Ok so I'm a shift manager for a small fast-casual restaurant with 2 locations and a main kitchen. The chain of command as relevant here basically goes Owner -> District Manager (manages kitchen and both restaurants, but doesn't actually work in the restaurants 99% of the time) -> Store Manager (does actually serve customers sometimes and I believe is also hourly)-> Shift Manager -> regular employees. The staff is pretty small since we're a tiny restaurant that isn't very busy and doesn't require a lot of labor to operate. So there's basically me who does most of the PM shifts, the other shift manager who does most of the AM shifts, our store manager who fills in our off days and generally works in the AM, and like 5 regular employees.
One of the employees only works once a week, and they were concerned about how few tips they were receiving. Credit tips for the day aren't something made available to the employees, but since I run the PM shift, I close the register and submit and sign off on sales totals to my manager each night so I know the total tips for 5 days out of the week, and happen to be able to see the totals for one other day as well. This coworker voiced their concern to me, so we ran a test by taking the Total tips from the day they worked, dividing by the number of employees that day, and comparing that to the tip check they received. The number we got was nearly double what they actually received. So they approached our store manager, who's fairly new and apparently had no idea how tips were split. Store Manager then asked District Manager how tips are split, whose answer was apparently that they are split by a percentage based on how many hours are worked that week. I took that to mean that to mean they are distributed by taking someone's hours for the week, dividing that by the Total labor hours, and then multiplying by the Total tips for the week. So I ran the numbers again with that in mind and comparing to my and their tip checks, and the numbers were still off by 40%. So it seems like to me that whether through intent or an accounting fuck up, either the District Manager or the Owner (who is an absolute POS who doesn't care about their employees) is taking 40% of the tip pool. I can't think of any other reason for our tips to be short so much.
So I'm not sure what to do here exactly. The Store Manager is no help as they're just trying to keep his job and would forward anything straight to the District Manager, who could be part of the problem. Do I have enough grounds here to warrant a Dwelcomes. A labor lawyer? I'm in Texas btw. Should I try to push further first by asking if the District Manager receives part of tips and hoping they admit to it? Any advice welcomed.
There's also no OSHA or labor law posters anywhere in the store, which I assumed were mandatory since every other restaurant I've worked has had them up.