Results tagged “tips”

In what's become an SEC tradition, the government agency decided to reveal details of its botched Bernard Madoff investigations late Friday afternoon. The SEC offered up a jailhouse interview with Madoff; the NY Times reports he "said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades," adding, "If you’re looking at a Ponzi scheme, it’s the first thing you do."

Over at Fork in the Road, journeyman Robert Sietsema has done a bang up job surveying the city’s burgeoning landscape of tip jars, which are no longer only found at cafes with counter service. They’re everywhere, Sietsema reports— from the coffee shop receptacle that implores “Karma is a boomerang,” to the mamma-said “Take a penny, leave a dollar.” It would seem that the current Thunderdome-style match-up of recession vs. New Yorkers has resulted in a new economy of tip jars that simultaneously allow business owners to broadcast their quirks as well as their woes, such as the “Tip $, because $4 a gallon is killing us!” price-of-milk themed message Sietsema found at a bakery. And Frank Bruni of Times puts in his two cents, imploring everyone to tip at restaurants, no matter how bad the service was: “It’s not some bold stand against fat-cat restaurant operators lining their pockets,” he writes, not to tip.

Anyone who toils as a cater waiter long enough eventually hears a horrible truth about the job: Clients at these uptight gala events routinely add a decent tip to their payment, but that money almost always ends up in the pockets of managers, not servers. Yesterday lawyer Maimon Kirschenbaum filed class action suits on behalf of waiters trying to claim their tips from the private catering operations at the Central Park Boathouse, Pier Sixty, and Le Cirque (pictured). He tells Grub Street that Pier Sixty is the worst of the three, because servers aren't allowed to accept tips during the course of a private party: "If you're really drunk at a wedding and you pull out a $100 bill and hand it to them, they're instructed to tell you, 'The host of this party has already given a gracious gratuity and I'm going to have to reject it.'"

Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, owner of Craft, Craftbar and Craftsteak, and a familiar face to millions for Top Chef, is being sued in Federal court by a former waitress who accuses his company of denying employees a portion of their tips and distributing the earnings among supervisors. Nessa Rapone, a Brooklyn resident who worked at Craftbar from March to May 2007, says the company also "failed to pay proper overtime compensation," and illegally retaliated by firing her when she objected to the policies. According to City Room, Rapone's lawyers say they hope other Craft employees will come forward so the can certify the lawsuit as a nationwide class action. (There are Craft restaurants in Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Ledyard, Connecticut.) Colicchio has not yet released a statement.

The east side Scores will pick up its crumpled dollar bills and jiggle into history by the end of the year, the Daily News reports. It's not quite clear if this means the entire Scores chain, which includes clubs outside of New York, is going down, but a lawyer for the owners says, "It's over; it is what it is."

Over 70 exotic dancers are joining a lawsuit against Scores. Last year, a former bartender sued the pleasure palace chain, claiming that management wouldn't give workers their fair share of the club's "Diamond Dollars" payment plan. The lawsuit claims club charges customers a 20% fee for every $100 in Diamond Dollars purchased and when workers redeem their Diamond Dollars tips, the club keeps 10%. The NY Post, which calls Scores "the mammary mecca," reports a judge wants both sides to settle. The plaintiff's lawyer said, "These workers made a lot of money for Scores. Now they're just asking for what's rightfully theirs."

Some things never change. Ephemeral NY takes a look at a guide of helpful hints for tourists visiting the city in 1920. The list of what not to do came courtesy of Valentine’s City of New York: A Guide Book, and included some of the following gems: "Don't ask a pedestrian where a certain street is. He is usually too busy to stop, and if polite enough to stop, won't know. No New Yorker knows anything about New York." And another kind reminder: "Don't gape at women smoking cigarettes in restaurants. They are harmless and respectable, notwithstanding and nevertheless. They are also smart." For more lexical gold, read the full text here.

Rich Conroy is the Bicycle Education Program Director at Bike New York, a cycling safety and education group in New York City and the organizer of the 5 Boro Bike Tour (which occurred this past weekend). Rich and the people he works with are not bike advocates--they leave political action to others and focus on the practical safety of being a cyclist in the city. The group conducts clinics to teach kids to ride bikes, and how adults can deal with the challenges of urban biking--stopping short, avoiding potholes, and not getting doored.

In what will be the largest class action suit ever brought by New York restaurant employees, employees are suing Starbucks for violating a state law that prohibits management from receiving part of workers’ tips.

Do certain band's fans tip better than others? Sasha Frere-Jones does an uncontrolled study at Bowery Ballroom -- and Chromeo fans, you're busted.

“When Chromeo played, their crowd drank house vodka and Budweiser. Didn’t tip. Some of them did what I’ll call the slide-backs. They put a dollar down on the bar, wait until you turn your back, then palm their buck and walk away. Classy. When your night starts out with “What’s your cheapest drink?” that’s also not good.”

Classy, indeed. So who is picking up the slack and keeping these bartenders in the green? It's the hard-drinking hard-rockers, of course. Specifically Preistess fans who fancy a little whiskey with their beer and often tip $2 per drink. Similarly, Bogmen fans aren't tight-fisted either, as Bowery bartender Amy Korb tells SFJ, "It’s nearly impossible to keep the Bud Light stocked in the cooler or the Ketel on the shelf. They draw investment bankers, guys who shout and get inappropriate, but, damn, they need that Bud Light."

Today the Times’s Keith Dixon, a self-described “clumsy, overambitious cook,” offers tips for cooking dinner in a crowded city apartment made even more cramped by a newborn baby. Dixon has adapted his cooking technique to accommodate a light-sleeping baby who, awakened by a clattering spatula, derails dinner plans as he and his wife “labor to get her back to sleep.” So he’s evolved into a “Silent Chef” with “ninja stealth” and suggests, among other things, avoiding meats that tend to smoke the place up, trading metal utensils for plastic, and using the stove’s exhaust fan as “a makeshift white-noise machine.”

When restaurants charge larger parties an automatic service fee – usually 20% – it’s generally understood that the money goes to the servers as a gratuity. But some restaurants have been keeping the lion’s share of the fee and passing along just a small fraction to the staff. Now a state appeals court has ruled that the practice is as illegal as it is outrageous.