I work in a hotel doing catering, a little while ago we finally got a new assistant catering manager (ACM for short) after the current catering manager (CM) finally got sick of doing the work of 2 people, for the pay of 1 (more like .75 but I digress). As such we've (as in mostly the new ACM and myself) been cleaning the rooms out that we were using for storage during Covid in order to nearly double the available rooms to use for catering. The ACM got real excited about the prospect of having every possible room full (there's about 10 rooms in total, although they all vary in size) and when I replied that I didn't really care if we had 1 room rented or all since I get paid the same wage regardless because our grats are capped she replied that the reason for the flat rate is “to offset the days were the room rental is the only thing being charged.” She also gave me a look, like I'm supposed to give a single shit if the hotel makes more money. This is complete bs since if there'a nothing to setup, clear, teardown, or clean, I (the only porter most days) don't have hours until there is or I am needed as a server for catering. I've seen the catering bills and even for an event with 5 people who just have coffee, tea, and a tiny lunch, the grats are nearly enough to cover my grats for 2 full days so where's the money really going? (Spoiler: right into the owner's pockets, after putting just enough aside for the days where I'm by myself just cleaning).
If I was getting a flatrate for grats for days where I'm just doing portering or where the grats are legitimately not enough I wouldn't mind but there are days where I'm catering 2 or 3 rooms each with breakfast and/or lunch plus doing portering and I get paid the same. She keeps peddling this bs about how it all works out in the end, but I've done the math and I'd be making an average of $3-$5 more per hour if they uncapped my grats.
I enjoy the job, the hours are good, the location is close to where I live, I get fed when there are events, the cash tips we get from some events (especially a fairly regular event we have) are decent, the benefits are decent, and I like my immediate managers and coworkers but man am I tired of coming in and juggling 20 things for the same pay as the days where I'm just doing a few things. I've mentioned it to both the ACM and the CM but they just peddle the same bs as always. We only recently got them to give us a flatrate for grats for the days where it was just setup (previously we just got minimum wage) or where the client wasn't charged a room rental (we have a few regular events where the fee gets waived) so things may get better.
TLDR: ACM doesn't understand why I (an hourly worker) don't care if we cater 1 event or 10 in a day because it's the same pay for very different amounts of work.