Am I being ungrateful?
I currently work on a food truck in Minnesota. The owner of the food truck is my step-mother. My step-mother claims that she should be entitled to the tips the are earned during shifts. Shifts usually consist of two or three people. She claims that she should receive 50% or 33% respectively of the tips depending on the amount of people working. When it is three people working, it is usually me, my step-mom, and my step-brother. Two is me and her.
For context, my step-mom does all the prep work on the food truck before a shift starts. She uses this as the reason for why she is owed her tip money. I think this is a bad reason as that is her responsibility as the food truck owner, or she should hire someone else to do the prep work if she thinks it is unfair. It is the duty of the owner of restaurant to provide supplies to the employees. I would agree that it is fair that she is owed (33 or 50) percentage if the prep work wasn't her reason for taking the tips. I would find it acceptable that she says she deserves the percentage solely because she is working along side us.
However, sometimes other people work on the food truck not related to us. For example me, her friend, and her will work the same shift, but the friend will receive 50% while me and her (step-mom) get 25%. Also on the shifts that me (sometimes alone) and my step brother work, the step-mom will go hang out and socialize with people and still claim that she is owed (33 or 50). The last thing that I think is important to note is that the step-mom often takes a larger percent of tips on days where the tips are better. For example if she nets $3200 in sales and get $200 in tips, she'll take 40% while on days where she nets $600, she'll only take 10%.
To me, it feels disingenuous that she adjusts the percentage that me and my step brother receive based on overall how much she nets in sales alone (usually higher sales means more tips). It's also unfair that she gives less tips to me and my step-brother, than she does to her friends when she claims that she is owed tips because of prep work before the shift. These friends/other people aren't doing prep work, but receive a larger percentage.
Personally, I think that when three people are working including her, the two employees deserve 50% each, whereas if it just one employee and her are working, then it should also be 50/50 between her and the employee. I guess the main thing that bothers me is that she lowers the percentage me and my step-brother receive while giving not family workers their "full" share of the tips. Me and my step-brother are payed minimum wage and the tips are why neither of us have asked for a raise.
Is it wrong to think that the tip distributions seem unfair (and arbitrary) and how do I go about proceeding in a just manner? Me and my step-mother are butting heads on this topic and I don't want something like money to affect our relationship, at the same time, when I brought this up to her, she got mad at me. Up until this point, we have gotten along very well. I don't know how to proceed.