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I’ve been known to take Connie to task, but when she pulls out that Pulitizer of hers and puts it to use, here and here, she’s great.  Connie has been all over a local restaurant, Yours Truly, skimming tips from servers without telling them.

Most customers, and I’ve heard from hundreds of them so far, don’t agree. They think it’s unfair to deduct a fee from the tips of servers who depend on gratuities to make minimum wage, and it’s unethical to hide this practice from the public.

A few restaurant owners have been a tad hostile. I’m fine with being called a socialist and an idiot, but I wince when an employer views employees as discardable and clueless. As one owner put it, “Look, these are minimum-wage jobs, and they were never meant to support a family. These people should know better.”

Yes, well, wouldn’t it be nice if restaurants were staffed only by trust-fund kids looking for adventure and stay-at-home wives in need of pin money? Unfortunately, life hasn’t quite worked out that way for an awful lot of Americans. All those working-class kids trying to afford college come to mind, not to mention the majority of servers who happen to be unmarried women. 

Yours Truly is one of those places eastsiders go to feel important and local and rub elbows with the polticos and such who have meetings there.  Their food is average.  Their service is good.  Their practice is Dickensian.  

The American economy for the last 20 years has been descending into Victorian robber-baron depths, and right now, it’s accelerating rapidly.  The notion that someone whose employer pays them $2.13 an hour should somehow cough up ANY portion of the money they earn on their own, without help from their employer, but solely based on their performance from their customers, is obscene.  The notion that anyone finds this practice defensible is sinful. 

But it has become standard practice in this economy to endlessly skim small amounts from those at the bottom of the food chain in what amounts to mass theft, to procure a better bottom line for those at the top.  Connie has done great work on this in her last two columns, and I hope she continues with this series.  Yours Truly’s practice is not only standard in their industry, it is standard in this economy, and it needs to be exposed just as Connie is doing.

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