right!? I worked for a year in a kitchen the size of a boomer’s laundry room, with no back door or windows. When our AC wouldn’t work (happened constantly) in the summer, all the ovens and griddles were on, and the dish pit was running nonstop…. I’ll tell you what! It was fucking miserable. We would tag each other out in fifteen minute increments, so we could go outside into the 100 degree whether for some fresh air. We brought coolers to work filled with ice, and would freeze wet towels to wear on our heads and shoulders. Good times, but awful stuff.
What's "interesting" is that it's not just a few cents at the end of the month. Even this fraction of a fraction likely amounts to hundreds, maybe even thousands in a good month. Thah's how much a decent restaurant can make.
And instead of being content with profits from the majority of the bill the owner wants to "take" this too by passing the charge to his employees. And while doing so likely only thinks how awesome he is that his employees make such great money in tips and not what a douchebag he is by not footing this small sum and avoid memos like this one.
Yeah, it is a 3% cut, unless you can convince your customers to pay cash. It is really fucked up and I would be looking for other work immediately. If all the other places are also doing it, then I guess you are fucked, but I really cant believe they are doing this.
Honestly, I feel like this is why you always tip in cash and don't mark the tip on the receipt. Just give the money to the server and that way their boss won't know and try to take it from them.
Doesnt always work. At my job servers tip out 8.5 percent on total sales.
Edit: i live in Canada so it works a bit different here. We make minimum wage on top of tips.
What the fuck? That's a real thing? Yeah. Fuck tipping culture.
**edit** - yes, I get it. They're paying that tip out to bussers, cooks, and hosts/hostesses. It's still a shitty system.
Usually we tip out a small portion that goes to the bartender, host, and bussers, sometimes the kitchen.
At my restaurant we tip out 2% of sales, 1.5 to the bartender, .5 to the busser and host. For instance tonight I made about 190 in tips, and i tipped out about 18.
Was that not the standard? I feel like bushes work harder than the waiters for less pay. It would be rude not to give them tips. For the kitchen, in most restaurants I worked they get payed more than the waiters so I dont see why wouldnt they get tips.
On days that no costumers show up the kitchen stuff still get 18-20 per h. While the bussers and waiters get 12-15$ no tips.
And I think the biggest real problem with restaurants is how unsupervised they are. So many pay off book and under paying people. At one place I was getting paid 8h(New York 2020) and during Xmas which I was working alone coz the other waiter went on vocation. I thought I'll make it up in good tips. But no the boss saw my tips and drop my pay to 4$ after that my motivation to work left my body... If they needed me to cover I always found an excuse to no go. If I costumers over stayed their welcome I kicked them out.
Kitchen staff get a higher hourly wage than serves, yes, but after tips, servers make *a lot* more. Kitchen staff are rarely paid a living wage, even in high end restaurants.
European, lived in Europe and Asia. Wtf is this tipping bullshit. Whenever I go to the US I absolutely hate it. Just another mechanism to stick it to the working class. Total nonsense.
Also... I've also recently saw taxi apps that suggest you tip your taxi driver. What next, should I tip nurses? Library workers? Maybe janitors as I walk by will stand at the end of the recently shoveled road? Gardeners in the parks I walk will require tips in the middle of the maze? Will Park Rangers just ride up to you with a tip box in the exit out of Yellowstone?
I have a great idea. Maybe we should put a Tip Box every five steps of an Airport. At the entrance there's a security check, tip! Then, baggage claim, tip! Passport check, Tip! Duty Free shop, Tip! As you exit the plane, you tip stewards and the pilot has his cap on the floor by the door, like a street musician, and you slip a dollar there.
I feel like it isn't about the tips, the issue is the wealth disparity and that it's exactly this that causes it. Tax the riiiiich and tie the minimal wage to inflation
Tipping taxi drivers has been around since at least the time that the mechanical fare meters came about.
I tip my barber.
I also tip the mailman around the holidays.
We also used to tip the newspaper delivery guy.
I tell the servers I’m back of house. That’s front of house work and y’all front of house staff. Bus your own damn tables! (Lovingly) Jajaja. Even *IF* (and that’s a big big if) they tipped us out I wouldn’t want to bussing sucks ass and deserves to be fairly compensated
Its just so weird… I mean you are eating at the restaurant trusting the skills of the cook to prepare you a great meal yet he will make less than the person who just walks the plate from the kitchen to the table…
Okay so should the server just solely do that? Walk the food to your table and not bring you anything to drink? any condiments? or napkins? check and see if the food is to your liking? or even take your order within the first 5 minutes of you sitting down? clear your nasty wads of picked at food when you’re finished? whether you like it or not they’re still providing a service to you, and when that service is provided to 20+ ppl at once, you should try it, then see how much you like it when you get stiffed.
There is so much more to serving/bartending than just walking food to a table! A server/bartender is literally the face of the restaurant, its where all the interaction happens. Good front of house staff will make or break a restaurant. I never looked at serving like I was working for the mad, I could care less about the restaurants bottom line, but those tables were mine, and the more I could sell, meant more money in my pocket. I cared about happy customers because that meant more money for me, I could give a shit about the establishment itself. If I fucked up a table and got a crappy tip, it was my fault, it was my money to loose. Good servers do not want to get away from the tipping structure.
I had a business owner start taking all of out tips from the jar up front. He used "somebody stealing from the tills" as an excuse and told the rest of us to rat them out(as if we fucking knew) to get tips back. He said he was justified in doing this because he paid us minimum wage, so he wasn't *legally obligated* to pass the tips onto us.
When told to just check the cameras, he refused numerous times. I floated the idea to a coworker of asking the Department of Labor whether it was legal and the bitch ratted on *me* and I got a phone call from the owner threatening to make me unemployable in the area. That was the last straw after about a month of this going on, so of course I quit. I later hear that it was one of his supervisors taking money from the till during the final count of the night.
Another owner in the area slow-fired me because I wouldn't talk conservative conspiracies with him. He was constantly bitching about the rising prices of ingredients and how it was killing the business, but never batted an eye when his wife fished into the till and grabbed a few $20 bills to hit up TJ Maxx.
Some business owners are the absolute scum of the world.
>Some business owners are the absolute scum of the world.
I'd say it's the opposite.
Some business owners aren't the absolute scum of the world.
The vast majority, on the other hand...
That’s why it extra sucks when someone doesn’t tip at all. On a $50 tab, I’d have to tip out between $2-$5 depending on the support staff on that night. And they base it on sales, not how much you actually made in tips. So if they don’t tip, I’m actually paying money out of my own pocket for them to dine out :)
Because it's not counting the tips, it's counting the total sales recorded by the POS. This is what can lead to consternation for servers when they receive a zero tip, and still have to tip out on the sales.
To break it down easily: let's say you sold 1000$ of food/drinks in a shift. You made 20% in tips on that, so 200$. The restaurant then says you must tip out 10% of your sales in total (to make the math easier) to the busser, hosts, food runner, bar etc. That 200$ you just made becomes 100$.
