Customer at a Michigan restaurant tipped his server $10,000 (he was in town for a friend’s funeral and left it in memory of said friend).
Server shared the tip with other front-of-house staff working that shift (per customer’s request).
Some controversy ensued about which I’m unclear due to conflicting reporting. Some indicates that she received complaints from other staff who did not share in the generous tip (e.g., servers on other shifts?), which she reported to management. Management demanded she disclose who complained. She refused so they fired her. Other reporting indicates that management was concerned that her social media posts on the controversy adversely affected the restaurant’s reputation.
It appears the restaurant is now getting review bombed online over the controversy and the parties are threating litigation. The server was to my knowledge an at-will employee, so not sure she has a strong case. The restaurant allegedly accused her of defamation online, but if her posts were truthful, not much of a case there either.
In addition to general observations on the situation, I’m curious, especially among those who have worked in the restaurant industry: Is there a “right” or best way to leave a generous tip for a server and ensure they keep it or that it’s fairly distributed with minimal controversy? And if a restaurant pools tips, is there a way to ensure just the server who went above and beyond is rewarded?
Or is this just a “no good deed goes unpunished” situation that’s best avoided?
From what I gather from the article is the waitress distributed the tip as she wanted to with no interference or guidance from management. And management had no problem with that.
After that apparently some other employees left out of the tip became crabby and workplace gossip and animosity started to spread.
The waitress then goes to management asking them to do something about the ugly gossip going around about her.
Management agrees and asks for either the source or spreader of the gossip.
Waitress then goes into the “I don’t want to snitch on anybody specific, I just want you to make everyone stop it” mode.
Management replies with “We kind of need specifics. We can’t just reprimand everyone on your behalf.”
Waitress gets peeved and starts bad mouthing management on social media.
Management says “good bye.”
I always give tips in cash if at all possible, even if I’m paying the bill with a credit card. Not so they can avoid pooling the tip, though they could if they wanted to, I suppose. Also, not that I’m encouraging them to report less of their tip money as taxable income.
I just figure, they work hard at a largely thankless job for what money and tips they earn, so I’ll give them as much control over their tip money as they are able to have.
If the restaurant has mandatory tip pooling as a practice, this may be impossible.
I have two friends in the restaurant business (one has 3 restaurants, one has over a dozen though some of those are smaller coffee/tea/bakery places). The bakery/cafe places all pool tips by necessity, there is a tip jar and a joint register and no one knows who served the customer who left a tip. The table service restaurants do not have mandatory tip pools, though the individual servers may hand a $10 or $20 bill to the bus person at the end of a shift. The host may get a $5 from each server (so maybe $35-50 on a busy night, $20 on a lunch shift). The bussers and host are paid at least minimum wage ($15) and mostly more than that because there is competition for minimum wage workers who are reliable and presentable.
There have been numerous incidents they’ve related to me about tips of $1000 or more, a couple of times even $5000. Almost all of which were to waitresses in full service restaurants by well known people (big businessmen who for e.g. own big 4 sports franchises or actors who are from here originally). One was to a bartender.
There is always some pressure on the recipient of the tip to share the largesse with other people. So instead of giving $20 to the busser/food carrier, people might suggest that a $50 might be more appropriate. But it’s mostly handled by social pressure. The owners/managers (all the managers are family members of the owners) don’t get involved because in Massachusetts the state gets pretty aggressive about triple-damages for wage theft and they’ve had their hand slapped pretty sharply before.
Yeah, that was a bad choice. But her first big mistake was sharing with servers and not kitchen staff. Front-of-house has to treat back-of-house well, that’s restauranting 101.
I said that preventing tip pooling was NOT the reason why I choose to give cash tips. I have no problem with tip pooling in general terms, as long as it’s fairly distributed.
My reason for giving cash tips is simply, if I add a tip to a credit card bill, I figure the tip is in the hands of the restaurant management to disburse as they see fit. If I give a cash tip, I’m (more likely, at least) leaving the disbursement in the control of the server, and I have more confidence that the server will properly disburse it than management would.
I used to handle employee relations issues at work, and I always hated it when an employee came in with a complaint but either didn’t want to share names or specifically asked me not to talk to anyone. If you won’t tell me who is involved or want me to talk to anyone just what do you think I can do?
My company tends to err on the side of caution when it comes to posting about work online. Employees do have a right to complain about work related issues such as pay or working conditions. There’s kind of a tightrope you need to walk to make sure terminating the employee won’t bite you in the butt later.
Back when I was a busser then a server (several decades ago), servers tipped out a percentage of their tips - so any largess was handled appropriately.
@Hampshire and @DCnDC - I agree that sounds about right. To be fair, though, one nuance appears to be the server didn’t want to snitch because her source was friendly to her and just informing on the ugly gossip. That is, she didn’t want to out someone who arguably wasn’t part of the problem (from her perspective).
Good idea. I may start doing the same.
I agree. Evil and stupid. Seriously, who thinks it’s a good idea to respond to an employee’s social media activity by making nasty threats that are likely to just end up on said employee’s social media page(s)? Especially a business that relies on reputation and good will with its customers.
Have dealt with similar issues for clients and it is indeed frustrating.