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Waitress, bartender sue local restaurateur they say kept their tips after restaurants re-opened following Covid shutdown
By adamg on Wed, 03/29/2023 - 2:45pm
Two former employees of the Barbara Lynch Collective today sued Lynch for back wages for the tips they claim she kept after they were called back to work when the state let restaurants partially re-open three months after the start of the pandemic.
In their suit, filed today in Suffolk Superior Court, Hilary Yeaw, who worked as a server at B&G Oysters between 2010 and 2021, and Brendan McAdam, a bartender at Drink between 2019 and 2021, are seeking to become lead plaintiffs in a class action.
The two allege that after Lynch obtained more than $2 million in federal PPP loans/grants, she used the money to pay workers "fixed amounts based on their average gross bi-weekly wages" - and regardless of how many or few hours they worked - but without the tips that are the reason state law lets restaurants pay below-minimum-wage salaries to servers and bartenders. Instead, the suit alleges, she kept all tips - and told them she was using that money to continue a weekly food-and-supply program she'd started to help workers when the state ordered restaurants shut in March, 2020.
The two charge this violates both the state tips and minimum-wage laws. They are seeking an amount equal to all of the tips they say they lost, plus minimum wages for the hours they worked, with treble damages, interest and attorneys' fees.
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| Attachment | Size |
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 Complete complaint | 158.49 KB |
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Comments
Magoo sez
Magoo tried being a waiter but Magoo was fired Magoo’s first day. What happened is that Magoo spilled a full soda beverage on a gentleman’s head when said gentleman was sitting down. Said gentleman was wearing a toupee and when Magoo spilled the soda beverage on said gentleman’s head the toupee got soaked and fell to the floor. This was at an outdoor patio where a customer had her poodlepooch sitting by her table. The poodlepooch saw the toupee and thought it was a muskrat and proceeded to attack said toupee and then peed on it like a wildebeest vanquishing its foe. Magoo.
Even Boston’s High End
Even Boston’s High End restaurants are scrapping by in these lovely economic times…. High end restaurants “on the take “
Taking tips from employees.
Wage theft
That Paycheck Protection Program was a godsend for grifters.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/i-team-wage-theft-massachusetts-investigation/
Interesting
Do the workers really have a civil claim to the employer's PPP money, when on a normal day they are not mostly paid by the employer but by the customer?
It seems more likely they have a claim to a whistleblower reward, if the PPP loan was fraudulently calculated based on employees' take home pay instead of their salary.
When companies applied for PPP loans
One of the main uses was to pay worker salaries.
right. I wonder what exactly was stolen.
My (poor) understanding of the PPP loan was that they did not have to pay back the money that was paid to employees. So is this about the fact that Lynch was credited with more money than the employees received?
Or is this about the cashless nature of covid restaurant payment. There is a lot of theft of tips that we put in apps.
They do if she stole the money customers left as tips
On a normal day, the employer doesn't get to steal the money customers think they are paying their waitstaff with.
On plenty of normal days they certainly do.
There are many different ways to do it.
Wage and gratuity theft by management has always been a longtime and difficult crime to combat in the restaurant and hotel business.
Lynch Actually Took the Tips
From the filing, this went out to employees
"You will be paid the same bi-weekly average gross wage whether you work a full 40 hours, 20, or none at all. Any tips guests choose to leave are being used to continue the Employee Food & Supply Pickups on Thursdays which you are welcome to attend."
So basically when patrons paid a tip, Lynch took the tip and spent it. This isnt a case of her not using PPP money to pay them lost tips.
Horrific if true. It would offer grim evidence
that the toxic fraternity of celebrity chefs guilty of wage theft (including one still operating in Boston, that ridiculous Instagram phenom Salt Bae) has gone co-ed with the admission of one of our most successful and acclaimed women chefs.
We need to pay
Restaurant and other service workers a living wage. That we're still using the whole "tips are important for incentivizing good service" shtick is just bad faith - plenty of places around the world with amazing service without the tip culture.
Imagine if your dentist, doctor or …
… bus driver, judge, President. etc required a tip to ensure they did their jobs?
In very corrupt countries. They often do.
This is what tipping eventually leads to.
That's funny
...because tipping servers has been around for a very long time, and yet...
(just a wild guess here, but I think just possibly bribing those in positions of power has been around a lot longer than tipping low-wage servers)
That would be less money for
That would be less money for servers. We do much better with the tipping system.