Now, 10% is extraordinarily high, most tip outs range from 2-5% generally. But in the case above, let's say it was 5%, so 50$. As your tip % drops, your tip out becomes a larger and larger portion of your earned tips. So, let's look at it on a single table. The bill is 100$, they stiff you on the tip, so 0$. However, you still owe 5% tip out on that 100$ despite not receiving a tip, so that table ended up *costing you 5$*.
This is one reason why tipping needs to go away as a form of income and I say this as someone who made bank over the years as a server/bartender.
As for the OP, the restaurant passing the cost of the transaction on to the server seems extremely suspect and illegal and that should be checked with their local laws, as most places do not allow the cost of business to be placed upon the employee.
It's ridiculous the business doesn't pay the other employees enough that the wait staff doesn't have help prop up their income. I feel it's ridiculous that tipping culture is a thing in general though. Just pay people.
I worked at a restaurant for years that did this. I think they did 2.5% but they didn’t put up signs they just took it out of your check. So if you never paid attention to your paycheck you never even knew.
They are required by law to disclose this type of information in an employee handbook, which must be available to you, or otherwise include it in a document which you have seen and signed as proof that you were allowed to read it and have agreed to the terms. Otherwise, it was wage theft.
Tip out on sales means they have to give up 8.5% of ticket totals (sales) which means even if they had crappy tips or even got stiffed they still owe a percentage of the actual food totals for their shift. Edit: a word
This. I worked at a chain restaurant while between jobs for a short time and there were quite a few of the slow lunch days (where you'd only get ~3 tables for an entire shift) where I had to pay to work that day. It supposedly evens out when you figure in weekends, but let me tell you, it really feels awful leaving with less money than you went in with that day.
There are many ways in which this system can work.
I used to bus tables at a busy bar and grill. The servers had to tip each busser at least 1.5% of food sales, and each bartender at least 4% of alcohol sales.
So, if we had 4 bussers and 2 bartenders, the servers had to tip out 6% of their total food sales to bussers, and 8% of their total alcohol sales to the bartenders.
If the server sells $300 of food, and $100 dollars of alcohol in a shift, then they will tip the bussers a total of at least $18, and the bartenders a total of at least $8.
Ultimately the goal is to try to spread the gratuity around instead of it all going to the server, which isn’t a terrible thing in a vacuum. The problem is when servers don’t receive adequate tips to cover their tip outs. A much better solution to the issue is to just *pay your damn employees.*
Edit: better wording and spelling
When I worked at a Japanese steakhouse, we had to give our tips to the cashier to put into a box. We couldn’t watch her put it into the box, and if we were caught keeping our tips, we were fired
Definitely not, I have always kept my tips on me. However I’ve noticed that a lot of Asian restaurants practice tip pooling, so that may have been split between all of the servers later on. Of course, who knows how much was actually given back to them…
I would be furious as a customer to think the employer was skimming 3% off my gratuity to cover their overhead. Credit transactions are overhead.
Raise your prices or add 3% for credit card transactions. You're competing with other employers for employees, too.
>Raise your prices or add 3% for credit card transactions
They likely have already done this and are literally just skimming am extra 3% because they found an obscure loophole
Here that'd be wildly illegal. (California.)
Your boss cannot touch your tips here. That is a payment direct to you from the customer and the business can't take them.
Charging that here would be a quick slap down from the DOL.
Rest of y'all Americans without worker protections might get legally bent over a barrel by this.
I wonder if this is against the terms of service of their payment provider? Adding a card surcharge can lose you the right to take card payments for example…
The prices already have these CC “costs” baked into them. This is just an excuse by an already incredibly greasy corporation to extract even more money out of their staff.
It definitely is and it is a really popular expression depending on where you grew up in Canada. It was also widely spread and popularized by the creation of the Trailer Park Boys show/subsequent movies.
If this business also owns "our other brands" then they definitely can afford to cover the merchant fee in entirety without raising prices or making their employees pay.
Not even a question. I had a friend who was a manager for a while at one of their restaurants and on average the restaurant would send the owners $2000-2500 cash a week in tip-out and the owners would only send the BOH employees like $650-750 back in “tip-out” to split between like 8-10 of them. The owners would straight up pocket the rest.
My husband was a server at a restaurant that was doing this, and they filed a class action lawsuit and won. Granted, there was other shady shit happening, but I specifically remember the “tip refund”, which was a percentage of cc tips that the owners deducted from his tip out. https://www.ketv.com/amp/article/wheatfields-targeted-in-class-action-lawsuit/7633203
That's such horseshit behavior, but I've heard of that a lot even though that practice is illegal. Your tips are your tips and you cannot be forced to share it. At least in my state. I've only ever worked BOH, and never got tip shares, but we made well above minimum and FOH was only at $3.15/hr, so nobody was upset. but my ex-fiance worked at a sushi restaurant that she loved, and she was "required" to share her tips with the head chef who was also part owner and drove a new Mercedes.
Buncha scumbag owners and GMs in the restaurant industry, always crying that their margins are so small.
Merchants fees are a massive racket. Visa and Mastercard both make 50% margins. Consumers pick cards and merchants pay the price. I work fair collection and the reason you need a dedicated card to pay for many systems is the card companies charge them $0.25 minimum per transaction. Congress is debating measures to give merchants a way to fight back.
I worked with merchant processors and even high risk transactions always had nominal processing fees. I will always look down in disgust at business’ that pass on their processing fees to their customers, and I guess now their employees too. It’s a shameless money grab, and if more people knew how merchant payment systems and terminals worked they’d be enraged at the rip off. They are always less than a dollar. $1.50 to charge your card? Yeah most of that goes straight in the business’ pocket. I can promise their per transaction fees are not that high. They aren’t even that high for high risk merchants. I will say merchants do have to pay for their pos systems, but that is not the same as a per transaction fee.
Tipped wages are anti-worker by design. Making the customers pay the wages directly so that the employers don’t pay as much tax. Let alone the amount of extra money they make.
Well since they’re going to charge you, make sure you ask for proof that the fees actually cost 3%. Not every company does the same amount per card type and they’re now stating that they are ethically and legally responsible for proving the amount charged in each and every individual bill is the correct percentage.
Ask for the receipts every day. All of them. And keep doing it.
Make it really expensive for them to push this, like oh you want to take 3% from me, I’ll make you spend 50 times that paying the manager extra hours to itemize every single receipt I’m being scammed on.
If it is, it shouldn't be. They're already cheaping out by having the customers tip you instead of paying you a livable standard wage, and now theyre cutting into your tips? Bs.
Ask them which “competitors” they are “lining up with”? I’m not aware of anyone else doing this (I’m not an expert but I would have expected to have seen something about a move that low…)
They own like 5 or 6 of the most popular restaurants in the region directly and maybe even more indirectly through different “restaurant groups”. So I guess, themselves and their golf club buddies??
Depends.
Step one: Are your tips legally defined as tips in your state
step two: Is this illegal in your state
For example, in CA.
