Some New York eateries might be altering the way they handle gratuities these days, but if you're accused of cheating your waitstaff on their fair tips, well, you're still opening yourself up to trouble. Such is the case over at Dovetail, a schmancy celebrated seafood place on the Upper West Side. An employee slapped the restaurant with a lawsuit this week that alleged it forced tips to be shared with non-tip based staff members and forced extra non-gratuity based tasks on workers without additional compensation.
Dovetail is Michelin-starred, and earned high praise from reviewers when it opened in 2007, but its fan base isn't quite as high with its staff, who allege the restaurant violates labor laws by sharing the tip pool with higher-waged employees, including assistant managers. Employees who work on tips earn about $5 an hour—an average dinner entree at Dovetail runs about $45. "It makes me angry. A lot of money they have taken from me," Roldan Monzon, a busser and runner at Dovetail, told the Daily News. "But I don’t have a lot of options."
Now, he's suing them. The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday, also alleged that the restaurant forced workers to spend time on tasks that didn't earn tips, liking cleaning windows, folding napkins and taking out the trash. "This is just a way for the restaurant to lower its payroll on the backs on its workers," Brian Schaffer, Monzon's attorney, told the News. Schaffer believes as many as 100 employees could join in on the suit; the restaurant's lawyer, however, maintains Dovetail has complied with all federal labor regulations, and plans to vigilantly fight the suit.
This isn't the joint's only recent problem: in April, they earned a nasty C grade from the Department of Health, with inspectors finding possibly contaminated food and a poorly sanitized cooking area, among other violations.
