Where Your Tip Money Really Goes: The Hidden Abuse of Restaurant Employees

Everyday people come into restaurants who are a special type of ignorant person who has never had to work in the restaurant industry. Merely tipping the socially acceptable 15% (although most people with any amount of class agree that 20% is the new 15%) does not mean that you can rest easy at night thinking you have given that cute girl a heads up on her college tuition or student loan payments. Sure, some of your money made it into his or her apron pocket at the end of the evening, but about half of it was siphoned out along the way. So, where does your tip money go?

People who have never worked in a restaurant simply do not realize that most servers support not only themselves, but the vast majority of the front of the house staff based on their tips due to a practice known as "tipping out". Servers are often required by management to share up to 50% of their tips with the bartenders, bussers, food runners, and host staff. In most places, the amount a server must tip out is determined based on the server's net sales, not the gratuity left by the "guests" of the restaurant. So if a server received no tip or a poor tip on a $100 check but was required to tip out 5% of their sales to support staff, a server just paid the restaurant $5 to wait on the table. Additionally, servers are required to declare their income based on their sales, so routinely being stiffed by customer patrons results in servers being forced to pay taxes on money they never made and/or had to tip out to someone else.

Last, but certainly not least, some the money you left as a tip made into the hands of the restaurant itself, because requiring their servers to pay half of their employees isn’t enough. Mandatory uniform, meal plan and supply deductions and other pointless charges such as credit card transaction fees are taken from the server. Therefore, if you left your server $15 on a $100 check, understand that if they are lucky, they are ending up about $9 richer. So, Mr. Smug-Fifteen-Percenter, keep that in mind next time you sign your credit card slip.

In any other occupation, it would be illegal for to not pay an employee for their services, or to require the employees to pay to work. In the restaurant industry, it is de rigueur. If a contractor came to do repairs to a person's home and the person decided simply to pay only half the typical amount or not pay at all, every court of law would rule in the contractor's favor. The contractor would well be within their rights to confront the homeowner, and the contractor's supervisor, if one existed, would most definitely require the homeowner to pay for some part of the services.

This forced financial helplessness based on the whims of others is such a way of life for servers that they begin to get cutthroat and bitter towards their coworkers, stealing tables, trading favors for sections, even stealing unattended cash tips inadvertently laying in plain sight.

Adding to the emotional stress of restaurant workers is the often complex inability to confront those persons doing the abusing and manipulating, from customers to coworkers and managers. In the restaurant industry, questioning the amount of gratuity left by a customer is almost always grounds for dismissal, and management rarely sides with the server for any reason. If a customer skips out on the bill it is even worse for the server. Although in most states servers are not required by law to pay the bill out of their own money, they will pay in terms of incurring management wrath.

In addition to unstable finances, the fickle favor of restaurant management renders the servers powerless to reduce their stress level. Sexual harassment and drug use are rampant in restaurants and whistle-blowing or confrontation leads to unfair scheduling, longer ticket times on food, and ill-will from coworkers who wish to remain in the good graces of supervisors. Restaurant managers almost single-handedly have the ability to directly impact and manipulate a servers financial status in a completely unethical yet procedurally legal manner. Servers must choose either to up with the abuse or become poor and unpopular. Having worked in several restaurants while in school, I have spent time in both camps, and neither is a calm place to be.

Restaurant employees, almost without exception, encounter stress, trauma, instability, anxiety and attack while on the job as routinely as cubicle workers receive phone calls, faxes, check e-mail and make copy. The borderline financial stability and poor benefits offered by most companies do not allow workers to receive any mental health support or crisis intervention services, and thus many servers and other restaurant workers attempt to cope with these stressors using a variety of less-than-adaptive self-medicating techniques. Occasionally, however, the creative talents of the downtrodden employees prevails over corporate control and truly amazing things happen, such as the first ever 2009 Annual Apron Burning, which will be the subject of my next post, complete with photographs, so stay tuned!