Hi all! This is my first post on here and I wanted to share the details of my last job with you all and see if I am over thinking this. It’s a long story but I think it helps to give context.
So I worked at a cafe/shop here in my town and at first, it seemed amazing. I was paid 15 an hour and got commission on top of that from the sales we got from the shop. All employees split tips and commission so it made me feel better that we were working collectively and sharing the profits. It went well for the first month or so but then I noticed that I was having to take on more work for the same pay. I was originally taken on as a server. I was very clear with the owner that I was in school and I had to have time to study, even if it was summer. I had to do well in my summer classes and that was non-negotiable. Well as soon as she heard that class was starting to wrap up she worked me 35 hours a week. “Fine.” I think, “extra money before fall semester.” But thats when the extra hats started to get piled on my head.
I would never know what I’d be doing when I c came in. Would I be cook? Would I be a server? Would I be a cashier? Would I be a dishwasher? Would I be 3 things at the same time? Who knew. I started to get so tired and burnt out because I was worked to my limit every day. But I kept telling myself it was okay because of the pay. Then one day, as we were splitting the tips, I saw the owner walk over and say “okay. So here are my tips and here are the rest of yours.” Huh?? The owner was taking tips out for her self when she was only there for a few hours?? Seemed a bit unsavory. This kept happening on our busiest days. The staff always knew if it was a busy day she would be there for a few hours so she could take home tips but every other time she was hard to find/not around.
There was one particular time that really pissed me off and started my decent down the road to quitting. She went on a vacation to Europe for 1.5 weeks and left no one in charge. We had no manager, no one who knew how the system worked if it broke… absolutely nothing. Well, when she was gone the whole internet crapped out. We had no way to take payments for food or the gift shop. Could we get in touch with her? No. She is living it up in Europe. It was a horrible week. Everyday I’d come in and be on the phone with tech, serving customers, working the kitchen, washing dishes and explaining to angry people it was cash only. She would occasionally get back to us when she was in the hotel but that was few and far between.
At this point, I was done. She came back and basically said “oops”. And never really apologized for setting us up failure and leaving us in that really shitty situation. Then we started to see no cash tips coming in. Every night we were supposed to tip out and take home what we made. We went from taking home 60-100 dollars a day to 10-12. Given that we are paid every two weeks and that we are in a very low income area for the locals, (tourist town) we depended on those tips to get us by day by day. One day, a new girl came up to me and talked to me about how our owner had promised that she would take home tips everyday but given that cash tips had gone more digital, she had gotten nothing for a week. She told me that she couldn’t get food and didn’t know what to do. Given that the owner wasn’t there there, I cooked her a bunch of food and just gave it to her. (No I don’t feel bad about it)
Later on I brought that up to the owner and asked if we could come up with a solution that allows our staff to get their promised tips so they can eat between paychecks. I reminded her that we live in a low income area and people are struggling to make ends meet. If you promised them tips every night, then you need to keep that. Our boss looked up at me annoyed and said “if you guys are gonna keep complaining about it, you can just wait two weeks for your tips.” (Btw, this woman drives a luxury car, wears designer clothes and lives in one of the most expensive cities in our state.) I was dumbfounded. I quit the next day. I told her to mail me by backed tips, which was 200.
Sometimes I wonder if I over reacted… but I feel like I made the right decision. What do y’all think?
Edit: the reason I had to keep reminding her that we live in an area where people struggle is because this girl is a trust fund baby that was literally handed two businesses bc she finished school. I think it goes without saying but she seemed outta touch 9/10.