MI waitress receives a $10K tip...gets fired.

[KFC911]

I suspect this will not work out well for that business owner .... losing customers, etc.

Good

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by The Synergizer

Someone has it right...

She got the tip. Maybe it was cash. She divided it up amongst all the wait staff. The restaurant management was mad though as management wanted it and then would have given the staff $20 each. So management plotted to get rid of her. And the others won't talk for fear of losing their jobs.

Or, perhaps it was all divided up and they then went nuts and spent it on a giant cocaine binge after hours... And no ones talking about what happened in the dark binge hours...

I believe the first one....I've been to Benton Harbor a few times and although it's not a wealthy area, it's also not a drug town.

[KFC911]

I read it again CB .... it's early and this is going viral.

I need to see a pic of the waitress

I prolly should have quoted CB's post ... poof.... gone !

[Crowbob]

I did too, KC. Then I deleted my post. The article said she shared the tip. I thought the waitress had said she shared the tip-but she hadn’t said that she had or that she hadn’t.

So I withdrew my post because the article was written so poorly there’s no telling what happened.

[KFC911]

Sharing equally or giving the others' a Benjamin ....

It matters... but the owner said the firing wasn't related....

I still need a pic

[stevej37]

At the 50 second mark of the video...her co-worker says how much she appreciated her share.

[KFC911]

^^^ Thank you. I only read the article (twice) ... didn't watch the video.

[stevej37]

more news on the story....


The reason Mark gave staff the five-figure tip was personal.

“It was in memory of a friend who had recently passed and he was in town for the funeral,” waitress Paige Mulick, who was also working that day, said. “It was just really an act of kindness that impacted so many people.”

The money was split nine ways among the coworkers for more than $1,100 each. Mulick, who recently graduated from Western Michigan University, said her share will make a huge dent in paying off her student loans.


https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/generous-customer-tips-10k-at-benton-harbor-restaurant/

[Superman]

Originally Posted by stevej37

That will be tough to do (unfair dismissal)
Michigan is an 'At Will' state. Employers can fire employees for essentially any reason and at any time.

So is Washington State, and most states. And yes, the employer will get away with it as long as he has not signaled certain other reasons for the dismissal.

I dunno what the reason was, but some restaurant owners just don't want people to have good earnings. I think they feel it creates expectations. Owners sometimes just want staff to be poor and grateful. Washington is not a "tip credit" state, meaning that tips do not count toward the restaurant's obligation to pay minimum wage. And so....they might as well let them keep the tips. But many do not. They treat tips as property of management, not staff. Now that I think about it, this restaurant owner may be following that same policy. Management wanted her to give the money to management. Refusal = dismissal.

[stevej37]

^^^ That does make a lot of sense for the reason.


There is a Bar & Grille near me that has excellent food and is very popular. I swear that every time I'm in there...the help staff is almost entirely new. I think the pay must be a bare minimum.

It's a tough profession to be in.


.

[WPOZZZ]

The business owner probably wanted to get reimbursed for the merchant fee if the guy used a credit card. Or they wanted a bigger piece of the pie.

[stevej37]

^^^ I believe that...it's just bad that it ended with her getting fired.

[KFC911]

Hopefully she'll land on her feet in a much better position.

Despite the owner's claim that her firing wasn't related to the tip.... I think he's FOS and therefore a POS ... and may his business suffer thusly.

[stevej37]

^^^ Agree
(only took me 10 minutes to post that. )

[Superman]

The stories I could tell....

We had a very colorful state wage investigator (minimum wage, overtime, the simple stuff) and restaurant workers were our best customers. Waitress complains, he does an investigation including all other workers similarly situated and presents the unpaid wage calculations to the owner. Formal disputes went to a hearing before a judge. They are triggered by owners dismissing his calculations. If an owner appeared to be starting down that path, he would ask for names and contact information for workers.....not the ones currently working there. Workers who worked there in the past couple of years but were not longer working there.

Over an entire career, none of Roger's investigations ever went to hearing. His methods made for some mighty amusing stories.

Many restaurants operate on the gray side of employment law, but let's be fair. The bulk of them are honest or mostly honest and a few are great places to work.