My company is ruling out a new training system that once you finish, you get $2 dollar raise. Sounds great right? The catch is that our base wage is $11 – $12 USD and we have a “living wage” system in place that ends up taking tips from the entire staff and splits it among everyone based on a percentage depending on your role at the restaurant. This equals to about $20 an hour for the lower roles and if we make anything below $20 the company will make up the difference but the catch is that since the base wage is the one getting a raise, we’re still going to see the exact same amount of money on our checks. They’re only going to be meeting the base of $20 so we’re essentially not going to be seeing the raise at all.
I brought this up to three different managers and the conversations went similar to this:
Op: “But if we always make $20 an hour if we don’t make enough with tips, then where am I seeing those extra two dollars?”
M: “Well, if we average out anything above $20 worth of tips you guys get that difference and that’s when you’ll see it”
Op: “But that’s literally the system that’s in place right now, and we don’t always make more than $20 after tips so where am I going to see that raise?”
M: “Well there will just be times where you won’t get that extra money”
Like what??????? How does that make any sense at all? You’re giving us a raise but not actually giving us more money???? Someone please make it make sense!