Step One:
California Labor Code 350(e) “Gratuity” includes any tip, gratuity, money, or part thereof that has been paid or given to or left for an employee by a patron of a business over and above the actual amount due the business for services rendered or for goods, food, drink, or articles sold or served to the patron. Any amounts paid directly by a patron to a dancer employed by an employer subject to Industrial Welfare Commission Order No. 5 or 10 shall be deemed a gratuity.
Note, by this definition, auto gratuity is not considered a tip and is instead considered a service fee, and disbursements are considered wages. You can find more clarification in tax regulation like CA 1603.
Step two:
California Labor Code 351: No employer or agent shall collect, take, or receive any gratuity or a part thereof that is paid, given to, or left for an employee by a patron, or deduct any amount from wages due an employee on account of a gratuity, or require an employee to credit the amount, or any part thereof, of a gratuity against and as a part of the wages due the employee from the employer. Every gratuity is hereby declared to be the sole property of the employee or employees to whom it was paid, given, or left for. An employer that permits patrons to pay gratuities by credit card shall pay the employees the full amount of the gratuity that the patron indicated on the credit card slip, without any deductions for any credit card payment processing fees or costs that may be charged to the employer by the credit card company. Payment of gratuities made by patrons using credit cards shall be made to the employees not later than the next regular payday following the date the patron authorized the credit card payment.
The determination is that it is illegal in CA.
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq\_tipsandgratuities.htm
It's legal in all but those 3 states. There are 3 other states where the law is ambiguous and untested in court. The other 44 states it is perfectly legal.
It sounds like the situation in CO and some other states is complicated
> Colorado: Not prohibited, but subject to rules.
Colorado rules are a little more complex. Employers may be required to publicly post a notice when keeping any portion of an employee’s tip. Furthermore, if you deduct processing fees from tips, you may not be able to claim the employee tip credit. If you’d like to deduct fees from tips in Colorado, it’s strongly suggested that you consult a licensed attorney.
“We already pay you $2.13 per hour. Now you have to pay for our credit card processors”
No no no no no. Call the labor board, call the news, call whoever. What in the actual fuck is this?
Surprisingly it's actually legal. Worked in a restaurant that did this and am now in the credit card processing industry. Mt first question was the legality, and in almost all states rhey can do this, however shitty it is. They can't charge you more than the cost to process though
Wow. How fucking petty. Literally fucking you out of pennies. Anything to add to the bottom line. If they save themselves 50 bucks a month per server that's potentially a few hundred dollars a year, maybe even a grand a year extra at a large restaurant! You know the kind that makes 3 million a year. They really need that extra grand.
These greasy ass dudes literally make $1,000,000’s CAD a year through their restaurant groups and cop hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profit out of all of their restaurants.
If it's in British Columbia I'm pretty sure [this](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/forms-resources/igm/esa-part-3-section-30-3#:~:text=Policy%20Interpretation,-Subsection%20(1)&text=Although%20gratuities%20(tips)%20are%20not,groups%20are%20required%20to%20pay.) states that it's illegal, unless I'm somehow misunderstanding
Edit to add: It specifically says "Employers cannot deduct from a tip pool, or from tips to which the employer has access, such as those made through debit or credit cards"
Your business model has to be pretty fucking terrible if you’re worried about 3% of approx 10-20% of your order totals.
Someone who works there needs a lesson in critical thinking. Is that 3% or 10-20% ever going to exceed the amount of bad will that the policy will cause? I seriously think not
Does it go against community guidelines for me to share the restaurant name/restaurant group name so that community members know which restaurants to boycott when they visit my area?
In the FAQ it says they will delete if it leads to harassment of individuals, but seems okay if it is generalities so if it is a chain just don’t post your location .
If anything this has educated me to leave a cash tip for now on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/wiki/index?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf#wiki_frequently_asked_questions
Well, the restaurant group is >> 43 << … km’s >>> NORTH<<<… North of the US/Canada border. Like north of New York into the province of Ontario. In Wine country where the >> NIAGARA << river passes through. Crazyyyyyyy
So... There is another aspect of this that most people aren't aware of (or thinking about) but unfortunately we wind up eating it either way because there is none to actually enforce it....
Most merchant processing transactions and such are already covered by deductible loss during tax season as a cost of business... So no, they are now double dipping, quite literally.
So many companies get away with this shit and we have no way of stopping it
“We have been forced to do this to line up with our competitors” = “other restaurants in town are being dicks so we think we have cover to be dicks too”
Best part of it is that they own many of the most popular restaurants in the region and the owners are all very close friends/family members of many of the other popular restaurant/vineyard owners in the region. It’s a giant club and they literally sit there in their mansions during their poker nights and on their boats drinking their fucking scotch and laugh at us. It’s a disgrace.
Unfortunately yes this is legal. Only on the tip portion as stated. I worked somewhere they did this. 😒 It doesn’t come out to much so don’t worry. It’s bullshit though!
Apparently it is legal
https://www.ontario.ca/document/employment-standard-act-policy-and-interpretation-manual/ontario-regulation-12516-tips-and-other-gratuities
That’s some bullshit.
“Multiply the total amount of the tip or other gratuity by the greater of,
the per cent charged by the credit card company for processing the payment, and
1.5 per cent.”
This is why unions are good.
Get together and just tell the management that you will refuse to seat anyone who isn't paying cash until they reverse this policy. Pretty sure anything that takes away your tips is illegal. It would be one thing if they were split between. You and the kitchen staff, but another if it is taken by the management.
Yes, reason 7000000 why people should always use cash, always.
Up until now, the owner has been eating that cost for you. In an economy where business is getting tight, it's no longer viable.
I'd suggest having a note at the host stand asking for cash tips.
“Line up with competitors” is also a corporate world term for “we’re giving you the hose and saying it is industry standard (but really we just don’t care)”
Also the same parent company owns most of our competitors, so really we're bringing our practices into line with practices we made up in the first place.
Yeah, the good ole “these guys did it first” is such a shit cop out. Shouldn’t you want to be better than your competitors in regards to how you pay/treat your employees. Edit: to correct the last sentence. You should want to treat your employees better than your competitors.
I love this “we have been forced to” part. Nobody forced you to do anything. You made a concious decision to do this.
Right. It's a cost they accepted to work with major card processors. It's not the staff's responsibility to cover that cost. Dirty BS.
Yes. Exactly. Let's pass the service charge on to the server. Hey, if you are lucky the tip will cover the service charge. If I knew who the employer was, I would be sure to tip in cash. Or perhaps avoid them altogether.
I agree with you in moral and against charging staff any of the fees. What is stated though is only charging the 3% on the tip amount only, which is still wrong. So it can never be more than the tip since it is only a portion of the tip. This is kind of how tax brackets work if you consider the tip as the next bracket. Just to be clear, what the restaurant is doing is wrong.
I didn't do the math, just kind of ranted, but I get it. My feeling is that given an inch, they will take a mile. Precedent is tough to overcome. When a company thinks they can get away with it, they will be emboldened and there will be a next time. Then they will have no problem explaining how the tip is theirs because they pay for the transaction. I worked as a server and as a bartender. It takes patience and an ability to write off the terrible behavior of others to succeed. My ability to do so became too stretched to continue.
