Back to the good old days!
Ah, nostalgia! It’s nice to see that some corporations have the respect for history and tradition to emulate, even in these difficult times, the robber baron mentality of America’s past.
The Minneapolis company Parasole Restaurants, which operates a chain of popular eateries with names like Chino Latino, Good Earth, Il Gatto, Manny’s Steakhouse, Uptown Cafeteria and Sky Bar, accessed its inner capitalist pig and decided that the best way to offset an increase in the cost of doing business was….to steal a portion of its waiters’ tips.
Servers at Parasole restaurants received word last week that they’ll have to give up 2% of their credit card tips to their employer. The Parasol suits explained the move as being necessary due to the combination of rising credit card use by customers and higher fees from banks.
They might as well have demanded that the servers turn over a cut of what’s in their kids’ piggy banks, or demand protection fees in exchange for Parasole goons not burning down their homes. Tips, whether they are left on a credit card or on the table, are gifts from customers to servers. A restaurant has no right to any of that money. They just have the power to take it.
Of course, a company with any sense of fairness and decency wouldn’t have to consider this, because the fact that servers only make the minimum wage and the harsh reality that it’s the tips that make their compensation livable would make such a move unthinkable.
A suggestion to all Parasole restaurant-goers: Give your server a cash tip. Give him or her a little extra. Tell the manager that his company is a greedy, heartless, unethical disgrace. Then write that greedy, heartless, unethical disgrace and announce that if the policy doesn’t change, you’ll be eating out at restaurants that have respect for human dignity and fairness.
Ethics Alarms 
Disgusting. And tipped employees don’t even make minimum wage! They make as little as $2.13/ hour depending on the state. They work for tips.
That’s right. When I worked at a restaurant it wasn’t required to pay the server minimum wage because of the tips. Grrrrr…I have no words harsh enough for these mafiosos.
Its been standard practice for years for restaurants to take 1 1/2 % of the servers tips on their credit card tips. I never leave a tip on a credit card and always leave cash.
It’s not the restaurant that’s taking a percentage of the tip, it’s the bank that handles the restaurant’s merchant account that’s taking a percentage. Up until now, the restaurant has been providing free credit-card processing for waiters’ tips. When you leave a $10 tip on your credit card, the restaurant is only going to get (say) $9.80 from the bank, but they’ve been kicking in the $0.20 for the waiter themselves. And now they’re stopping. It’s just a reduction in benefits for employees. It may not be a wise P.R. or employee relations move, but there’s nothing unethical about it.
WHAT?!?!?! As a former server (shocker, an actor waited tables?!?), I cannot BELIEVE this! Considering how many people these days leave NOTHING, I am now going to make it a practice to ALWAYS ask. I live on my credit card and loathe cash. But I also make sure to be a good tipper, because servers make BELOW the minimum wage. I made more per hour as an ice cream scooper when I was 16 at $3.35/hr than when I waited tables. There oughta be a law…
Pardonnez-moi ma Francais, but this really, REALLY pissed me off!
At one period in my misspent younger days I paid the rent, first, as a dishwasher, then moved up to short-order cook, and ahh, at last! was promoted to table-waiter, where tips were possible.
These days I ALWAYS over-tip, because I know it is a helluva hard way to earn a living…hard on the back, constant high pressure, for very little reward. Shame, shame on Parasole!