Starbucks must pay $100 million in back tips

[mugs]

Wait - don't shift supervisors at Starbucks do the same kind of work as everyone else who gets tips? I never go to Starbucks, but at every other small retail business, the shift supervisor does largely the same work as everyone else, they just have some additional responsibilities. If they're doing the same work, then they deserve a cut of the tips regardless of how much Starbucks pays them; and how much Starbucks "should" pay them is irrelevant. Comments like ?Starbucks should be paying their shift supervisors a supervisory wage, not compensating them through tips that legally belong to baristas? reek of class warfare.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

I used to work at a Quiznos back while I was still in school and on Friday nights we'd put out a tip jar just for fun. Most nights we'd get $15-20 in tips (total) which we just used as beer money for that night. We didn't force anybody to put in money, or even tell anybody there was a tip jar. Heck, the only reason we started is because somebody put some money into a empty jar I forgot to take into the back (it was clean).

I got paid $5.50/hr which was above minimum wage, so I didn't particularly care whether we got tips on not. We did share them with the "manager" (which was me, but I the only extra stuff I did was count the till at the end of the night and deal with angry customers, we all worked the line, prep'd, etc). The store manager did not split the tips with us though.

EDIT: To clarify, my co-workers weren't annoyed with splitting the tip money with me, and in any case we just used it for beer money immediately after work ended for the night, so I guess the biggest drinker really benefited the most (not me.)