A woman I knew opened a bar/restaurant this past December. We weren’t great friends but I have known her forever.
Anyway, when she opened I picked up a few shifts.
So last night this table comes in. It was 3 women and one of them owned a website that basically features best restaurant, hotels, best things to do, etc in my city.
So the owner sat with them for a while. At the end, the owner comes up to me and says “Don’t give them a check”
So they ask me for a check and I told them there wasn’t one. The website lady said “Are you serious? Then you are getting a nice tip!”
So anyway, their check would have been like $64 and she gave me a $60 tip (she didnt know how much her bill was).
So a few minutes later the owner was like “How much did they give you” and I told her and she said “ok, I want part of that to help offset the check. I don’t want to have to eat that whole thing”
So she basically made me give up $30 of my $60 to pay for the check.
Besides being in complete shock, I am still trying to rationalize this by thinking- well, I probably wouldn’t have gotten a $60 tip if I had presented the table with a check. But even still, I think what she did was completely wrong….
If she said not to give them a check, you should have gotten to keep your tip. The woman who ate there gave you that much because she thought you got to keep all of it.
Your boss is a jerk for doing that. If she didn’t want to eat the cost of the meal, she shouldn’t have made the guest think she was footing the bill!
Umm.. I would have NEVER given her any money, if she did not want to take the hit on food cost then she should have given them the god damn check! I would have said NO because YOU DID YOU JOB! it’s not your problem she did not want them to pay at the time.. and next time ANYBODY ask;s you just say “Enough” and leave it at that.
Your manager may have broken the law in requiring you to give her the $30 portion of the tip on the comped check, as tipped employees aren’t required by law to arbitrarily split tips on an one individual table at a manager’s discretion.
What really sucks about this is that assuming a 30% food cost on the $64 tab, the total cost to the restaurant was likely only around $19 or $20, thus the manager actually made a $10 profit while still being able to write off the full amount of the tab as a marketing expense…you’ve been had on this deal.
I’m mad you let your manager scam you!
That sucks so hard! She offerred to comp them…asking for $ after the fact was going back on her word! Plus it’s HER business that will benefit from a good review- it won’t help you any -so of course it should be HER investment to comp the reviewer! Her greed will destroy morale among the staff and cost her in the long run.
It is amazing to me how low some people will go. That owner is lower than dirt and it will come back to her.
I would not have given her shit. My money. My work on that table. You are the owner and can obviously afford this “write off”.
It’s way too late for this to be helpful except in future situations. It’s illegal for salaried employees to take part in tipshare. Illegal. Also, even if they had walked out on their bill, instead of having it comp’ed, it is illegal in quite a few states for the server to pay for the walkout. As the restaurant took care of the bill, you are in no way liable for that money.
I’m happy to see that people are still outraged and posting on this one. It’s simply outrageous that an owner would believe this is even remotely acceptable, let alone legal. I hope you havn’t had any more extortion episodes like this.
Wow, the owner is a bitch for doing that to you. I hope she hasn’t tried it again, with you or anyone else.
There is a little thing called the Racketeering Law that denies an owner of a restaurant to expect a server to share, turn over , or give up any money that is freely given by a member of the public in the name of gratuity. That’s why no owner or manager of a foodservice place is allowed to threaten employees with loss of wages. Kickbacks are ILLEGAL!