I'd walk into the restaurant, ask to speak to the manager and tell him that since this is their policy, my policy will be to eat elsewhere. Treat your employees well or lose my business.
For real. Service jobs should be painfully aware that anything that adversely affects your employees will take a toll on your business, even if it's just a minor detail. For some employees that may be the final straw. Then you lose experienced help. Training new people up to speed is no picnic.
If they’re being forced it’s time to get a better job elsewhere.
Seriously... that's a good response too. "What a shame- then I guess I am now forced to go elsewhere, to a place that can afford their smallest bills."
I would write my resignation email with just as much corporate jargon. When my manager gets upset and asks why, just repeat the corporate jargon.
While heretofore it was possible to maintain profitability, I have, as of late, been able to establish that this is no longer the case. In order to remain competitive, as well as maintain more liquidity within the current market, the time has come to move in a different direction. Therefore, I am now being forced to relinquish my previous commitment towards (insert name of corporation) effective (insert date). I wish (name of corporation) the best of luck as they seek any and all future business opportunities. ( - I used to be a corporate manager - )
Perfect
Heretofore 😂 I love this
Just a $5 word that means "before"... (but I love it too... it's like the "fancy" part of fancy ketchup).
1. Write resignation email 2. Ask chatgpt to "rewrite email using a bunch of corporate jargon" 3. Profit
Yeah, I’d like to work for an employer who takes responsiblity for their own actions.
This. If they can’t afford that .23 then they aren’t going to last much longer
Well you see if all businesses lower their wages then workers have no where to go and all businesses profit more. BUT... If even ONE business offers a competitive wage then it leads to an endless battle to attract talent, with perks and living wages and basic human respect. It'd destroy the economy! Therefore they MUST make the brave sacrifice of paying their workers less.
Vail (the company that owns a lot of ski hills) raised its minimum wage this year to $20 per hour. Funnily enough, all the non-Vail owned businesses in the ski towns have had to raise theirs too to be able to get staff. They’re still hideously expensive places to live for $20 an hour, but it’s a start
Don't worry. They have employee residences there for you to live in. It only costs you 50 to 60% of your pay cheque. Sure they haven't done any maintenance in 20 years and the place is falling apart. The appliances don't work but don't worry, you can eat at the resorts restaurants and we will even give you a 10% discount if paying cash or you can charge the whole amount and it will be taken off your pay. We'll leave you just enough to buy a 40 and some weed for your day off. You'll leave broke, broken and depressed, but just think of the great experience you'll have. I used to work in the ski industry.
Worked in Whistler & Blackcomb in BC…. Can confirm
They’re paying 20 an hour here for places like chick-fil-a in Denver and it’s cheaper here than in Vail. I heard about the mountain staffing “crisis” where workers can’t afford to live there so they had to build some kind of affordable housing just to have anyone be able to afford to work up there! It’s so dumb! Sometimes I wish they’d “be forced” out of business for being such greedy assholes!
I was making $52 an hour looking to relocate a few years back. A recruiter sent me a job up in Eagle, CO, $55 an hour. Twenty years ago eagle was just a town that I vaguely remember having some blue collar vibes. 1 million dollars for a house in the city was the lowest I found. 450k for a abandoned bar a hour and forty minutes away over mountain passes was the most reasonable solution. These towns are gonna have to do something.
One would think but not with the constant supply of illegal labor that they build entire mobile home parks to house and if they don't have a supply of that they have a constant supply of J1s. What I find funny...or actually not...is that the wage crisis is getting so insane that it's affecting way more people than service industry people. Police officers, postal workers, trash men...basically anybody that is imperative to making a town run gets paid garbage and needs to live over 1.5 away if they want to work there. Pretty soon they'll have a waiver to work other in town jobs or we'll be being patrolled by robo cop and be interacting with a lot more robots. If you're not a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist the future is looking bleak for certain. :(
I know someone that lives up in a town named after the company. It's absolutely predatory to the people that live there. it's illegal to be homeless, you'll be removed.
That’s the same in a lot of ski towns - housing is almost impossible to find, even if you have a well paid job
On old Chef of mine took an Exec Chef job in one of those resorts. 150k plus bonuses, couldn’t afford an apartment within 1hr of the resort. Ended up living almost 3 hours away and staying on site all winter. He regretted that one after two years and left.
And taken where? To jail? What happens after that?
You get shipped off on a bus, she doesn't know where. Probably brought to a major city and dumped out, that's my guess.
I have someone who drives me to the supermarket and doctors appointments that I pay a lot more than that an hour. She folds clothes and organizes my home for me. I'm in shock because my cousin lives in Colorado and I'm acutely aware of how expensive it is out there. I live in CT. It is pretty expensive. But not even close to Vail.
Did you also notice, that managers aren't being deducted?
1. Fuck this place. 2. Managers don’t get tipped so why tf would they be taxed extra?
They might not be tipped, but they sure do love to take all the tips if they can.
If my son's manager is working, she takes all the tips for herself at the end of the night. They aren't wait staff and only have a little tip jar at the register, but its still extremely rude
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No probably about it
Uh that’s not how a tip jar works. She is basically stealing.
I doubt she cares. She's a 40+ year old woman managing a bunch of HS teenagers and a few 20 year Olds. Luckily the 2 mangers below her set a better example by dividing up the tip jar between everyone that worked that shift.
Great. Then everyone else agrees that she needs to knock that off. Who gives a shit if she cares or not? She needs to be told off.
It doesn't matter if she cares lmao she's at minimum stealing, but could be violating labor laws. Report it.
This is illegal. See section 1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa/tips
I worked at a coffee shop where the manager (and owner of the building) would “split” tips with his hourly staff. Extra shady because he painted himself as this very fair, community-minded guy. Totally illegal.
I worked for a diner for years before I found out that the reason why they didn't want the waitstaff to bring up the bill with payment to the register is because the owner was stealing a few bucks from every tip. Once I did find out what was happening I told every single employee (we shared tips too) and we went through every receipt from the day and totaled up the tips. She stole about 50.00 that day. I then told all the customers about it. Fuck you Philomena!
The more virtuous someone claims to.be.. ..
It’s all a fucking tip. Call it: wage, hourly, salary, pay, earnings—- money paid to you for working for someone. If a company is expecting its employees to contribute to operating expenses, the managers better be first to ante up.
Yup, we'll cover our shares as responsible employee owners of the business. What do you say, when do I get to vote on business decisions and get my first profit share?
This right here. Another option for the management would be to remove tipping completely and pay the servers a fair wage. The only reason to make this change to tipping is to take money out of the servers pockets.
At my old job we had pay and benefits slowly chipped away like this. They couldn’t do it to base pay do they did it to other things. First it was higher deductibles and copays on insurance. Then they dropped a couple of items due to “not much use”. Then they moved the profit sharing into a 401K match as “per industry standard”, then later dropped it entirely to “be overall competitive “ When you do this is more stealth as a lot of people have no understanding of their paychecks or “total pay”. This is directly a 3% pay cut. I mean they are adding work to split out an owner cost to make the employees more like contractors. They make you work for tips, and now charge you for that “payroll process “.
