As a waitress, do you have to pay the restaurant back for errors on the bill? Example:?

Question

I overheard two waitresses talking the other day, the one was like a boss or something. She was reveiwing the other lady's checks and compairing them to the menu prices. If there was an error, the boss said okay you owe $1.00, okay $2.00, okay, $2.30, the waitress owed $2.30 to the restaurant because she had not written the exact prices for the meals. I thought that was totally ridicilous, What do you think?
Is that a common practice in waitressing?

Answer 1

In my experience, if you forget to charge a table for something you're responsible for the cost. If it's the guest's fault, ie "dine and dash", then you're not responsible.

Answer 2

It is illegal if it is in the US and regarding a mistake in the bill. The resteraunt/bar/hotel/whatever is expected, legally, to eat the costs of mistakes because people do make mistakes and the owner needs to allow for and account for this in pricing.



If a server regularly makes gross mistakes they can be fired for that. They can't be fired for not paying for the mistakes, however.



That said the vast majority of waiters, waitresses, and bartenders do not know their legal rights or are afraid to assert them and all too many propieters will take advantage of that. What's worse is that if they are fired for a mistake the law says people will make no matter what they only have legal recourse if they can find enough other employees back them up when going to the authorities to have the owner held responsible.



When a boss makes a waiter, waitress, bartender, or any other employee pay for any mistake it is every bit as illegal as stealing. It's just harder to prove.

Answer 3

I think it kind of depends on the person being reprimanded. I was in the business for quite a while and everyone forgets to ring in a coffee from time to time but honestly, I have had co-workers turn in tip money to pay for "mistakes" that they just keep on making. In essence the thought process is, "If I don't charge him for that glass of wine, maybe he'll be grateful and tip me more." That's not what happens usually and it can cost the restaurant a lot of money if everyone is doing it. Sometimes it just takes a few examples of managers collecting a few bucks here and there to get the point across to everyone that freebies need to be cleared by the manager.

Answer 4

Most restaurants do hold the servers accountable for mistakes. I worked at a restaurant where a customer had told me after I put the order in that they didn't want something that came with the meal. I told the kitchen but it was made wrong.... I had to pay for the meal out of my tips because I had keyed the order in wrong. Alot of people who have never worked in a restaurant don't realize how much comes out of the servers pockets. Not only mistakes, but, alot of places have a set percentage that the servers have to claim in tips regardless to if they made it or not. (Ex. your total sales are 100.00, you have to claim 1.5% of your sales meaning you have to claim $15.00 in tips whether you made $5 or $50) The reason for this is most restaurants only pay servers about $2-$4/ hour and they are suppose to make the rest up in tips to equal min. wage....

Answer 5

I think that totally sucks! I worked at a bar once and a patron bumped into a tray I was carrying and it was full of bar drinks and my employer made me pay for all the liqueur and the broken glasses needless to say I quit . I could see if it was an all the time occurrence but c-mon give a girl a break nobodies perfect!

Answer 6

i work at a fast food restaurant and things do work this way. if a cashier's till is short, they must pay back the short ammount by their next shift. in my personal opinion, it is fair because they should be careful when counting change or a big error could come up. Also, small errors add up in the long run.

Answer 7

They would probably take the shifts tips, maybe weeks tips. Unless it was a HUGE mistake that cost the restraunt a fortune, which they'd most likely get fired.

Answer 8

Yes.

If you are the boss and your waitress loose money everyday, would you let her go?