hey dudes, i'm not sure if this is the proper place to post this, but i want to hear about the experiences of other cynical serviceworkers outside of my own job to parse whether or not this is normal.
i work at a coffeehouse in the chicagoland area where i make shit pay as a regular employee. i'm not a manager or supe or anything. like a lot of small restaurants, we pool tips to supplement our regular income.
i'm good buds with a coworker of mine who is a supervisor. she was recently promoted, maybe a couple of months ago, and she told me that the only payraise that she got for her promotion was 30% more tips from the tip pool. she did not get a base raise or further benefits. so right now, she's getting paid below minimum wage like the rest of us and is just making money off of everybody else's equal labor.
really quick, i wanna emphasize that i have nothing against her for taking the raise (or the “raise” i guess lmao), she's doing what she needs to do to survive, but damn. i haven't really gotten a chance to ask other supervisors who i have close relationships with about this mostly just because i know a lot of people are uncomfortable discussing their wages.
obviously there's a lot that's fucked up about this. we've both worked in the service industry before and we've never heard of anything like this. it's pretty fucking infuriating.
has anybody else heard of something like this? have you worked somewhere were raises were taken out of the tip pool? it just seems bafflingly unethical.