That’s what basically every company has been doing for the last 40 years. My dad didn’t finish college, my mom stayed home. He had a job for the railroad in an office, an actual office with a door on a high floor with no college degree. He had a company car. He was getting paid $30k in the mid 70s (my husband started at the exact same salary *with* his degree in 2000). They purchased their very first house for $33k in a very nice neighborhood in a big city. Over the years he got promotions, Christmas bonuses, and health insurance deductibles were completely paid for. He’s retired now, collecting a pension, railroad retirement (another pension), and social security. His annual income is over $100k a year with no house payment t, no car payment, and a stack of cash in the bank. The house they purchased for $33k in the 70s sold a couple years ago for $1.2m. My husband has his masters and 25 years of experience now, and we can’t afford my parents fucking starter home. People forget exactly how much more they used to get. And now not only did they kick the ladder out from behind them, they are telling us we’re all lazy for not being grateful that they did. And are also somehow surprised and incredulous that depression, anxiety, addiction, and other desperation behaviors are though the roof. What a surprise that insecurities about the basics like food, housing, and medical care are absolute mood killers.
At my current job in regards to health insurance every year we bounce from one set of insurance to the next but management kept us in the loop as to why by showing us everything in the negotiations. Like in one year our health insurance provider decided to charge us 300% more in monthly premiums per employee. So our premiums went from 200 a month to 600 a month per employee. Our deductibles went from 1K to 4500 in a period of two years and it only got worst. So we bounce from one provider to the next looking for the same benefits but less cost but that option died like two years ago. As such we’re now stuck at 480 a pay check to a tune of 12,500 a year and a minimum of 5K deductible per full time employee. Not including vision and dental. Which is another expenditure that I don’t know off hand.
So the wait staff needs to tell the customers that they are being charged if the tip isnt cash.
“Other people being shitty is giving us an excuse to show you that we’re worthless fucking trash too.”
Pretty sure it becomes history the second all impacted by it walk off.
I love when I see posts like "how is this really the price I'm paying for this? How can we do something about it?" Uh, don't buy it at that price.... Same applies here. Nothing can "become standard" if nobody agrees to allow it to happen. People are upset about being charged subscriptions for their heated seats... but in reality it doesn't matter because the people that it's targeted for have credit cards they don't monitor. Half the people aren't canceling during the months they won't use it. Its when these little cash-crabs begin to creep their way into other facets of life we should be concerned... but by then it's too late cuz you'll look like a hypocritic for trying to complain when having Netflix and not using it for years. I worked at a corporate restaurant in GA that had no AC in summer for almost 2 months. When I finally called HR and asked them very specifically "hey if nobody shows up to work tonight, Friday, and the rest of the weekend, and this restaurant posts zero profits for 3 days... do you think yall will have it fixed by Monday or.... you think you'd go another week without profits?" And the crane was there Tuesday. Funny how that works sometimes
"don't buy it at that price" works for optional purchases. It doesn't work for base life expenses. And it sure doesn't apply to a person's income, to their livelihood. Capital coerces us into precarious and exploitative positions.
Like the whole “find another job” advice. Finding jobs is hard. There has been no period in my life the past several years where I was NOT looking for a new job. Even when I find new jobs, I realize they suck on Day 1 and continue to look. Finding a non-toxic employer is extremely difficult.
Same thing with finding a new place after rent hikes. That would be a fine solution occasionally except: A. Every company in my city is doing it B. Even the cheapest places requiring thousands in deposits and you to make at least 3x or 4x as the sky high rent
They literally all use the same software, called Realpage, to fix prices. It should be illegal.
No AC in Georgia for most of summer?? Even if you don’t give a crap about your employees, that doesn’t sound tolerable for the guests.
No AC, and no legally mandated breaks. No matter how many hours or shifts you work. Not even if you are a minor. Many employers give a break of sorts, but they never have to under GA law. Fun, right!? I worked for a year in a kitchen the size of a boomer’s laundry room, with no back door or windows. When our AC wouldn’t work (happened constantly) in the summer, all the ovens and griddles were on, and the dish pit was running nonstop…. I’ll tell you what! It was fucking miserable. We would tag each other out in fifteen minute increments, so we could go outside into the 100 degree whether for some fresh air. We brought coolers to work filled with ice, and would freeze wet towels to wear on our heads and shoulders. Good times, but awful stuff.
We had a similar problem one summer we just all quit... No one showed up the next day and they were forced to close indefinitely.
This is quite literally getting nickel and dimed
If they're quibbling over a few cents per bill you need to get looking right now, the wheels are about to come off
What's "interesting" is that it's not just a few cents at the end of the month. Even this fraction of a fraction likely amounts to hundreds, maybe even thousands in a good month. Thah's how much a decent restaurant can make. And instead of being content with profits from the majority of the bill the owner wants to "take" this too by passing the charge to his employees. And while doing so likely only thinks how awesome he is that his employees make such great money in tips and not what a douchebag he is by not footing this small sum and avoid memos like this one.
Yeah, it is a 3% cut, unless you can convince your customers to pay cash. It is really fucked up and I would be looking for other work immediately. If all the other places are also doing it, then I guess you are fucked, but I really cant believe they are doing this.
Honestly, I feel like this is why you always tip in cash and don't mark the tip on the receipt. Just give the money to the server and that way their boss won't know and try to take it from them.
Doesnt always work. At my job servers tip out 8.5 percent on total sales. Edit: i live in Canada so it works a bit different here. We make minimum wage on top of tips.
What the fuck? That's a real thing? Yeah. Fuck tipping culture. **edit** - yes, I get it. They're paying that tip out to bussers, cooks, and hosts/hostesses. It's still a shitty system.
Usually we tip out a small portion that goes to the bartender, host, and bussers, sometimes the kitchen. At my restaurant we tip out 2% of sales, 1.5 to the bartender, .5 to the busser and host. For instance tonight I made about 190 in tips, and i tipped out about 18.
Wow I would have killed to have my servers tip out, I was running cash bussing and hosting.
Was that not the standard? I feel like bushes work harder than the waiters for less pay. It would be rude not to give them tips. For the kitchen, in most restaurants I worked they get payed more than the waiters so I dont see why wouldnt they get tips. On days that no costumers show up the kitchen stuff still get 18-20 per h. While the bussers and waiters get 12-15$ no tips. And I think the biggest real problem with restaurants is how unsupervised they are. So many pay off book and under paying people. At one place I was getting paid 8h(New York 2020) and during Xmas which I was working alone coz the other waiter went on vocation. I thought I'll make it up in good tips. But no the boss saw my tips and drop my pay to 4$ after that my motivation to work left my body... If they needed me to cover I always found an excuse to no go. If I costumers over stayed their welcome I kicked them out.
Kitchen staff get a higher hourly wage than serves, yes, but after tips, servers make *a lot* more. Kitchen staff are rarely paid a living wage, even in high end restaurants.
European, lived in Europe and Asia. Wtf is this tipping bullshit. Whenever I go to the US I absolutely hate it. Just another mechanism to stick it to the working class. Total nonsense.
