[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Bartenders in restaurants that have bars where patrons can sit, earn their tips at the bar. They aren't tipped out, here in the Villages. It's just not how it works. They get paid better than waiters.

Kitchen help get paid minimum wage, which is $11/hour at the moment. Wait staff gets paid $7.98/hour and RELY on tips to make up the difference. If their tips are pooled and split among kitchen staff, bartenders, and hosts, then those kitchen staff could theoretically be earning significantly more than the wait staff, after the tips are split.

That isn't how it works everywhere, and it definitely isn't how it worked at the places I've been on wait staff or as a bartender. Wait staff works their butts off, the customers THINK that the tips are going to the wait staff, but in actuality they only get a piece of the tip.

If a waiter gets tipped $10 for a $50 meal - and there are 10 employees working during that shift, then that means the waiter earned $1 out of their customer's tip for themselves. If the other waiter had half as many tips, then the one who EARNED more will lose out when it's time for their share of their tips.

Pooling tips to "make up" for a minimum wage benefits only the management. It hurts the employees.

And that is why there is such a huge turnover. A waiter who EARNED $100 in tips that day, might only see a total of $40 when everyone else's tips are split among themselves, and the people who don't get tipped at all BECAUSE THEY ALREADY GET PAID A HIGHER WAGE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Pooling tips can only be done among tipped employees. It is illegal to require tipped employees to share their tip income with the kitchen staff, hosts, or management, who are not tipped employees. Federal law says that a tip is the property of the tipped employee and no one else.