Skip to content

Starbucks ordered to give back money…

  • by

There is a story in the news today about how Starbucks has been ordered to repay $100m US it stole from it’s employee’s tip jars.  starbucks203okThis is a practice that’s done by companies around the world.  Basically, all the tips that staff get in the course of doing their jobs all go into a collective pot then at some point (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever) the money is the “divided” between all staff members, including the management/supervisors.  I have 2 problems with this practice, 1) the management/supervisors shouldn’t get any share of an employee’s tips, unless it’s given to them by the employee’s; 2) the idea of pooling all the tips and dividing it “equally” between all staff members isn’t fair to those that truly earned those tips verses the slackers that did nothing to earn anything.

 

The story in the press can be read here:

   BBC News – Starbucks must pay $100m in tips

   CNN News – Starbucks ordered to pay $100m in back tips

 

This sort of practice goes on all the time here in the UK and it’s disgusting and despicable to say the least.  Years ago when I use to work as a busboy in restaurants I use to make very good tips, all given to me by the waitstaff for helping them out.  The waitstaff would tip the cooks, busboys and bar staff based on how much they help they gave them in doing their jobs.  This is a fair system.

Share this post :