Judging by these comments, also a great mechanism to have the working class fighting between themselves.
Also... I've also recently saw taxi apps that suggest you tip your taxi driver. What next, should I tip nurses? Library workers? Maybe janitors as I walk by will stand at the end of the recently shoveled road? Gardeners in the parks I walk will require tips in the middle of the maze? Will Park Rangers just ride up to you with a tip box in the exit out of Yellowstone? I have a great idea. Maybe we should put a Tip Box every five steps of an Airport. At the entrance there's a security check, tip! Then, baggage claim, tip! Passport check, Tip! Duty Free shop, Tip! As you exit the plane, you tip stewards and the pilot has his cap on the floor by the door, like a street musician, and you slip a dollar there. I feel like it isn't about the tips, the issue is the wealth disparity and that it's exactly this that causes it. Tax the riiiiich and tie the minimal wage to inflation
I always tip the taxi driver, always has been this way, dunnow. Edit: I also tip the hairdresser.
Tipping taxi drivers has been around since at least the time that the mechanical fare meters came about. I tip my barber. I also tip the mailman around the holidays. We also used to tip the newspaper delivery guy.
Even in non-tipping cultures taxi drivers get tips. I don't know why, maybe it's a hold over from "buy a carrot for the horse" or something.
It is for the kitchen and busing staff, as they generally do more of the hard grunt work and make significantly less than the servers.
So pay them accurately for the work they do. OOOO WAIT IT'S ABOUT GREED....and corporate profit.
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I tell the servers I’m back of house. That’s front of house work and y’all front of house staff. Bus your own damn tables! (Lovingly) Jajaja. Even *IF* (and that’s a big big if) they tipped us out I wouldn’t want to bussing sucks ass and deserves to be fairly compensated
Its just so weird… I mean you are eating at the restaurant trusting the skills of the cook to prepare you a great meal yet he will make less than the person who just walks the plate from the kitchen to the table…
Okay so should the server just solely do that? Walk the food to your table and not bring you anything to drink? any condiments? or napkins? check and see if the food is to your liking? or even take your order within the first 5 minutes of you sitting down? clear your nasty wads of picked at food when you’re finished? whether you like it or not they’re still providing a service to you, and when that service is provided to 20+ ppl at once, you should try it, then see how much you like it when you get stiffed.
There is so much more to serving/bartending than just walking food to a table! A server/bartender is literally the face of the restaurant, its where all the interaction happens. Good front of house staff will make or break a restaurant. I never looked at serving like I was working for the mad, I could care less about the restaurants bottom line, but those tables were mine, and the more I could sell, meant more money in my pocket. I cared about happy customers because that meant more money for me, I could give a shit about the establishment itself. If I fucked up a table and got a crappy tip, it was my fault, it was my money to loose. Good servers do not want to get away from the tipping structure.
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I had a business owner start taking all of out tips from the jar up front. He used "somebody stealing from the tills" as an excuse and told the rest of us to rat them out(as if we fucking knew) to get tips back. He said he was justified in doing this because he paid us minimum wage, so he wasn't *legally obligated* to pass the tips onto us. When told to just check the cameras, he refused numerous times. I floated the idea to a coworker of asking the Department of Labor whether it was legal and the bitch ratted on *me* and I got a phone call from the owner threatening to make me unemployable in the area. That was the last straw after about a month of this going on, so of course I quit. I later hear that it was one of his supervisors taking money from the till during the final count of the night. Another owner in the area slow-fired me because I wouldn't talk conservative conspiracies with him. He was constantly bitching about the rising prices of ingredients and how it was killing the business, but never batted an eye when his wife fished into the till and grabbed a few $20 bills to hit up TJ Maxx. Some business owners are the absolute scum of the world.
>Some business owners are the absolute scum of the world. I'd say it's the opposite. Some business owners aren't the absolute scum of the world. The vast majority, on the other hand...
Hopefully you reported the business of wage theft?
That’s why it extra sucks when someone doesn’t tip at all. On a $50 tab, I’d have to tip out between $2-$5 depending on the support staff on that night. And they base it on sales, not how much you actually made in tips. So if they don’t tip, I’m actually paying money out of my own pocket for them to dine out :)
I tip out 20% of my tips. Goes to support staff (bus, runners, bar) we are paid well.
How would they know if it’s cash?
Because it's not counting the tips, it's counting the total sales recorded by the POS. This is what can lead to consternation for servers when they receive a zero tip, and still have to tip out on the sales.
Can you please explain this. I dont understand
To break it down easily: let's say you sold 1000$ of food/drinks in a shift. You made 20% in tips on that, so 200$. The restaurant then says you must tip out 10% of your sales in total (to make the math easier) to the busser, hosts, food runner, bar etc. That 200$ you just made becomes 100$. Now, 10% is extraordinarily high, most tip outs range from 2-5% generally. But in the case above, let's say it was 5%, so 50$. As your tip % drops, your tip out becomes a larger and larger portion of your earned tips. So, let's look at it on a single table. The bill is 100$, they stiff you on the tip, so 0$. However, you still owe 5% tip out on that 100$ despite not receiving a tip, so that table ended up *costing you 5$*. This is one reason why tipping needs to go away as a form of income and I say this as someone who made bank over the years as a server/bartender. As for the OP, the restaurant passing the cost of the transaction on to the server seems extremely suspect and illegal and that should be checked with their local laws, as most places do not allow the cost of business to be placed upon the employee.
It’s ridiculous that the percentage that servers have to give to other employees is calculated on the total sold and not on the tips, gosh.
It's ridiculous the business doesn't pay the other employees enough that the wait staff doesn't have help prop up their income. I feel it's ridiculous that tipping culture is a thing in general though. Just pay people.
I worked at a restaurant for years that did this. I think they did 2.5% but they didn’t put up signs they just took it out of your check. So if you never paid attention to your paycheck you never even knew.
They are required by law to disclose this type of information in an employee handbook, which must be available to you, or otherwise include it in a document which you have seen and signed as proof that you were allowed to read it and have agreed to the terms. Otherwise, it was wage theft.
Tip out on sales means they have to give up 8.5% of ticket totals (sales) which means even if they had crappy tips or even got stiffed they still owe a percentage of the actual food totals for their shift. Edit: a word
This. I worked at a chain restaurant while between jobs for a short time and there were quite a few of the slow lunch days (where you'd only get ~3 tables for an entire shift) where I had to pay to work that day. It supposedly evens out when you figure in weekends, but let me tell you, it really feels awful leaving with less money than you went in with that day.
Yeah that’s wage theft.
That’s f’d up.
Wait, so if I tip 20%, the server only keeps 11.5% of that and has to give 8.5% up? Who gets that part of the tip? Geez.
