To think Pizza Express should keep their grubby hands off staff's tips

[Needanedittbuton]

According to The Observer Pizza Express got rid of 2,500 staff rather than put them on the Employee Retention Scheme. Now they are going to divert a large percentage of tips paid by card to the kitchen staff.

This is going to have a huge impact on the take home pay of their minimum wage waiting staff.

If you are going to tip - do so in cash!

Tbh that drop in tips is also most likely a combination of covid and this. People are much less likely to tip on cards.

We rarely get tips where I work
(large pub chain) we don't have a tip jar so if someone gives us a pound or whatever we just buy ourselves a soft drink with it.
The kitchen staff get paid more than front of house there though so hopefully that makes up for not getting tips.

@Needanedittbuton

According to the article, it will decrease the take home pay of waiting staff by up to £2,000. Would you be happy to have £2k taken out of your wages to pay Sophie in Accounts or Jim in the warehouse more? You don't rob Peter to pay Paul.

Waiting staff rely on tips - apparently they are offered fewer hours than kitchen staff.

I don’t think anyone should be getting tips in the first place to be quite honest, but if people are going to give them they should be shared out.

Waiting staff are only a small part of an eating out experience and so tips should be shared to reflect the work from everyone who gave that customer the experience.

Nobody should be relying on tips. Those who tip are actually creating the low wage problem, because while people tip employers aren’t going to see a need to up their wages.

Waiting staff rely on tips

Yeah. This is the problem. You shouldn't rely on unreliable income. I made sure my bills were covered by wage. Tips were extra. Everyone I know looked at it this way because one week you get few hundred, next week you get 30.

There's endless people on low wages, but people only seem to think waiting staff need tips.

What about carers, retail staff, endless other people, all on minimum wage, all might need more hours, yet people seem to think waiting staff are a special case? Makes no sense.

Are the tips going to be split with the accounts staff though?

When I waitressed, the rule was that tips got shared between hourly-paid staff within that branch

The managers who were on annual salaries didn’t get a share,
Nor did anyone outside the branch

@Needanedittbuton

According to the article, it will decrease the take home pay of waiting staff by up to £2,000. Would you be happy to have £2k taken out of your wages to pay Sophie in Accounts or Jim in the warehouse more? You don't rob Peter to pay Paul.

Waiting staff rely on tips - apparently they are offered fewer hours than kitchen staff.

The issue is still not the tips.

The issue is the wage.

@Needanedittbuton

According to the article, it will decrease the take home pay of waiting staff by up to £2,000. Would you be happy to have £2k taken out of your wages to pay Sophie in Accounts or Jim in the warehouse more? You don't rob Peter to pay Paul.

Waiting staff rely on tips - apparently they are offered fewer hours than kitchen staff.

But tips are not part of your salary - they're a discretionary addition by customers.

Wait staff will always take home a base pay of minimum wage for the hours they've worked - tips are just a nice bonus on top.

It's not the same as Tim from Marketing having 2k taken off his salary to give to Sophie in Accounts.

Pizza express chefs are paid more than waiting staff on £9ph+ plus annual bonuses (which are not shared)... They can also have pay rises by becoming senior chefs. But the waiters are always on minimum wage (for their ages) and no matter the training. There’s no career progression/development available.

Tips were split on a 70/30 portion which was fine. They then notified employees, a week before reopening, that the tips were being reduced by another 20% after many suffered from significant pay losses after furlough. The staff were essentially told to take the cut, or leave.

After taxes, divisions with BOH etc, staff are getting around 30% pay cuts.

If they want the BOH to be paid more, it shouldn’t be taken from the FOH tips. Maybe it should come from the manager’s regular bonuses...

The kitchen staff have a higher hourly rate and longer shifts than the waiting staff. They are already earning more.

as long as they're not using it to make up minimum wage, I think tips should be shared between Kitchen Staff and Wait Staff, presumably a service charge would be.
I would not leave a tip or reduce the service charge if service had been bad, but equally, I would do the same if the food had been crap.

I do prefer to leave a tip in cash, but never have it these days, so switching to adding to bill & paying by card.

In a restuarant yesterday, had the option on the card reader to tip 5%, 10% or custom amount. Went for a custom amount to round the bill up (yes, I realise a bit of a daft concept if not paying in cash!) - you couldn't see what you were entering, must have had a couple of attempts, waiter stepped in to help (you just needed to press a button with a green tick).
Fortunately I checked the final amount (I can well imagine not doing that if I'd had a little tooo much to drink) - instead of £140 it was £1,700+ .
Waiter cancelled it, and I went for a more straightforward 10% - a shame as it was a bit less than I'd intended - but warning, do take care when doing tips on a credit card!!!!

Waiting staff rely on tips - apparently they are offered fewer hours than kitchen staff.

Millions of people in this country earn minimum wage and don't get tips, though. They're not something you should rely on.

