Hooters MGR’s Accused of Stealing Tips

Poor Hooters Girls

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that ex-Hooters waitresses have filed a class-action lawsuit against the management of World-famous Hooters Restaurants for using a tip diversion scheme that robbed waitresses of their tips. The lawsuit also claims managers made employees buy and wash their uniforms, cover cash shortages and didn’t allow the staff to take lunch breaks.

“It’s disgusting. I mean, these girls are making minimum wage, and here (senior managers) are dipping into their tips,” said plaintiff Dina Partridge, 29, of Pleasanton, a former assistant manager at the Hooters restaurant in Dublin.

“Those are extra wages for them, and they’re being taken advantage of,” Partridge said at a news conference in Oakland.

The thefts from the tip pools of waitresses amounted to about $40 per day per restaurant over the past four years, said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Burton Boltuch.

Boltuch claimed he hadn’t witnessed “a more flagrant violation … of California employment laws, especially the slush fund allegations. I have to admit when I first received a document that was entitled ‘Slush Fund’ that Hooters kept on a daily basis, I almost thought it was a fabrication.”

“It made you just feel like you were always taking things out of your pocket to do your job, and I am personally a single mother, and I need every penny that I make,” said plaintiff Jessica Rose, 23, of San Ramon. “And to have to pay for all the different things. It all adds up.”