Is this bullshit my restaurant is pulling now legal or can I sue them?

Not that it's not a drag, but I don't see anything even vaguely questionable here, in terms of law.

you should be happy to tip out the busboys. they do most of the work for you, afterall, and get way less money. the hostess, on the other hand...

A more stable scheme like this could actually result in better service across the board. But if you're paying for help that isn't there that's BS.

As far as I know, it's almost always perfectly legal, so long as you still end up making more than minimum wage over the course of your shift.

This is ridiculous. With large parties, people see gratuity added on so they just think oh ok, he has his tip, and that is that. Although I'm just getting a little over 10%. Tell me where in this country a 10% tip is acceptable? And what's the other option, telling the customer, hey, just so you know, the gratuity is tiny, so um, I mean, as of right now I'm hardly getting any money. Just keep that in mind, thanx!

That is my point exactly.

Tipping out people who aren't there though and reducing the gratuity from 18% to 15%, yeah, that's worth being pissed about.

I had one big table in my section and two smaller ones. A ~15 top was coming in, so they reserved my big table and one smaller one to put the party at. Now keep in mind, we don't have reservations. But they put menus on the tables and waited for this party to get there for about an hour and a half, right in the middle of the rush. So while everybody else had full sections, I just had one small table I was serving. When the big party finally got there and ordered after keeping me waiting about 2 hours, they then stayed about 3 hours. They were there the ENTIRE night. They were basically my only table. And then I only had the ~10% gratuity from them? That's fucking bullshit. I made less than half of what I should have made last night because the management fucked me by:

1. Taking 1 table out of my section earlier in the night -- it was supposed to be a 4 table section, but they gave one to someone else.
2. Reserving my section forever, counter to actual restaurant policy.
3. Lowering the gratuity.

The place I live in is terrible for restaurants, but I'm going to start looking for another job now.

that's lame. any crowded restaurant should have an "if you're not there at your specified time, please enjoy the wendy's across the street" policy.

Almost every one I've dealt with had a tip-out of 3-5%, but they were run so that you still made decent money averaging 10-12%. Either you had a high enough PPA to make up for it, or you had enough turnaround so you didn't care. And they didn't begin to put together big tops until every member of the party was there and ready.

It's really messed up that people's livelihoods are predicated on tipping. How did we as a society get to this point?

My cousin worked at a GREAT restaurant in New Orleans for years, and loved it. It was an independant restaurant.

It came under new management, and became not as cool, so she left and was stuck with corporate places, which, as a rule, suck ass. They have a large amount of people to pay up to. Look for indie places - they treat their people SO much better, do a better job of promoting the organically positive aspects of the service industry (having people as guests, allowing personal touches by the staff, etc.), and don't have an un-negotiable pay scale.

I often miss the waitstaff lifestyle. It can be a ton of fun if you find the right place.

OTM on the anti-corportate sentiment. Even smaller corporate groups instill an ugly set of feelings on what otherwise can be a cool job.

OTM on the anti-corportate sentiment. Even smaller corporate groups instill an ugly set of feelings on what otherwise can be a cool job

The restaurant was like this. Everything was nice and fine, except the kitchen was pretty unorganized and had a lot of problems. Not so bad that the restaurant ran incredibly badly, but it was pretty common to get overly long ticket times and stuff. A new manager came in, this bastard named Nate. And he was all, Ok, I am going to fix this restaurant and make it run so much better! Now, what was stable is now completely unstable and run like shit. Today I had a talk with him about how badly I was fucked over last night and how upset I was about it.

And re, some post above, yes, I still made minimum wage, so I can't ask for more money. But yes, this restaurant is run shitty. I am going to start looking for a new restaurant, but this part of Charlotte (near the university) is bad. All the nice restaurants with good clientele, where you can actually make a good amount of money, are a pretty good distance, and I'm not excited about the prospect of driving half an hour to work every day. My restaurant is one of the most popular ones in this part of town. Any other one will get the same undesirable clientele, but less of them, and most likely better management. The only way to really get ahead here would be a long drive to another side of town, so I'm not exactly sure the best way to handle this.

This is only my second restaurant job. My first one was as un-corporate as you can possibly get. It was a tiny Jamaican place, only ten tables in the whole restaurant, run by this crazy old Jamaican lady. She cooked all the food and did all the management-related stuff. Problem was that she was crazy and had terrible eye sight and refused to buy eye glasses. Basically I was a manger there, although I wasn't paid for it, but I had so many responsibilities it was terrible. One day the electricity was actually shut off since she hadn't been paying the bill. I was in charge then of writing the check for her and calling the electricity company and getting it sorted out since she was too old/crazy/whatever to handle it herself. That type of thing was a common occurance. Here's another scenario:

Addie: How much he [customer] pay for de curry goat?

Me: $12

Addie: $12? No, no! No! You must charge $15! He must pay you $15!

Me: The menu says $12. That's what we've been charging the entire 3 months I've worked here.

Addie: No! De menu say dat? No, that is too cheap, man! He must give you $15!

Oh my god. As you can imagine it was a terrible experience. So coming to this new corporate restaurant was a breath of fresh air. I could go into work, expect things to happen as they should, only worry about my job, make my money, and then leave. Now those things are obviously changing though, but christ. I guess I need something in the middle. At first the corporate nature of it was very attractive, coming from my Jamaican hellhole, but I am strongly desiring a little mom 'n pop place now.