With the exception of a few months of fast food service in HS, I have zero experience or knowldege as to service industry standards, managment or procedures. My biased view is that paying less than minimum wage is criminal, but it has been a standard that was set long before my time that continues today. So waiters, waitresses, hairdressers, barbers, bartenders, etc. all are allowed to be pd. an hrly wage that is far less than minimum with the understanding that it is augmented by the tips they recieve for their service. (Not really critical to the question, but I tip >20% for good service and a minimum of 15% believeing that it is necessary to even make it fair to the people working for less than minimum wage to begin with.
My question is, "How do tips get distributed?"
Again, in full admission of my ignorance, I thought that it I left a $20 tip for a waitress, she got $20. In some cases, I thought they collected them in a "pot" and split them evenly or based on some percentage among the workers to make sure the bus boys, hostesses, etc. were all included. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that only a small %age gone to the employees and a much larger %age went to the manager!?! I would have assumed the manager was a salaried employee?
I have recently became "aware" of the procedures for tip distribution at a local resteraunt that I frequent and quite honestly it makes me sick! But before I go overboard in my assessment, I figured it was better to ask people that work in the service industry about their experiences before I cast judgement. What I think is flat out theivery, may very well be commonplace? In this case, a $20 tip is distributed as follows; 0-25% to the server, ($2/hr to the hostess + $2/hr bus = these are max values regradless of the actual $$ of tips within a given night or hour) and the balance to the manager!?! So if I was the ONLY patron in a resteraunt for an hour and left a $20 tip, and the server was "experienced enough" to max out at 25%, the distribution of that $20 would be:
$2.50 = server
$2.00 max = hostess
$2.00 max = bus
$13.50 min = manager
Is this typical? My initial reaction when I heard this was to never go back! Then it was to go back and ask for a manager and have them explain the distribution of the tip to me! Then insist that the manager be my waiter for the rest of the night as they are recieving the bulk of the tip! Ignorance is bliss and I may have just been stumbling through life ignorant? Can others shed some light on their experiences and procedures? If this is the exception, I have no problem exposing the name of the resteraunt!