Im a server at a restaurant that allows you to creat your own bowl of food from a line if you’d like. You don’t have to. You can order a chef made bowl if you’d like but most prefer making their own.
There are people that work on the line who change out the food tins when they are almost empty to keep it stocked. They also put together our chef made bowls if they’re ordered but I typically only have 1-2 people per shift order a chefs bowl most of the time I can go a whole shift without anyone ordering one.
Anyways we have to tip these people out. Like we tip them out a higher percentage than our hosts. It’s a percentage of your sales. So if you sell $700 worth of food but get tipped shitty the whole night you could end up tipping them out 10% of your money. Ive had this happen before on a slow night but with big tables – high sales because of the big tables but a semi low tip.
When I approached our gm about this I was told that they help us by replacing food in the line and the company gets away with it because the line people are supposed to be interacting with every guest and answering any questions they may have while up there- our line employees don’t speak English so we servers have to go up there and do it. I also explained to the gm that them replacing food in the line is not something they do directly for us servers but for the company because that’s how the company wanted to set up their restaurant so I do not feel like we should need to tip them out. The other servers feel the same (I’ve known this gm for 3 years as friends before working at this restaurant that why I felt I could speak to him about this). He then explained that the line people do not even make minimum wage and that they use our tips to bridge the gap so that they’re getting paid enough. The fact that they get a higher percentage than hosts make me feel like they’re getting paid less than hosts. Hosts make 6.50 plus tip out.
Is this even legal? They don’t work directly for/with us yet we have to tip them out. I’m in Texas for reference. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Also this is a corporate place so my gm doesn’t get final say on who we tip out so don’t hate on him too much.