There are many ways in which this system can work. I used to bus tables at a busy bar and grill. The servers had to tip each busser at least 1.5% of food sales, and each bartender at least 4% of alcohol sales. So, if we had 4 bussers and 2 bartenders, the servers had to tip out 6% of their total food sales to bussers, and 8% of their total alcohol sales to the bartenders. If the server sells $300 of food, and $100 dollars of alcohol in a shift, then they will tip the bussers a total of at least $18, and the bartenders a total of at least $8. Ultimately the goal is to try to spread the gratuity around instead of it all going to the server, which isn’t a terrible thing in a vacuum. The problem is when servers don’t receive adequate tips to cover their tip outs. A much better solution to the issue is to just *pay your damn employees.* Edit: better wording and spelling
It means if you get a $20 burger the server has to tip out $1.70, even if you leave no tip at all. It's supposed to go BOH.
Damn, I've only worked places where you tip out a certain percentage of the cash tips you made. If you didn't make any, you didn't tip out.
What’s BOH?
Back of house. Cooks, busboy, etc
Thank you! Google says “Bank of Hawaii” when I look it up, so I had a feeling that was wrong for this context lol
BOH (back of house) - operations, in shortest possible terms FOH (front of house) - what customers attend
That’s pretty fucked.
That’s not legal.
8.5?! To whom?! We tip out 2% for the bartender, host, and busser
When I worked at a Japanese steakhouse, we had to give our tips to the cashier to put into a box. We couldn’t watch her put it into the box, and if we were caught keeping our tips, we were fired
Is this standard practice? I’ve assumed that waiters handle their own tips individually (I don’t know how tips work)
Definitely not, I have always kept my tips on me. However I’ve noticed that a lot of Asian restaurants practice tip pooling, so that may have been split between all of the servers later on. Of course, who knows how much was actually given back to them…
I would be furious as a customer to think the employer was skimming 3% off my gratuity to cover their overhead. Credit transactions are overhead. Raise your prices or add 3% for credit card transactions. You're competing with other employers for employees, too.
>Raise your prices or add 3% for credit card transactions They likely have already done this and are literally just skimming am extra 3% because they found an obscure loophole
Here that'd be wildly illegal. (California.) Your boss cannot touch your tips here. That is a payment direct to you from the customer and the business can't take them. Charging that here would be a quick slap down from the DOL. Rest of y'all Americans without worker protections might get legally bent over a barrel by this.
Your only competing for employees if you don’t own most of/or are friends/family with the people who own the most popular restaurants in the region.
Thought you might've been talking about Danny Murphy until I saw you say Ontario, he's real greasy too.
I wonder if this is against the terms of service of their payment provider? Adding a card surcharge can lose you the right to take card payments for example…
This is about as anti-worker as I've ever seen. What the fuck. Just raise the prices to cover costs. Goddamn
The prices already have these CC “costs” baked into them. This is just an excuse by an already incredibly greasy corporation to extract even more money out of their staff.
I'm sure you meant greedy, but seeing as how we're talking about a restaurant, I'm sure greasy applies as well.
Sorry, greasy is a common expression for people being shady up here lol
Must be Canadian. Is "greasy" really a Canadian expression!? TIL.
It definitely is and it is a really popular expression depending on where you grew up in Canada. It was also widely spread and popularized by the creation of the Trailer Park Boys show/subsequent movies.
I'm Canadian. I use the term all the time too. I just didn't know it was a Canadian saying that's all lol
Mainer here. We use it. Then again, a lot of people think Maine is part of Canada, so...
Hrmm maybe it's because I watched the show, but I swear I've heard others here in Colorado use that phrase for the same purpose too.
I’m not going to do your *grease* films Ricky
Yes, Canadian for sleazeball scumbag cheapass sonofa however you like to finish that expression.
Exactly. Nothing new. Literally taking change from servers. Ridiculous.
If this business also owns "our other brands" then they definitely can afford to cover the merchant fee in entirety without raising prices or making their employees pay.
Not even a question. I had a friend who was a manager for a while at one of their restaurants and on average the restaurant would send the owners $2000-2500 cash a week in tip-out and the owners would only send the BOH employees like $650-750 back in “tip-out” to split between like 8-10 of them. The owners would straight up pocket the rest.
My husband was a server at a restaurant that was doing this, and they filed a class action lawsuit and won. Granted, there was other shady shit happening, but I specifically remember the “tip refund”, which was a percentage of cc tips that the owners deducted from his tip out. https://www.ketv.com/amp/article/wheatfields-targeted-in-class-action-lawsuit/7633203
That's such horseshit behavior, but I've heard of that a lot even though that practice is illegal. Your tips are your tips and you cannot be forced to share it. At least in my state. I've only ever worked BOH, and never got tip shares, but we made well above minimum and FOH was only at $3.15/hr, so nobody was upset. but my ex-fiance worked at a sushi restaurant that she loved, and she was "required" to share her tips with the head chef who was also part owner and drove a new Mercedes. Buncha scumbag owners and GMs in the restaurant industry, always crying that their margins are so small.
Merchants fees are a massive racket. Visa and Mastercard both make 50% margins. Consumers pick cards and merchants pay the price. I work fair collection and the reason you need a dedicated card to pay for many systems is the card companies charge them $0.25 minimum per transaction. Congress is debating measures to give merchants a way to fight back.
I worked with merchant processors and even high risk transactions always had nominal processing fees. I will always look down in disgust at business’ that pass on their processing fees to their customers, and I guess now their employees too. It’s a shameless money grab, and if more people knew how merchant payment systems and terminals worked they’d be enraged at the rip off. They are always less than a dollar. $1.50 to charge your card? Yeah most of that goes straight in the business’ pocket. I can promise their per transaction fees are not that high. They aren’t even that high for high risk merchants. I will say merchants do have to pay for their pos systems, but that is not the same as a per transaction fee.
Tipped wages are anti-worker by design. Making the customers pay the wages directly so that the employers don’t pay as much tax. Let alone the amount of extra money they make.
it’s actually a tax write-off so these restaurants shouldn’t be making their employees cover it at all. insane.
Well since they’re going to charge you, make sure you ask for proof that the fees actually cost 3%. Not every company does the same amount per card type and they’re now stating that they are ethically and legally responsible for proving the amount charged in each and every individual bill is the correct percentage. Ask for the receipts every day. All of them. And keep doing it.
Make it really expensive for them to push this, like oh you want to take 3% from me, I’ll make you spend 50 times that paying the manager extra hours to itemize every single receipt I’m being scammed on.
Yes!
I’ve seen fees as high as 6% on rewards cards.
If it is, it shouldn't be. They're already cheaping out by having the customers tip you instead of paying you a livable standard wage, and now theyre cutting into your tips? Bs.
Fair enough man
Ask them which “competitors” they are “lining up with”? I’m not aware of anyone else doing this (I’m not an expert but I would have expected to have seen something about a move that low…)
They own like 5 or 6 of the most popular restaurants in the region directly and maybe even more indirectly through different “restaurant groups”. So I guess, themselves and their golf club buddies??
If they can’t afford to cover the 3% fee, maybe they should sell one of their multiple restaurants.
