What is tip pooling?

Although many establishments provide uniforms for staff such as server aprons, shirts, pants, bistro aprons and such, and the staff have no expenses in that regard or for food and drink during work times, the people who work in these jobs need the extra money they earn from tips, as this is their livelihood, and they work many hours a day for a set salary.

Establishments have different rules regarding tipping. While some allow specific staff members to be tipped after a service, others prefer to pool tips, where a part or total of the monies received as tips are collected and redistributed among all the staff. Although this is meant as a way of being fair to everyone, since some staff members do not liaise directly with customers in order to receive tips, staff members may not consent to it, since they feel that they have worked hard that night, while others have slacked but are still getting a portion of the tips that were earned through others’ hard work. 

Employees who generally receive tips are:

• Bussers.
• Counter staff.
• Servers.
• Waiters.
• Bartenders.

A policy for tip pooling should be designed by the employees themselves, so that there will not be any arguments or problems on a later date for the employer, and there will be a set procedure on how it is done. In general, the pooled tips are equally distributed among the staff members in order create fairness, unlike tip sharing where everyone gets a certain percentage of the tips.

Pooling tips works best in environments where multiple people service the client, but only one person actually physically interacts with them.