Please note that I am including all such instances of a pooled tip jar and not just Starbucks, so please spare us the “well the exploiting corporation should make that up out of their obscene profits” argument. The mom and pop smoothie shop down the street doesn’t have obscene profits to spare.

How about trying to maintain a 57% – 59% gross profit margin? Would that be one of the reasons as well?

Aren’t they making enough money that they shouldn’t have to resort to stealing the customer’s tip. You see, at Starbucks, customers can’t tip anyone they want. Instead they must unknowingly give their tip over to Starbucks so Starbucks can use it to pay their workers.

If Starbucks wants customers to believe they care about them then why don’t they get rid of those tip stealing jars? How can I tip an employee when the employee must give control of my tip over to his greedy employer? I don’t need to do any research to know what’s going on here. Businesses who require tip pooling are stealing the consumer’s tip, end of story.

The problem is, a few corrupt California judges have ruled employers may force their workers to pool tips even though such would be the collecting of gratuities California laws prohibit.

Since Starbucks was forcing it’s workers to pool all tips into one fund and essentially collecting gratuities, the employee’s tips were mingled with the managers tips. The problem is not that managers should not be receiving tips. My god it’s a person’s constitutional right to tip who-ever they want.

The problem is, once the tips are illegally collected, there is no way to know exactly who the tips were actully left for and how much each should receive.

Judges in California have painted themselves into a corner. While state laws do not, and connot, suggest that managers cannot receive tips, the judges who have allowed employers to illegally collect tips through employer mandated tip pooling now must make up lies to substantiate their ruling that state laws do not prohibit employers from mandating tip pooling.

For instance, what authority does a judge have to rule as to who each and every customer’s tip belongs to? It’s the customer’s tip. However, when employers are allowed to collect tips, through tip pooling, there becomes a question of who do the tips belong to. Rather than stating the truth, that being that judges have no authority to determine who can or can’t share in a customer’s tip, judges must lie and suggest that state laws define who can or can’t share in the customer’s tip.

The question that remains is, why would judges misinterpret state laws in a manner that suggests that state laws define who the customer’s tip belongs to? The reason is, so employees who are presented tips cannot claim the tip as their own. You see, by suggesting that state laws define who the customer’s tip belongs to, those workers who receive tips cannot claim that their employer is taking their tips when they force them to contribute their tips to a pool that the employer will control.

Business owners want to control their worker’s tips. There are many benefits to controlling other people’s money. Since state laws clearly explain that employers cannot take their employees tips, employers have cleverly devised a plan that allows them to benefit themselves to the customer’s tips. Employers across this country are currently forcing their workers to pool tips simply so the business can use the tips to pay workers who don’t receive tips. The more workers they can share the tips with, the more workers they can pay low wages to. It saves the business money.

My question is, our we tipping to save business owners money? I certainly am not. I do not think judges should be ruling that business owners can collect and control my tips. If I want my tips shared I can share them myself. This is a public issue. While judges in many states have ruled that employers may confiscate the public’s tips and share them among workers of the business’s choosing, such has been allowed without any consent on the part of consumers. The justice system in this country is infringing on our public’s property rights by giving the public’s tips over to the control of business owners.

Employer mandated tip pooling must be prohibitted across this country for it is cleary an unauthorized appropriation of the public’s property, their tips.

This whole situation would not have happened if employers were properly prohibitted from forcing their workers to pool tips.

The “shift supervisors” at Starbucks are hourly workers. The question that I have is “what defines a ‘supervisor?'”

These shift supervisors could not hire, terminate, or discipline an employee. They worked the counter just as a “regular” employee did. Their responsibilities were to look out for the store when management was not around. If they are looking after the store when the management was not there, are they then, by exclusion, not “management?”

50-60 Mill? Plus expenses, the employees will get a coupon for a cup of coffee at Bucks!