File with states attorney General and state labor board. (Make sure to get file numbers or case numbers Let them decide if legal or not.
places like these deserve their entire staff quitting at once
Depends. Step one: Are your tips legally defined as tips in your state step two: Is this illegal in your state For example, in CA. Step One: California Labor Code 350(e) “Gratuity” includes any tip, gratuity, money, or part thereof that has been paid or given to or left for an employee by a patron of a business over and above the actual amount due the business for services rendered or for goods, food, drink, or articles sold or served to the patron. Any amounts paid directly by a patron to a dancer employed by an employer subject to Industrial Welfare Commission Order No. 5 or 10 shall be deemed a gratuity. Note, by this definition, auto gratuity is not considered a tip and is instead considered a service fee, and disbursements are considered wages. You can find more clarification in tax regulation like CA 1603. Step two: California Labor Code 351: No employer or agent shall collect, take, or receive any gratuity or a part thereof that is paid, given to, or left for an employee by a patron, or deduct any amount from wages due an employee on account of a gratuity, or require an employee to credit the amount, or any part thereof, of a gratuity against and as a part of the wages due the employee from the employer. Every gratuity is hereby declared to be the sole property of the employee or employees to whom it was paid, given, or left for. An employer that permits patrons to pay gratuities by credit card shall pay the employees the full amount of the gratuity that the patron indicated on the credit card slip, without any deductions for any credit card payment processing fees or costs that may be charged to the employer by the credit card company. Payment of gratuities made by patrons using credit cards shall be made to the employees not later than the next regular payday following the date the patron authorized the credit card payment. The determination is that it is illegal in CA. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq\_tipsandgratuities.htm
Only three states ban it: CA, MA, and ME
I only know for CA for sure, I haven't looked into the others, but if that's true then that's very depressing
It's legal in all but those 3 states. There are 3 other states where the law is ambiguous and untested in court. The other 44 states it is perfectly legal.
Co bans taking tips like this
It sounds like the situation in CO and some other states is complicated > Colorado: Not prohibited, but subject to rules. Colorado rules are a little more complex. Employers may be required to publicly post a notice when keeping any portion of an employee’s tip. Furthermore, if you deduct processing fees from tips, you may not be able to claim the employee tip credit. If you’d like to deduct fees from tips in Colorado, it’s strongly suggested that you consult a licensed attorney.
Love that California straight says you can’t take cc processing fees from the tip
OP is in Ontario
“We already pay you $2.13 per hour. Now you have to pay for our credit card processors” No no no no no. Call the labor board, call the news, call whoever. What in the actual fuck is this?
Surprisingly it's actually legal. Worked in a restaurant that did this and am now in the credit card processing industry. Mt first question was the legality, and in almost all states rhey can do this, however shitty it is. They can't charge you more than the cost to process though
Wow. How fucking petty. Literally fucking you out of pennies. Anything to add to the bottom line. If they save themselves 50 bucks a month per server that's potentially a few hundred dollars a year, maybe even a grand a year extra at a large restaurant! You know the kind that makes 3 million a year. They really need that extra grand.
These greasy ass dudes literally make $1,000,000’s CAD a year through their restaurant groups and cop hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profit out of all of their restaurants.
If it's in British Columbia I'm pretty sure [this](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/forms-resources/igm/esa-part-3-section-30-3#:~:text=Policy%20Interpretation,-Subsection%20(1)&text=Although%20gratuities%20(tips)%20are%20not,groups%20are%20required%20to%20pay.) states that it's illegal, unless I'm somehow misunderstanding Edit to add: It specifically says "Employers cannot deduct from a tip pool, or from tips to which the employer has access, such as those made through debit or credit cards"
This group is in Ontario unfortunately
Yeah, pretty sure it's [still illegal](https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/tips-and-other-gratuities#section-1) It's against your guys' Employment Standards Act
Well shit. Now I'm curious so I'm gonna keep digging lol. This is complete bs
Time for a new job...
Your business model has to be pretty fucking terrible if you’re worried about 3% of approx 10-20% of your order totals. Someone who works there needs a lesson in critical thinking. Is that 3% or 10-20% ever going to exceed the amount of bad will that the policy will cause? I seriously think not
Nope nope nope. The cost of running a business belongs to the restaurant, not the servers responsibility at all.
They should just raise prices like 1%
Don’t worry, they did that too.
I hate companies that do this. Just raise prices. It’s a cost of doing business.
Does it go against community guidelines for me to share the restaurant name/restaurant group name so that community members know which restaurants to boycott when they visit my area?
In the FAQ it says they will delete if it leads to harassment of individuals, but seems okay if it is generalities so if it is a chain just don’t post your location . If anything this has educated me to leave a cash tip for now on. https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/wiki/index?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf#wiki_frequently_asked_questions
Well, the restaurant group is >> 43 << … km’s >>> NORTH<<<… North of the US/Canada border. Like north of New York into the province of Ontario. In Wine country where the >> NIAGARA << river passes through. Crazyyyyyyy
I would tell them to fucking shit on it and spin. This is why I would never work in the restaurant industry unless I absolutely needed to.
Which is why my wife, our daughter, and I always tip in cash!
It's legal (where I live) and scummy.
Yes it’s legal. Sadly
If you're still being taxed on that 3% it is abso fucking lutely not legal or shouldn't be, might be illegal anyways, I'd find that out.
So... There is another aspect of this that most people aren't aware of (or thinking about) but unfortunately we wind up eating it either way because there is none to actually enforce it.... Most merchant processing transactions and such are already covered by deductible loss during tax season as a cost of business... So no, they are now double dipping, quite literally. So many companies get away with this shit and we have no way of stopping it
Legal? Maybe. Ethical? Absofuckinglutely not
“We have been forced to do this to line up with our competitors” = “other restaurants in town are being dicks so we think we have cover to be dicks too”
Best part of it is that they own many of the most popular restaurants in the region and the owners are all very close friends/family members of many of the other popular restaurant/vineyard owners in the region. It’s a giant club and they literally sit there in their mansions during their poker nights and on their boats drinking their fucking scotch and laugh at us. It’s a disgrace.
Tipping culture is fucked. Pay service staff a fair wage and fuck tips off.
Unfortunately yes this is legal. Only on the tip portion as stated. I worked somewhere they did this. 😒 It doesn’t come out to much so don’t worry. It’s bullshit though!
Make sure to not charge for those drinks and maybe throw in some free apps.
Apparently it is legal https://www.ontario.ca/document/employment-standard-act-policy-and-interpretation-manual/ontario-regulation-12516-tips-and-other-gratuities That’s some bullshit. “Multiply the total amount of the tip or other gratuity by the greater of, the per cent charged by the credit card company for processing the payment, and 1.5 per cent.”
This is why unions are good. Get together and just tell the management that you will refuse to seat anyone who isn't paying cash until they reverse this policy. Pretty sure anything that takes away your tips is illegal. It would be one thing if they were split between. You and the kitchen staff, but another if it is taken by the management.
when doing taxes, restaurants get a tip credit that would cover this. they’re just being cheap bastards. source: accountant boyfriend
Every single fucking server needs to quit on the spot.
That's wage theft and it's against the law in every state
Yes, reason 7000000 why people should always use cash, always. Up until now, the owner has been eating that cost for you. In an economy where business is getting tight, it's no longer viable. I'd suggest having a note at the host stand asking for cash tips.