I’ve been in the restaurant/bar industry for a long time, and in my experience tip outs are pretty standard. Servers and bartenders pay a portion of their tips to the food runners, barbacks, etc, the amount is based on a percentage of our food/liquor sales, and it’s automatically deducted from our tips on our end-of-shift report.
I currently bartend at a huge venue, it’s part of a multi-billion dollar corporation. Lately my venue has been short on barbacks, and a few days last week I didn’t have one at all, which meant that I had to fulfill the barback duties in addition to my own. Later I did my shift report and noticed that the barback tip out (equal to 2% of my total liquor sales) was deducted from my tips, so I asked why I had to pay it, and my manager told me it’s always deducted whether there’s a barback or not. I pointed out that barbacks are only paid the tip outs from shifts they work— so who gets the tipout for that shift if nobody worked it? He said “No one”, and I argued that I shouldn’t have to tip out no one, and especially for work that I did. So basically I’m paying the corporation to take on two workloads??
He agreed it wasn’t fair but just said “It’s policy”. I asked him if no one was getting my tip out, then where exactly does that money go? and he said “Nobody knows— I asked the DM once and he had no idea.” It’s not paid to any other person or position or shift, and it’s not credited back to me on payroll. Can the corporation just… take it?