I didn't last long as a waitress as I quickly found out how allergic I was to random food stuffs- like breathing it in. So didn't think of this connection until reading how rampant tip stealing is.
I once worked in an academic healthcare office. So – a hospital but also a school, so there were a bunch of us admin together who did the scheduling for faculty, or had other duties like running the educational programs or research programs on the admin side. I was warned that the school doesn't do Christmas bonuses, and that the manager stopped allowing them between the assistants and who they worked for privately. Instead, she told the doctors to give her the money they would be giving their assistants and then divvied it up into envelopes ranging from 1-50$ or so, and had people pick them from a bucket.
It was unfair, she told me, that management never got bonuses from the doctors so this way she and the other managers or assistant managers could also get a Christmas bonus. All the doctors hated it, but never told her 'no' (as I found out later, she was a spousal hire and her husband high up.) and some would sometimes slip extra to their assistants.
I found it so incredibly demeaning and inappropriate. The fact that she so blatantly said it's because she wanted them to give her money, then to make us choose envelopes she herself stuffed instead of letting us get our christmas presents/money from those who we worked for – not to mention at the time there was a pay freeze for admin assistants, but as 'essential personnel' her level and above could approve raises for themselves and she did so liberally. Now I wonder if beyond breaking ethical laws, there was more to it. Probably not as it was technically voluntary. I didn't last the year there, and refused to choose an envelope and play her game, telling her to give mine to the person retiring instead. That gave them an extra dollar. But still, that entitlement gets to me.