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If you ask your manager a question involving how you’re getting paid, and you’re given a vague answer along the lines of “it’s complicated” or “you wouldn’t understand” or “I don’t have that data,” you’d be right to think something fishy might be going on.

In this story, one cafe employee is suspicious of how the manager is splitting up the tips among the employees, and it honestly sounds like the manager is doing everything possible to avoid answering this question.

But the employee is determined to get a straight answer.

Keep reading for the whole story.

AIO for questioning how much of the tip pool my manager takes?

So I just started at a cafe about a month ago and when the manager (24M, manager for 4 years) hired me he told me tips were $3 per hour and they pool the rest for winter when tips drop lower.

I thought that was a bit strange but took the job because I needed one.

I asked my coworker about the tip situation and she said he had told her something different, that it was just a direct split.

The manager seems to keep changing his story.

I then asked him about it again and he said they weren’t doing it anymore.

I then asked for a tip pool breakdown.

And he kept saying that he would get me that information and then wouldn’t follow through.

It seems like the manager is avoiding OP.

I decided to add up the tips myself on the POS which he saw me doing on the cameras and called the cafe to tell me to stop.

He said he’d go through the breakdown with me the next day, but then didn’t show up, and when I texted him near the end of my shift he said he wouldn’t be getting there until after my shift was over.

I said I could wait, and he showed up about an hour after my shift.

I asked for just the hourly tip breakdown because he claimed that the total amount of tips was just divided by the total hours, but he couldn’t give me those exact numbers, instead just started showing me random excel sheets with random numbers saying that only the accountant had that info.

I’m pretty sure the manager is making this up as he goes.

I kept asking for just the tip breakdown which he still couldn’t give me directly. He showed me that the hours are wayy more than what’s on the schedule because:

He tips himself out for 40 hours of on-the-floor shift work per week and then he gets another 12 hours of managerial pay on top of that, didn’t say how much that is.

The wife of the owner comes in at night to bake at night, apparently 18 hours per week but we don’t even have that many baked goods.

The son of the owner randomly comes in whenever he chooses, he’s 17 and in high school, but none of them are on the schedule nor clock in.

It’s very fishy.

The fact that he can’t give me straight answers, the untracked hours, the lack of tip breakdown. It just seems weird to me.

I’ve also been working 40 hours per week and have not seen him here for that many hours.

It might be worth noting that the owners don’t speak English- they’re Persian, and only the son and the manager (who is also Persian) can speak English.

OP is thinking about quitting.

Now the manager is talking about me to the other employees who are his girlfriend, his best friend and his roommate – the only ones that are consistent employees otherwise there’s a lot of turnover.

The whole thing just feels weird and immature and unnecessary and I’m not sure I want to work here anymore.

Am I overreacting??

I wouldn’t trust anything the manager says about tipping. He’s clearly lying. Yes, I think OP should quit and find a different job.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

Here’s a vote for quitting.

Another person thinks this is obvious tip theft.

Here’s some more advice.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a employee who airs every last grievance in his resignation letter.

Everyone seems to think OP needs to quit.

It doesn’t seem right for the manager or the owners to get tips. The tips should go to the servers at the cafe.

OP should definitely quit, but reporting the manager or the owners seems like the right thing to do as well. They shouldn’t be allowed to continue to steal tips intended for their employees.

This sounds like an awful place to work.