Stop eating at the Tudor Room

I am writing in response to the article on the Tudor Room’s new policy for tipping.\nBefore becoming a professor, I worked in the food service industry for 15 years; waiting tables, catering parties, organizing formal wine tasting parties and even consulting on general operations of other restaurants. With this experience behind me, I am shocked at the Tudor Room’s new policy. Under the guise of “pooling” tips, the management of the Tudor Room is actually skimming off the pool to pay for operation costs that should fall squarely on the restaurant management. I have never seen a restaurant operate in such a way. If the restaurant cannot afford administrative costs of processing payroll, new minimum wage requirement or any other aspect of business operations, it should reevaluate the food it serves, the hours it is open, food expenditures and especially the managers’ own salaries. Rather, the Tudor Room is demonstrating a lack of respect for its workers’ labor and using the false claim that pooling tips will lead to more teamwork. Anyone in the restaurant business will tell you that there are other ways, including a percentage system that divides the workers into captains, service staff and service assistants. Additionally, in most restaurants I worked in (and I have worked from the most greasy spoon to waiting on Hillary Clinton at four-star resorts), tip pooling almost always proves to be ineffective. The Tudor Room’s tipping policy is, as your article claims, “shady” to say the least. Giving them business at this point would only send the management the signal that we as University workers do not care how it treats its staff.\nDavid Delgado Shorter\nIU assistant professor