Co-owner of a 35% profit margin family business tells a trusted employee she wants to cut all staff pay 40% to minimum wage and absorb their tips

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  via Lucky Business

  Tip jar with cash on a café counter while a barista works in the background.

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• Boss told me she wants to cut everyone’s pay

  
  via blindrunner_
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• The financial logic here is creative in the way that a screen door on a submarine is creative. A popular business with healthy margins, staffed largely by minimum wage workers whose tips represent a significant chunk of their actual take-home pay, does not have a payroll problem. Cutting 40% of payroll at a place that is, by all accounts, doing extremely well is not a cost-saving measure. It is a preference. The co-owner essentially confirmed this herself by framing it as something she would love to do, which is not typically how people describe solving a financial crisis.

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  via Nathan Anderson

  Young café worker standing behind a coffee shop counter near a tip jar and register.

  ^{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

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  via blindrunner_

• The detail that makes this whole thing so specific is that she said it to someone she likes. This was meant as a confidence, a little peek behind the curtain for a valued employee. The implication being that the valued employee would appreciate being let in on the plan to significantly underpay everyone around them, including themselves. The awkward chuckle in response was probably the most diplomatic reaction available under the circumstances

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  via blindrunner_

• Pocketing employee tips during a globally universal tough time is sitting in this story like a footnote that is actually the headline. It is mentioned almost as additional context, a small clarifying detail, when it is in fact a fairly complete portrait of the management philosophy at work here. The tips situation happened, apparently resolved itself somehow, and the business continued operating as normal. Which explains a lot about why the co-owner feels comfortable floating minimum wage fantasies to staff members in casual conversation.

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  via blindrunner_

• Businesses that treat employee goodwill as an infinite resource tend to find out otherwise eventually, usually right around the time the popular place starts wondering why nobody wants to work there anymore.

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