my job is stealing tips and I don't know what to do
This is a doozy. I started working at a new sushi restaurant in late July. I've worked 3 other sushi jobs, and various other jobs that pay out tips so I generally know what my tips should be at the end of the night. From the day I started getting tips things were weird. I would get $12-15 a day for 6 hours of work. Granted we weren't busy at the time, but we had less workers than most restaurants so the tips only had to be split 6 ways instead of the usual 8-10. I made 50% of my tips for the first two weeks (longest I've ever trained) so when that third week hit I was eager to ask for a pay bump. They gave me 75%. I usually wouldn't mind but I run this restaurant. The owner doesn't do anything and the manager only does to go orders. My coworkers come to me when looking for tasks to do because im usually the only one that fully knows whats going on. This is about a month into opening so things are starting to pick up. Most weekends the restaurant was full. My pay went up to about $23-30 a day but I began to notice our average bill was about $150 since we're on the pricier side. It was strange to me that in a full day we were only making about $200 in tips as I asked my coworkers what they got and they gladly told me because they suspected something was wrong too. In the coming days we compared tips and things never added up. I would make 15 dollars more than someone who worked an hour less than me when we only made about $8 per hour in tips and other weird stuff like that. This would be a good time to mention I've asked to see the math on the tips but I always got the runaround. I was mad so I gave an ultimatum. On week 4 or 5 of me working there I said I needed my full tip amount by the next week or I was done. This would be a travesty for then since I'm the only trainer, and pretty much the only one that can handle the weekend rush and do it well. She decided to play smug and tell me I should get a new job if I'm not satisfied with the tips so I said okay I will which caused her to backtrack and agree to talk to the owner about it. I wanted to keep this job since it was about a 3 minute drive from my house and it was laid back enough to be a good work environment outside of the tip situation. I was glad I could keep my job and get the tips I deserved. A week went by and we're the busiest we've ever been. It's hard to find an open table after 6:30pm. With the influx of customers and my tip raise I was expecting around $80. Our patrons tip pretty well so this was more of an “at least $80” situation. Well I was making $56-62. Mind you this was the most expensive restaurant I've ever worked at and I was used to bringing home $80 a night EASY at the other restaurants I've worked.
Well here's where shit hits the fan. It was a Sunday, following a particularly busy Saturday night. I asked for my tips from the following day and she gave me $53 dollars. I has past the point for fed up weeks ago as there were other small signs that tips were being stolen so I straight up told her that the amount didn't make sense. She proceeded to tell me the restaurant only made $256 in tips for the entirety of Saturday. That would mean if our customers tipped only 10% (I'd say it averages to around 15%) we'd have only made $2,560 in a restaurant where the cheapest item is $15 and most totals are anywhere from $150-500. At this point I knew she qas lying so I counted the card tips myself. Came out to $283 at 7pm. This didn't include the almost full jar of cash tips and we stull had 2 hours to open since we close almost 2 hours earlier on Sunday. Just to make it clear if they were telling the truth, we had made more money with 3 hours to spare and less customers than we did on our busiest night of the week. I quietly wrote down my total and waited for Sundays tips. They have to be fucking with me because I made $53 AGAIN. we had the same amount of workers and somehow I made the exact same amount I did on Saturday KNOWING we made more on Sunday. I sent my manager a text explaining what I had found and you'll never guess what she told me. She said I've only been making 75% of my tips. Not only did this have NOTHING to do with my message but she had just told me that I'm still making 75% of my tips after 2 months of working and if I'm not happy with it to talk to the owner. I was livid but I pretty much ignored that message since it basically just proved furthermore that they're fucking with tips and reexplained my original point. She then said she didn't have time to text me (it was 9:30pm and we were closed) and if I wanted to talk I could come in. Seems like they don't want a written record. Oh, and she verbatim said “since you obviously have a problem with me ill only schedule you on days i dont work.” 1. I was always nice and frequently shared my lunch with her. I genuinely dont have a priblem with this lady other than the fact shes taking my tips. 2. She works almost everyday so my hiurs are definitely gonna be cut. (Retaliation for reporting an issue?) Now my coworkers are texting me saying they're asking questions about me. All they needed to provide was the tip calculations and considering they wouldn't do that and want to cut my hours now that I have solid evidence that they're underreported the amount of tips we make I'm fully sure they're stealing tips. Anybody have some advice ? I'm missing about $300 from my tips according to my calculations.
Tldr; my manager never had a straight answer when it came to tips and now that I have evidence of them underreporting they won't send messages in writing, cut my hours, and are asking my coworkers about me.