If you ever read reviews about various restaurants, bars or cafes, you might notice that the things people are looking for in such places are delicious food or drinks and good customer service. These are the things that people usually complain about or bring attention to how amazing it was.
But there are other things that customers also notice and Reddit user ScoobyDooItInTheButt based their whole review on the fact that management was strict with a server and it seemed so inhumane to them that they decided to leave a 1-star review.
More info: Reddit
A customer saw how a manager took their server's smart watch and decided to expose them in a review
Image credits: F Delventhal (not the actual photo)
The OP starts by saying that the food and service were good, but what didn’t sit right with them was how the manager treated their employee. According to the customer, the manager saw the server using their smart watch during their working hours and just took it because “they were communicating with the outside world.”
Managers may think that being on the phone or a smart watch may be distracting or seem disrespectful in front of customers, but the OP was more worried about the server having to work with such a controlling manager.
They heard that the manager told the server they were taking the watch so that the employee wouldn't "communicate with the outside world"
Image credits: ScoobyDooItInTheB**t
The OP continues to defend the employee, saying that they were doing their job well and that’s considering they were only being officially paid $2.75 per hour, as many restaurants in the US can legally do because it is assumed that the servers will collect a minimum wage from their tips.
If they don’t reach the minimum wage, the employer should have to compensate for the difference, but because tipping is so common in the US, the restaurants aren’t very worried about it and don’t feel bad about not paying the full $7.25. Such a strategy helps business owners save money as basically, the customers are paying wages instead of them.
As a former server themselves, the OP was quite frustrated with the way the manager was treating the employee, especially knowing how little they earn
It seems crazy that businesses are allowed to rely on customers to pay their employees' wages and the OP goes as far as calling it a slave wage. The person who was a customer in this situation says that they used to be a server, so this is very familiar to them.
The Redditor explained in the review that being a server isn’t a person’s whole life and they actually need to keep in touch with the outside world to be able to get through their day. The OP suggests that servers would feel more motivated to focus only on their jobs if the employees would finally pay them for it.
But then those businesses wouldn’t be so profitable, as they can only bring in income if they aren’t spending too much money on paying their employees.
The review once again reminded people how underpaid servers are and that businesses often rely on customers to pay for the employees' wages
Image credits: Images Alight (not the actual photo)
This was quite a different review that went kind of viral online as most often it’s a Karen complaining about ridiculous details and the owner clapping back, defending their business or their staff.
This time a customer once again brought to the surface the issue of servers not getting paid enough in the US and having to depend on customers’ willingness to leave a tip, which, while highly expected, is not mandatory, and really shows how little businesses or companies care about the people who work for them.
Statistics show that because of the tipping culture in the US, this mindset works as tips make up more than half of servers' wages
According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), “The median share of hourly earnings that come from tips account for 58.5 percent of wait staff’s earnings, and 54 percent of bartenders’ earnings.”
There are a few reasons why this is problematic. First of all, tipping amplifies racial inequality as white people receive more tips than people of color, which means it widens the wage gap which already exists.
Which leads to unequal pay, especially because customers tend to leave more money for white people and think they have a right to harass women servers
Tipping also allows customers to feel more comfortable being inappropriate with servers. 80 percent of women working in the food industry report that they experience some type of sexual harassment from customers while working.
Another negative thing tipping culture encourages is employee exploitation. As tip-pooling is legal, it allows the businesses to easily keep the revenue to themselves rather than giving it back to the workers.
The Redditor received a lot of positive reactions for bringing up the incident in the review and for acknowledging the unfair pay servers receive
Being a server is hard work as they have long shifts while standing on their feet or running around a restaurant, they may have to work very late or very early, and they deal with demanding customers with a smile on their faces so they can earn that tip and have their cost of living covered that month.
On top of that, their managers might not be the most understanding people either and, as it happened in this case, even took a personal belonging despite the server doing their job well, as experienced by the customer who wrote the review.
At the same time, they were sorry servers have to be humiliated in such a way while getting paid pennies
People in the comments were confused how a manager could allow themselves to take someone’s smart watch, especially knowing that the server probably had to save up for a long time to be able to purchase it. They also praised the OP for mentioning the situation in the review as they felt sorry that the employee had to go through this.
We would like to hear what you thought of the review and do you think the wage system for service workers should be reviewed? Do you think that it would help them earn more, or would that discourage people from tipping so it would leave a server with a lower wage at the end of the month? Let us know in the comments!