Location: California
I work in the restaurant at a higher end hotel. Every bill has an automatic 22% service charge added, that acts as the tip. When I was hired that was a selling point made by the hotel manager to me, that those service charges are pooled between servers and the kitchen and split by hours worked.
On numerous occasions since then, I have felt that my paycheck didn’t quite add up to what I was expecting to receive. I have asked the hotel manager multiple times if some of that service charge was maybe going elsewhere, like the housekeeping or bellboys, and was assured that it was all kept for the restaurant team. I have also asked for a weekly printout of the spreadsheet to go over the pool and check if it all adds up, always met with a non answer, that they’ll be able to accommodate that at some point in the future.
Last week I got to see the spreadsheet in passing, and noticed that 5 of that 22% is being set aside for the “house”. My interpretation of that is that it is just being held as additional profit. After checking in with my restaurant manager who works under the GM, he confirmed that the hotel has in fact been taking 5 out of the 22% this whole time. My manager was unaware of this, and has been confused about our paycheck discrepancies right along with us.
After some quick math, I came to a conservative estimate that the “house” has taken a total of upwards of $6000 that I was expecting on my paychecks over the last year. Nowhere on my onboarding paperwork or anywhere does it mention the house getting a cut, and similarly every guest that comes in also assumes the service charge is going directly to us.
Do I have any recourse here?