Compensation Management

When I think of a time that compensation motivated my behavior in the workplace I think of my prior job as a waitress at a local sushi restaurant. I had worked there for just about 5 years. The entire time I worked there my tips were cut, and different sections in the restaurant had different tip outs. For the Hibachi tables where the chef cooks at the table, tips were split 50/50 between the chef and the server. One day I had a huge table of about 30 people for a work party at a hibachi table and I knew the main person who was paying as he was a childhood friend of mine’s dad. Their party went well and I spent most of my shift working with them instead of taking other tables because they needed most of my attention. When it came time to pay the bill the main person asked me how the tip system worked, as many customers would ask, before tipping. I let him know that the chef and I split the tip evenly and he gave me two hundred dollar bills, he said one for me and one for the chef. I was thrilled to take home a hundred dollar tip and because it was in cash I would get to keep it fully. I gave the chef his hundred and we high fived and I went on with my night. When it came time to leave and cash out, my boss informed me that she and my other two bosses (all three were owners) talked and they thought I needed to split my hundred dollar bill, but the chef didn’t. She was changing the rules around my big tip because I didn’t have many other tables to contribute to the tip pool for the night.

This situation led to a few servers quitting as they realized that the tip system was all just made up according to what the owners wanted to do, and we weren’t even sure if what we had been told for years was accurate. Because I had worked there for so long, I knew it well and it worked with my schedule, I stayed working there but my effort level definitely decreased. I didn’t go out of my way to take big tables anymore, and I didn’t go out of my way to offer to close or pick up shifts anymore. I think compensation led me to feel that way because it showed me how little they valued me and my efforts. I had worked there for years, and the tip was an overly generous tip partially due to the rapport I had with the customer and the level of work I put in. I deserved the tip in general and according to their tip policy. Once they took away the compensation I deserved basically just because they wanted a part of it, I lost the motivation to really work hard for the organization because I saw that they didn’t value me.