Posted by Gabriel Cohen on July 09, 1998 at 16:26:57 :
I have been in the catering business for ten years, first as a waiter, then as a captain, staff booker, and finally as a party planner. I was absolutely appalled by some of the comments relating to gratuities posted on this bulletin board. One of the caterers said that he includes a "service charge" on his bills and then keeps the money as a "profit center" for his company. He adds that the staff is well paid already, so they don't need to be given tips. If this is different from announcing "I steal my waiters' tips and I'm proud of it," I'd love to know how. His statements reflect several major fallacies: first of all, by nature a gratuity has nothing to do with whether or not the staff is well-paid. It represents a special token of thanks on the part of the client, above and beyond any billed pay. Second, if a client sees a "service charge" on a bill, they will naturally assume that it is going to a staff gratuity, just as you would if you saw a "service charge" added to a restaurant bill. To keep this money may not be technically illegal, but it is certainly unethical and immoral. I once captained over thirty major private and corporate events for a major national food service company. When I wondered why I never received tips, a friendly manager explained (strictly "off the record") that the company routinely included a service charge in the bill, so that while the clients thought they were tipping the hard-working and deserving waitstaff, the top managers were using this "profit" to pad their bottom line. It's bad enough to engage in such shoddy business practices--to brag about them on a public bulletin board is even worse.