Quote:
Originally Posted by redwitch
Sadly, standard policy in most restaurants is that the server is responsible for paying for the check. Was this way when I served in college, hasn’t changed. The restaurant does not eat the bill. To make matters worse, if a server confronts a customer obviously leaving without paying, it is an automatic dismissal for the server. Many also have the policy that if a server has three walkouts in a 12-month period, it is an automatic termination. This happened to my daughter at Olive Garden and she’d been with them over 6 years!
More than once I’ve paid someone’s bill so the server wouldn’t have to. It is truly one of the more vile things a person can do, in my book.
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There has to be a whole lot of documentation to make a server pay for a walkout. It's not at all like it was back in the day.
After A Dine-And-Dash, Is It Legal For A Restaurant To Take Money From A Waiter's Tips?
A rep for the Division explained that, according to Sec. 203(m) of the Fair Labor Standards Act [PDF], tips are to be fully retained by the employee, except in those cases where there is a valid tipping pool shared by multiple employees.
“Beyond that, tips are the property of the employee and an employer cannot require an employee to turn over any portion of them to the restaurant,” explains the rep.
So if, as per the example situation we presented, the waiter depends on his tips to meet the minimum wage, his employer can not deduct anything from his wages or tips?
“In the situation you give, there would be a violation,” says the Labor Dept. rep. “Since the employer is claiming a tip credit, the server is in effect a minimum wage employee and
any deduction from wages would result in a violation.”