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Antiwork

My boss posted a message in the group chat with all service staff threatening to withhold money from the tips we get.

By way of context; I work part time at a local restaurant to help finance my life while I study. I'd say about 60 employees in total work there. A lot of main staff members have resigned recently to move on to other jobs. Now I'm not in the loop on all the specifics behind the scenes, but it's kind of obvious that management has been struggling to make ends meet lately due to being forced to close because of the pandemic as well as a lot of experienced employees leaving. Pretty much everyone within the company makes minimum wage or close to it. Here's a loose – the original message was full of grammatical errors that I've tried to fix – but accurate translation of the message the owner of the restaurant shared with our staff today: “Just to inform everyone; this is what a new black cap for…


By way of context; I work part time at a local restaurant to help finance my life while I study. I'd say about 60 employees in total work there. A lot of main staff members have resigned recently to move on to other jobs. Now I'm not in the loop on all the specifics behind the scenes, but it's kind of obvious that management has been struggling to make ends meet lately due to being forced to close because of the pandemic as well as a lot of experienced employees leaving. Pretty much everyone within the company makes minimum wage or close to it.

Here's a loose – the original message was full of grammatical errors that I've tried to fix – but accurate translation of the message the owner of the restaurant shared with our staff today:

“Just to inform everyone; this is what a new black cap for the steam tap on the coffee machine costs. Very sad and a wasteful expense if you ask me.”

They shared an invoice they received from the company they ordered this new cap from. Apparently, the old one got lost during cleaning or something like that. Again, for context, the costs came down to €25, including shipping. The message continued:

“I'm going to make lists with the purchase prices of the stuff we use on a daily basis, and therefore have to replace when it breaks. I think that way too much breaks down, disappears, etc. Starting now, we will be keeping track of the expenses we make on stuff that gets broken or lost in order to get a concrete overview of how deep this problem runs. If it goes too far, I will compensate by withholding money from the tip jar. So make sure that things are handled neatly and carefully.”

Now to me, this is just a totally shitty way of dealing with the issue at hand.

First of all, the whole point of giving tips is that that money goes directly to the staff, not to the company they work for. Being a restaurant, payment is shitty in the first place, which tips are supposed to slightly compensate for. Though, luckily, in the country I live in, living off of tips is not as ubiquitous as it is in some places in America, for example. Nevertheless, stuff gets broken or lost all the time, that's just the nature of the business and should be accounted for in the overall finance scheme, not retroactively deducted from money that is supposed to go to the staff.

Secondly, of course there are situations where misconduct on the part of the staff causes damages in some way shape or form. That's an excuse to talk through that issue with them, or even with the staff in general, by organizing some kind of team meeting to adress the issue and promote careful usage of all equipment on site. But there is no mention of that at all. Instead they seem to think that threatening to take money that is meant for all staff will stop employees from breaking stuff.

I don't know, what do you think about it? What would you do in the situation? Normally speaking I would probably respond in private messages in order to have them set up such a meeting, while stressing that I don't see how their threat would solve the issue of 'unneccesary cost making' during tough times. However, I am already considering to resign and look for another, better paying job, so I don't really feel incentivized to do so.

Edit: spelling.

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