Waiting staff get less hours as they don't need to come in before service to prep, nor do they need to stay late to clean down the kitchen afterwards.

Tips were split on a 70/30 portion which was fine. They then notified employees, a week before reopening, that the tips were being reduced by another 20% after many suffered from significant pay losses after furlough. The staff were essentially told to take the cut, or leave.

But tips aren't part of a salary, they're a bonus that nobody is entitled to.

As long as people take home minimum wage for their hours worked, Pizza Express aren't doing anything wrong (legally). You can argue it's immoral but nobody is entitled to tips.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

Tbh that drop in tips is also most likely a combination of covid and this. People are much less likely to tip on cards.

Have you been to a pizza express recently? They advertise themselves as cashless. You pay by card on the app.

Very rare for waiters to receive any cash tips.
They’re much more likely to receive card, almost certainly.

There's endless people on low wages, but people only seem to think waiting staff need tips.

I van compare retail and hospitality (not caring tho) and retail was always better to hospitality in my experience
Customers are generally dickheads in both, but in hospitality that treatment was always horrible. I also did find it more physically and mentally tiring.
In retail you don't have to non-stop communicate with the customers (usually) and I found that the biggest difference.
That's not to say retail is easypeasy and great. It's a hard jobs, but the hospitality is just another level ime.

I don't tip to top up wages. I tip as a reward for great experience. If I could tip in a shop when I have lovely cashier, I would do too. I tip window washers, taxi, always tipped cleaners when they did great job on a kitchen after busy weekend (non domestic at work) etc. It's a gesture of appreciation imo rather than topping up.

But everyone looks at it differently, don't they.

YABU. I worked in hospitality (a large bar/club) and all tips were split between bar staff and floor staff equally. So if you worked in room 1, all tips from that room would go to all the staff in that room.

Everyone works had and x can’t do their job without y so why should x only get tips? Why should y miss out when they have no capacity to get a tip due to working out the back and not be in direct contact with customers? Even though x wouldn’t get a tip at all if the food was shit?

I would rather my tip went to the kitchen staff - they make my food! I feel in most chains like pizza express, the service you get is the bare minimum these days. Obviously there are exceptions, but apart from bringing a plate of food and a drink, that’s as much as you get.

*Have you been to a pizza express recently? They advertise themselves as cashless. You pay by card on the app.

Very rare for waiters to receive any cash tips.
They’re much more likely to receive card, almost certainly.*

Yeah I gathered they are cashless. That's what I meant. People are less likely to tip on cards so that's part of the drop in tips. When people pay in cash, they usually leave tip. Paying on vcrds, they usually don't. Not just the sharing is causing lower tips.

Have you been to a pizza express recently? They advertise themselves as cashless. You pay by card on the app.

Very rare for waiters to receive any cash tips.
They’re much more likely to receive card, almost certainly.

I think the point is they are less likely to receive a tip at all because its on card. A lot of people just don't bother.

It's not about where you work or worked. It's about PE changing the existing rules about how waiting staff are paid. They are going to lose quite a lot if money. That's not acceptable and it's a shame that so many of you think it's ok to shaft staff in this way.

I like the idea of tips being shared between everyone, however my daughter worked in Prezzo, and none of the non management staff got a penny of the tips. Even cash ones went in a pot that was never shared out. Wankers

Turning the tables why should equally low paid kitchen staff not get any tips while the wait staff get it all? They contribute every bit as much to the customer experience. When I tip I do so as a thank you for the whole experience, food and service, not just the waiting service.

@LostInTime

The kitchen staff have a higher hourly rate and longer shifts than the waiting staff. They are already earning more.

Yes. My DD (student) works kitchen and front of house . When in kitchen she gets more p/h because kitchen don't get tips. Also, her hours in the kitchen are fixed whereas waiting staff sometimes get sent home without pay if the place is quiet.

She prefers kitchen work because she doesn't get aggro from (the minority of) customers who think it's ok to treat people like shit because they are waiting on them.

I am delighted to hear that the tips will be shared with the kitchen staff - I had assumed that was the case and I am astonished that the greedy waiting staff were allowed to keep the whole lot.

Cooking food perfectly takes skill. All waiters have to do is bring it to the table and take orders. If I tip, it's because the whole experience was good - the waiters were polite and efficient, and the food was good. I wouldn't tip the waiters if the food was shit, and I wouldn't tip the kitchen staff if the waiter was shit. It's the overall service that counts, so tips should be split.

@Needanedittbuton

It's not about where you work or worked. It's about PE changing the existing rules about how waiting staff are paid. They are going to lose quite a lot if money. That's not acceptable and it's a shame that so many of you think it's ok to shaft staff in this way.

I don't look at it as staff being "shafted", though.

Nobody is entitled to receive tips. It's a nice bonus on top of your salary - that's all.