Hello!! I have a question regarding tipping laws and regulations.
I work at a new ice cream/over-the-top-shake shop that opened approximately 4 months ago, and I was super excited because the owners seemed really nice, they're young (mid twenties) so I clicked with them well.
When I started working, they asked me about tips and said “if we gave everyone the tips all the time, this would be a $30 an hour job!” (I get paid $13 an hour, same as everyone, minimum wage in my state [UT] is 7.25$) Me, not knowing the laws and knowing we were new and probably wouldn't get much business to give me enough wages on tips (they only based the $30 on opening weekend, when in reality it was dead a lot of the time), and also sort of trying to just please the owners, nodded and agreed with them and as such they decided to keep the wage at $13 an hour and just give the cash tips.
This was fine at first, since we weren't busy and I knew they were starting up so I didn't sweat it too much.
However, lately it has gotten insanely busy, from open to close. I heard the owners bragging saying “in one week we've tripled our sales of one week!”
It's hard to keep up with the amount of customers that come in nowadays, especially on weekends. (Especially as we are understaffed in my opinion…)
Despite earning much more profit, I still don't get the credit card tips. Nearly everyone tips (I'd say 2/3-3/4) but cash tips are extremely rare. I've earned probably $25-30 of cash tips over my entire span of 3.5 months.
Is this allowed? Should I request to get at least a percentage of my tips? This just seems unfair that the owners get to keep all tips even when they aren't working that day.